Fields | Terrains | Special Issue Vol. 1

Winter-Hiver 2015

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Special Issue Édition spéciale

McGill Undergraduate Journal of Anthropology Revue d’anthropologie des étudiantes et étudiants au baccalauréat de l’Université McGill

Editors-in-chief - Rédactrices en chef Geneviève Godin Samantha Easy Cover art - Couverture Geneviève Godin Editorial board - Équipe éditoriale Benjamin Baker Catherine Paulin Geneviève Godin Jorge Gamarra Laura DeFazio Maria Theresia Starzmann Samantha Easy Special thanks - Remerciements McGill Department of Anthropology Anthropology Students’ Association

Note des rédactrices Editors’ note L’équipe éditoriale du Fields | Terrains est fière de vous présenter la première édition spéciale de la revue d’anthropologie des étudiant(e)s au baccalauréat de l’Université McGill. Ce volume explore les enjeux entourant l’archéologie contemporaine en se basant sur l’étude de deux sites Montréalais. Il s’agit d’une extension du travail effectué par les étudiant(e)s d’un séminaire de recherche avancé, soit l’Archéologie du passé contemporain (ANTH 551), enseigné par Maria Theresia Starzmann, professeure d’anthropologie, durant l’hiver 2014. Au nom de l’équipe éditoriale de cette année, nous vous remercions de votre soutien. Nous espérons que vous apprécierez l’édition spéciale de Fields | Terrains de l’hiver 2015.

The Fields | Terrains editorial board is proud to present the first special issue of the McGill Undergraduate Journal of Anthropology. This volume explores issues surrounding contemporary archaeology by studying two sites in the city of Montréal. This is an expansion upon the work done by students in an advanced research seminar, Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past (ANTH 551), taught in winter 2014 by Professor Maria Theresia Starzmann. On behalf of the editorial board, we thank you for your support. We hope you enjoy the winter 2015 special issue of Fields | Terrains.

Geneviève Godin & Samantha Easy Rédactrices en chef Editors-in-chief

C o n t e n t s | Ta b l e d e s m a t i è r e s I 2 - Preface Geneviève Godin Maria Theresia Starzmann 4 - Site Histories Catherine Paulin Samantha Easy 7 - Research Methods Samantha Easy

II 10 - Social Commentary over Resistance: The Queer Archaeology of Graffiti Visibility in Saint-Henri, Montréal Benjamin Baker 15 - Power Dynamics at Past Industrial Sites: An Archaeological Study of Graffiti in Montréal Catherine Paulin 21 - Contemporary Graffiti-Making and Its Problematic Dichotomies: Questioning Criminality, Abjection, and Marginality Geneviève Godin 27 - Oral Histories: 6240 Av. du Parc Jorge Gamarra 30 - Asserting Identity and Countering Marginalization with Graffiti Laura DeFazio 37 - An Archaeology of Supermodernity: Towards an Understanding of Place in Urban Landscapes Samantha Easy

III 46 - Epilogue Benjamin Baker 48 - Acknowledgements

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Preface Geneviève Godin Maria Theresia Starzmann “I misbehaved in the cosmos yesterday.

I lived around the clock without questions, without surprise.”

Out of this revolution of speed arise new distinct ways of experiencing time and place, which are explored in more depth throughout this volume. Since the fast-paced supermodern present becomes the past almost instantly, we see the emergence of a desire to protect and remember the past, both distant and recent.

Our choice of post-industrial and transient sites that host a large number of graffiti is a deliberate one, as these dynamic spaces speak to the popular nostalgia for the recent past, and the fascination with the ruins it continuously produces. By carrying out this project, we blur the line between the object of study and ourselves. We do so by looking at sites that are still in the making, and unsettling the taken for granted inclusions and exclusions of present-day narratives. The combination of archaeological practices and methodologies borrowed from other disciplines (geography, history, socio-cultural anthropology, etc.) allows us to examine the alternative and undocumented significance of assemblages.

We also give value to a multiplicity of voices, thus acknowledging that they have imbued the supermodern landscape with meaning, to the same extent that mainstream actors have. This is one of the main characteristics of contemporary archaeology.

