Alison Young - Graffiti Sessions - Day 1

art or crime (or both at the same time)? __________________________ the value of illegal images in public space

Alison Young Social & Political Sciences University of Melbourne

Proposition 1: There is no difference between a corporate logo and a tag __________________________________________

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Proposition 2: Damage is a euphemism for challenges to property ownership _____________________________________________ Why do street artists and graffiti writers place work in public space without permission?

Interviews with 64 artists and writers as to motivations‌

Inspired by culture Communication Aesthetics Corporeal pleasures Oppositional stance

But the law isn’t interested in motivation: intention or recklessness as to damaging property belonging to another without consent‌.

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Proposition 3: Illegality has its own hierarchy _________________________________________ State Govt of Victoria 4-pronged prevention strategy – offenders removing graffiti; provision of cleaning kits to residents; council/community graffiti removal partnerships; funding for graffiti removal initiatives 9

Proposition 3 Illegality has its own hierarchy _________________________________________

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Proposition 4 Street art is the beneficiary of discriminatory criminal justice practices _________________________________________ ‘I don't normally have problems with the police or anything because if… they stop and if you are really friendly, then it's okay. And you say, it's only art. I'm an artist…. But you have to say, okay, it's not graffiti’ El Bocho (Berlin)

‘I didn’t want to stop painting and I thought yeah if I’m a little bit clever about this I can still… paint illegally and still have some fun. So… I moved away from graffiti and more into street art’.

Eine (London) 11

When I’m doing projects like takeovers of phone booths or billboards, often the police are very calm. The space that I’m interacting with isn’t like a private landowner’s building. It’s not – I’m not permanently destroying anything. What I’m doing can be reversed very quickly. So they kind of just will allow me a level of conversiveness with them, and eventually just say, ‘hey, I got to write you a summons’….[But] I have been caught by cops that were under the assumption that I was writing graffiti, and that was a completely different experience, where they will grab you, manhandle you, throw you against a cop car, handcuff you, search everything that you have on you, without any consent, obviously, and generally scare the shit out of you.

Jordan Seiler (New York)

One time, the police pretend to write me a fine but they said, ‘we think this is beautiful, we cannot fine you…

Alice Pasquini (Rome) 12

Proposition 5 Locating uncommissioned words and images is complex ___________________________________________

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Proposition 6 Valuing street art over graffiti is dangerous ___________________________________________

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conclusions why does it matter?

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