Indeed, it pays attention to the silences produced by dominant narratives through the inclusion of subjugated, marginalized, and unheard stories. Consequently, it emphasizes the fact that narratives are not straightforward, and that human experiences are complex stories we can engage with.

As a result of studying our own surroundings, it is inevitable that subjectivity and personal engagement permeate the texts in this volume. Through the lens of contemporary

– Wisława Szymborska, Distraction An Archaeology of Us This special edition of the Fields | Terrains journal is the result of a collective project in the field of contemporary archaeology, carried out during the winter and early spring of 2014. It is part of a broader trend, which has grown in recent years, towards the study of the material culture and landscapes of the 20th and 21st centuries.

This type of archaeology is first and foremost an archaeology of us, meaning that the archaeology of the recent past focuses its efforts on the now, which it approaches using interdisciplinary methods and theories. Its aim is to study the contemporary in its own right by actively engaging with it, and seeing this engagement as both a method and a goal of research. In doing so, we attempt to shed new light on the familiar material culture and landscapes that surround us – the city of Montréal and its graffiti, more specifically. We reflect on what makes analyses of the presentday archaeological, within the context of a supermodern world that is intimately familiar to us but often remains unquestioned.

Processes of consumption and destruction, material excesses and their consequences, as well as rates of technological change on extraordinary scales characterize the supermodern world of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Modes of communication and transportation are faster than ever before, and globalization is part of our everyday reality.

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archaeology, we set out to explore familiar spaces, and use archaeological practices to investigate the ways in which they play into the lived experiences of people in the present.

re/creates surfaces. Once we begin peeling back the layers that make up each surface, the implacable walls of our cities do no longer remain external to us. By historicizing graffiti, even as we are concerned with relatively short time spans (a graffiti scene in Montréal only really emerged in the 1970s), archaeologists of the contemporary look beyond what is there, encountering the otherwise unseen.

What is more, by revealing what lies underneath and in-between (whether more graffiti or the walls of ruined buildings), the archaeology of the contemporary can debunk a common myth: that modernity has no history.

While the graffiti we pass on any given day in Montréal could entirely change by tomorrow, be painted over or removed altogether, this is not so much an erasure of the past as it is an indication that the past is always part of the present. From this perspective, graffiti appears as a historical act, one that is constitutive of our practices in the present, while it is simultaneously an emerging act, something of the future that is about to happen.

Here, then, is where the archaeologists of the contemporary misbehave in the cosmos: we refuse to domesticate the world through reliance on a rigid framework of evolutionary time and instead recognize past, present, and future as immanent, concurrent dimensions of history. While this is a move away from more traditional archaeological time lines and strict notions of a ‘prior to’ and ‘after,’ studying the archaeology of the contemporary is not to dismiss the past.

Rather, it is to provide students with a space to imagine different possibilities for the future.

Future Possibilities The present is made up of fragments from the past. Studying (and teaching) the contemporary is thus not a straightforward matter, it is not a getting from here to there, but it is about disentangling the ways in which every life is folded into other lives and histories.

If we think about human lives as trails, crossed over and cut across by myriad others, a dense fabric of life paths emerges; through time, this fabric materializes as surface atop surface atop surface, forming the fragile layers of history.

While the focus of the archaeology of the contemporary is our seemingly familiar world, its interest lies not with the taken for granted but with the hidden and obscured places of history, with those layers that are not readily visible but interrupted, erased, or covered up. Maybe because this way of looking at the world requires us to misbehave in the cosmos a little, as Wisława Szymborska suggests in her poem Distraction, is why studying the archaeology of the contemporary past is such a unique opportunity. It invites us to shift our position and look at the familiar with unfamiliar eyes – to see its surprises – and it pushes not only the boundaries of our discipline but also of our thinking. Here, there is no linear history but a web of possibilities, which the archaeology of the contemporary allows us to unearth.

The possibilities of graffiti emerge from the spaces between its accumulating deposits of paint. If graffiti seems ephemeral to the archaeologist at first – a fleeting act applied to the city’s outermost skin – it is not timeless or depthless. A practice of constant inscription and incorporation, it continuously appropriates, dismisses, abandons, and

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Site Histories Catherine Paulin Samantha Easy transportation.

This industrial boom also explains the large percentage of working class anglophones who moved to the area in its early expansion, although the area became known for its Jewish immigrant population arriving during the 1920s. This sector of the city can be considered quite multicultural, as later occupants also included immigrants of Greek origin and eventually a higher percentage of the francophone community (Ville de Montréal). Merchants during the early 20th century were mostly White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, of British or Scottish descent, whose renowned economic success culminated in a social divide between the wealthy and the lower classes of low-paid labourers in Montréal (Linteau 2003, 92-98). Typically they did not settle in the industrial neighborhoods, but they would certainly have profited from the working-class population already on site and available to work. This made these types of neighborhoods incredibly good choices for growing businesses.

At the time this was originally written in the winter/spring of 2014, the site’s fate was still undecided. For sale by the Montréal Rosdev Company, the site was advertised under the “built to suit” category (Rosdev). Further research showed, however, that the building could eventually be destroyed since demolition permits had been requested since 2011 (Registre des Lobbyistes du Québec). The site was in a state of ruin and local graffiti artists changed its official purpose to one of artistic expression. The past decade or so therefore saw its purpose transformed, and it had gained a new kind of fame that it probably would not have found otherwise.

Online, it has been popularized as an artistic

L’Omnipac Located on the margins of three Montréal boroughs (Rosemont/La Petite-Patrie, Le Plateau Mont-Royal, and Outremont), this industrial-style building has mostly been known as a graffiti hub in its more recent history. In 1856, William Rutherford, a Scottish immigrant, started the Rutherford & Sons lumber business (Inc. 1899). Upon his death in 1904, Rutherford left his four sons in charge of the company. His fourth son, Stewart Rutherford was in charge of the box manufacturing portion of the company (Sulte, Fryer, and David 1908, 824-826).

This business sector came to be known as the Dominion Box Company, determining the use of the building for decades to come (Bélanger 2008). The Rutherford & Sons building was sold in 1922, when it changed its name to the Standard Paper Box Company (Ville de Montréal). The site’s most current and popularized name, L’Omnipac, comes from Les Entreprises Omnipac (Registraire des Entreprises du Québec).

The Rutherford & Sons building would have been one of many buildings constructed during an industrial boom north of Van Horne Avenue in the early 20th century, located near to the Canadian Pacific Railway (Ville de Montréal). Montréal was not only a major maritime hub because of the port but also an important railroad hub. The Canadian Pacific Railway carried goods across Canada all the way to Vancouver by 1886, making it an important transportation route for merchants (Linteau 2013, 92-93). According to Jean Delage, writing in 1943, industries would concentrate around the Lachine Canal or the railroads for better access to these modes of

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graffiti hub, photographs showing its potential for self-expression (The Murr 2010).

Participants to this research now confirm that the building has been demolished in the fall of 2014.

There have been several responses to the proposed changes by community members and activists. A group of community volunteers from the Citizens Committee of the Village des Tanneries (CCVT) began work on a gardening project on the corner of St. Jacques and Rue Desnoyers in 2010.

The project, known as “guerrilla gardening,” aims to transform the area into an inviting public space and to discourage graffiti (Collete 2013). A plan for creating a mural behind the community garden to further deter taggers was in progress according to the organisation’s web site, but was put on hold in 2010 and, at the time of the project, had still not been completed. Netting and vines have been placed in order to deter graffiti artists however, it has not been effective.

The site area for the project includes the area directly beneath the Turcot interchange and the surrounding cross streets.

The site is used in a variety of ways by the community; thousands of people drive through every day along the Villa Maria expressway, others participate in community activities or create graffiti. The survey area will likely be drastically affected by restructuring of the highway as it includes the area directly beneath the Turcot overpass. As the neighbourhood rapidly expands and construction projects continue, controversy over use of space in the neighbourhood remains between gardeners and graffiti artists, and between the city of Montréal and community activists.

St. Henri Located in the borough of Le SudOuest, St. Henri is a historically working class and industrial neighbourhood which began as a small tannery village in the 16th century.

Today, the area is still colloquially referred to as the ‘Village des Tanneries.’ In the 19th century, the first wave of industrialisation began with the construction of the Montréal and Lachine railroads and of the Lachine canal. The growth of tanning and textiles industries provided employment to a historically working class and underprivileged community, primarily identified as Black, Irish and French Catholic (Heritage Montreal).

In 1905 St. Henri was annexed to the city of Montréal which began providing public services and developments in infrastructure.

These improvements created a boom in living and working conditions and for life in the borough until the 1930s when factories began to close and unemployment rose.

In the 1960s, the Villa Maria expressway and Turcot overpass were built.

These landmarks had a devastating effect upon the neighbourhood and continue to be a source of controversy. The construction displaced thousands of people from low income households and the city’s former red light district was destroyed (Industrial Architecture of Montreal). The controversy continues today as proposed restructuring of the expressway are argued to perpetuate processes of gentrification.

Residents and activists have argued that the proposed changes are an appropriation of the neighbourhood, an act of class discrimination and an environmental hazard (Mobilisation Turcot).

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References Bélanger, Claude. “William Rutherford.”

Marianopolis College. http://faculty. marianopolis.edu/c.belanger/quebechistory/ encyclopedia/WilliamRutherford.html.

Sulte, Benjamin, Dr. C. E. Fryer and Senator L. O. David. A History of Quebec, Its Resources and People. Vol. II. Montreal and Toronto: The Canada History Company, 1908. https://archive.org/details/ historyofquebeci02sultuoft.

Citizens Committee of the Village of des Tanneries. “Our Projects.” www. villagedestanneries.com/ourprojects.html.

The Murr. ”Van Horne Dec 2010.” www. mtlgraff.com/2010/12/vanhorne-dec-2010. html.

Collete, Olivia. “Urban Villages: St-Henri, eccentric, artsy.” Montreal Gazette, October 4, 2013.

Ville de Montréal. “L’avenue Du Parc et ses Intersections.” http://ville.montreal.qc.ca/ portal/page?_pageid=5677,87581573&_ dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL.

Delage, Jean. L’industrie Manufacturière de Montréal. Montréal 1943.

Heritage Montreal. “Neighbourhood SaintHenri.” www.memorablemontreal.com/ accessibleQA/en/histoire.php?quartier=13.

Industrial Architecture of Montreal. “SaintHenri.” http://digital.library.mcgill.ca/ industrial/sthenri.html.

Linteau, Paul-André. The History of Montréal: The Story of a Great North American City.

Montréal: Baraka Books, 2013.

Mobilisation Turcot. “Expropriations.” http:// turcot.info/en/node/11.

Registraire des Entreprises du Québec.

“Les Entreprises Omnipac.” www. registreentreprises.gouv.qc.ca/fr/consulter/ rechercher/instructions_recherche.aspx.

Registre des Lobbyistes du Québec.

“Consultation Du Registre : Divco.” www. lobby.gouv.qc.ca/servicespublic/consultation/ ConsultationCitoyen.aspx?id=0.

Rosdev. “Built to Suit.” www.rosdev.com/ built_to_suit_availability.php.

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Research Methods Samantha Easy How might we use the methods of archaeology to explore what is intimately familiar? This is a question which has absorbed those who study the recent past. Archaeology as a discipline was developed to explore the physical and distant past. In what ways can these methods be applied to contemporary social phenomenon? This journal explores an archaeological approach to the recent past by utilising the rhetoric and theory of archaeological methodology to make the familiar, unfamiliar.

In this volume we make use of a variety of methods employed throughout the course of the project. In doing so we acknowledge the interdisciplinary nature of the study of the recent past and the influences of other disciplines which focus on contemporary materiality; anthropology, material culture studies, art, photography, and documentary film. There are many ways in which the methods of archaeology and related disciplines might be applied to late modern, post-industrial sites. This project incorporates interdisciplinary methods and theories, and uses them to make a study of the modern landscape archaeological.

The individual papers included herein make use of a variety of methods and approaches regarding their particular questions.

Historical data was used to contextualise the research and to analyse the sites in light of their industrial and socioeconomic histories. This included doing research into both archives within the city of MontrĂŠal and independent news sources such as blogs and local news to study more recent histories.

Some articles make use of data from survey and quantitative analysis. This information was gathered by walking through the sites and recording information on spatial

relationships and material culture. We made use of images taken by ourselves at the sites in order to highlight certain features, show particular images or the layout of sites.

Anthropological theory was a large part of our analysis. We drew on writings which discussed place making, postindustrial nostalgia, and graffiti from different sociocultural contexts. In this way we did not draw distinct lines between anthropology and archaeology, acknowledging the uses of both on this topic.

Throughout this project we made a deliberate effort not to see ourselves as wholly separate from that which we studied. We do not see supermodern landscapes as sterile or static, rather we acknowledge that a multiplicity of voices characterises them and a multitude of people create them. Those who interact with our sites invoke change and create meaning.

We do not imagine that we exist outside of these processes and so many of our discussions are subjective in nature. We intend to restore voice to alternative narratives, including oral histories, documentary films and interviews from people living near or interacting with these sites in our final analysis. By using this information we place our sites within a lived and experienced context.

The variety of methodologies used in this journal and the interdisciplinary approach we undertook allowed us to create an academic journal which is both subjective and archaeological. The lens of contemporary archaeology allowed us to create a unique insight into experiences created and shaped by modern sites.

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Social Commentary over Resistance: The Queer Archaeology of Graffiti Visibility in Saint-Henri, Montréal Benjamin Baker Graffiti exists on almost every surface in the city of Montréal, ranging from tops of former industrial silos to sides of freight trains to metro tunnels. In the deindustrialized neighborhood of Saint-Henri, graffiti is particularly ubiquitous. The borough of SaintHenri has a colorful history creating a powerful context in which graffiti exists (GraffitiArch 2014). However, this paper will focus on graffiti found within the predetermined survey area (Figure 1). My research proposes a counter-hegemonic, queered narrative, which explores how the visibility of graffiti affects its perceived purpose. I argue that the intent of graffiti is not straightforward but exists along a nuanced spectrum. Based on the results of my analysis, I argue that graffiti is not an act of resistance, as defined in other literature; rather graffiti is a form of social commentary reviewing contemporary circumstances.

Interpretations presented in this paper are rooted in the theoretical framework of queer archaeology. Contrary to popular conception, queer archaeology is not solely the archaeological investigation of queer people in the past (Dowson 2009). Dowson (2009) and Alberti (2012) propose that queer archaeology allows archaeologists to provide counter-hegemonic interpretations.

Queer archaeologists criticize mainstream interpretations of the archaeological record for being the result of the projection of modern norms and values into the past (Alberti 2012; Dowson 2009). For example, the projection of modern family structures results in a reading of the past as a continuum of western family values normalizing the institution of the nuclear family (Dowson 2009). Queer archaeology seeks to undo normalizing/ hegemonic practices by presenting alternative

interpretations of the past (Dowson 2009).

Hegemonic narratives silence nuances of the past, which archaeologists can tease apart using a queer perspective.

The Montréal Police Department defines graffiti as a “type of vandalism that damages property that doesn’t belong to you” (SPVM 2014). This definition of graffiti is representative of broader social understandings of graffiti as an act of criminality or delinquency, something disruptive to the general functioning of society because it stands against cultural norms of what is considered proper.

Here I invoke Durkheim’s concept of organic solidarity, wherein each member of society has a specific, specialized role (1984 [1893]). In order for society to function, each individual must adhere to social norms and behaviours, leaving little room for an individual to deviate from presubscribed and accepted behaviours and practices. Breaking away from socially sanctioned behaviour throws social order into chaos. Constructing graffiti as a deviant practice encourages individual perceptions of graffiti as a criminal act allowing mainstream society to repress taggers as a troublesome and threatening subculture. Queer archaeology is particularly suited to developing alternative discourses, ones that evaluate graffiti writing in terms of expression rather than criminalization.

In both academic literature and public opinion, graffiti is constructed as an act of resistance. However, this is a vague claim and does little to answer what exactly resistance is or what graffiti is resisting. As defined by Scott in Casella (2007, 70), “as a constellation of activities intended to undermine, thwart or obstruction conditions of domination… often subtler and anonymous, resistance activities gradually erode authority.” This positions

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acts of resistance in direct opposition to the dominant ideology, giving them counterideological quality. All this implies that in order to be an act of resistance it must be a public act, and there needs to be a ‘dialogue’ between oppressors the oppressors and the resister, meaning that resistance can only exist where there is oppression (Casella 2007, 70).

However, based on this assertion, I propose that archaeologists can read graffiti not only as an act of resistance, but also as an act of social commentary/critique. Ronald Kramer comments on studies of contemporary western graffiti, arguing that they perpetuate normative assumptions of graffiti as an act of resistance (2010). Following a proposition

by Janice Rahn, Kramer advances the idea that graffiti is an “expression of disdain” for processes of the dominant culture (2010, 240).

Graffiti here is not so much an act of resistance as an act of social commentary, highlighting problems wrought by the dominant culture.

The difference between these two poles is the degree to which they are counter-ideological, with the former being counter-ideological and the latter not directly challenging the dominant ideology. I argue that ascertaining the difference between these two poles is a function of how visible the graffiti is to the public.

Two cases studies presented in following paragraphs exemplify how visibility determines where graffiti falls along the resistancecommentary spectrum: a historical example taken from Japanese-American internment camps during the Second World War (Burton and Farrell 2013), and a contemporary example from the West Bank (Peteet 1996). Despite the wide temporal, cultural and geographic differences in these examples, both highlight the intricacies of graffiti and the predominance of the practice in times of adversity.

Graffiti in Japanese-American internment camps varied in style and scrawled non-discriminately (Burton and Farrell 2013,

254). My brief discussion of graffiti in these camps focuses on the tags, which fall on the resistance side of the spectrum because of both their high visibility and counter-ideological component. In the camp, derogatory antiAmerican messages were among the most popular form of tags. Tags at Manzanar, such as “BANZAI NIPPON” (Burton and Farrell 2013, 255) which translates to “Long Live Japan” illustrate the strong sense of betrayal Japanese Americans felt towards the United States government for their unjust imprisonment. Graffiti at Manzanar indicates the presence of a Japanese militancy group, the Black Dragons, who frequently scrawled their tag in the wet cement of construction projects.

Internees at Manzanar could easily read the graffiti done by other prisoners, serving the goal of consolidating a Japanese identity and boasting camp morale (Burton and Farrell 2013, 256). The intent behind the graffiti at Manzanar was to defy the oppressive regime of American soldiers.

Manzanar also contains graffiti, which falls on the social commentary side of the spectrum. On the south field’s pipeline supports, internees inscribed tanka poems (Burton and Farrell 2013, 255). One poem conveys a message of powerful disdain for Japanese treatment by Americas, referring to the latter as despicable. While at first this poem conveys strong anti-American sentiments, the placement of the poem does not place it in dialogue with the dominant regime.

Arguably, placing the poem is a hidden place creates a space in which the writer/artists can communicate with their fellow internees to express their feelings towards their forced confinement.

Graffiti in the contested area of the West Bank is another example of how graffiti serves as an act of resistance. In the West Bank, many artists tag public places (Peteet 1996, 148). Palestinians tag surfaces, residential and business walls with politically

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charged messages such as demanding equal representation for taxation (Peteet 1996, 145).

In efforts to stop these messages from attracting attention, Israeli soldiers or businessmen and homeowners whose property was marked erased graffiti tags, often within hours of the act of tagging (Peteet 1996, 143). In order to have an impact, both Israeli official and the civilian population had to see the tags (Peteet 1996, 148). If these tags were not visible, there would be no point to their politically charged messages. This is a stark contrast to graffiti tags in the Saint-Henri survey area, which look weathered, indicating a lengthy duration of existence.

During my survey of the site, I along with Samantha Easy established seven data collection points (Figure 2). Samantha and I took photographs at each data collection point, in every direction. This enhanced the experience of the map, given that a portion of site is not visible with tradition maps, while also serving as a way to re-examine the survey site without going back. Data points 2 and 7 serve as the basis for interpretations presented in this paper.

Data point 2 is in an open place.

Graffiti found in this location are primarily tags, concentrated on the most visible sides of two green Hydro-Québec power boxes (Figure 3). The tags on the boxes convey no politically charged messages; they only relay the artists’ street identity. All tags on the boxes vary in terms of age, suggesting that this is a popular place for artists to sign their identity.

However, while the argument can be advanced that tags have become a naturalized/expected component of a cityscape, this does take into account the fact that these tags ‘stick out’ from the rest of the street. Instead, I would contend that these tags are a form of resistance against the encroaching forces of gentrification. In recent years, the neighborhood of Saint-Henri has drastically transformed with whole areas being redeveloped pushing marginal groups

out. Tags directly contest the ‘gentrified aesthetic’ and are remnant to the former character of the area.

Data point 7 contains graffiti that fall into the mural category. I argue that these graffiti murals function as acts of social commentary. One of the recurring images found at this data point convey the image of police officer as pigs (Figures 4 and 5).

While this equation conveys the belief that police officers have begun abusing their power and behaving in ways unjust for individuals claiming to uphold peace, this graffiti is what I define as an act of social commentary. The twin images of the police officer pigs are a social critique of what some members of society view to be a problem. Contrary to the nearby tags on the Hydro-Québec boxes, these graffiti are not acts of resistance because of their visibility, or lack thereof.

What prevents these pieces from being acts of resistance is they are not visible to the public, only to members of the community or individuals who know where to look. Some may argue that the subject matter alone of these pieces is enough for them to be acts of resistance. However, resistance exists only when it is in opposition to the dominant group. In the case of Palestinian graffiti, it is out in the open directly attacking something the artists’ views to be unjust (Peteet 1996). In this case, artists intentionally hide their graffiti from the gaze of the dominant group. In order to experience these pieces, the viewer must enter the area beneath the over-pass through data point 4 (entrance to this area is also possible through data-point 5; however it is arguably a more difficult path). A busy street as well as fencing around the area clouds visibility of the area from data point 1. While the fence acts as a deterrent to the area, there is a gate that remains open allowing individuals in, should they chose to walk underneath the overpass.

The lack of visibility of these images allows graffiti to function as a form of social

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commentary. By defying traditional uses of space, graffiti brings to the fore the grievances of marginalized and subaltern populations.

Graffiti artists need not necessarily be from a marginalized population in order to express grievances. Making a Name, a 2013 film

by Patrick O’Connor, seeks to provide its audience with an introduction to the world of Montréal graffiti making. Perhaps what is most striking about the film is that it demonstrates that graffiti artists come from all socio-economic backgrounds, breaking from mainstream preconceptions of graffiti as being the practice of urban delinquents from poor neighborhoods. Marginalized graffiti artists could be responsible for the production of the images, although it is just as likely that artists from more affluent areas bear responsibility.

However, graffiti artists’ positioning as social deviants allows them to function as ‘anonymous’ allies to social groups and causes.

From this perspective, representations of police officers as pigs from the Saint-Henri site can be symbols communicating the grievances of an area. The area is facing rapid change, as construction of the nearby super-hospital alters the landscape to the west, whereas encroaching gentrification from the east poses another threat to the neighborhood. The municipal government has slated much of the area near the Turroct interchange for eventual demolition (Tamo, 2014). Depictions of police officers symbolize broader societal failings for residents of marginal neighborhoods. By sheltering the graffiti away from public sight, graffiti artists create a space in which those members of the city who are dissatisfied with current circumstances to express their disgruntlement.

Often, from an outsider’s perspective graffiti is an act of resistance. However viewing graffiti as only being an act of resistance denies agency to the practice and assumes a onedimensionality to its form. This paper proposes that instead of abandoning the idea of graffiti

as resistance entirely, scholars acknowledge the existence of a graffiti continuum. As I have illustrated, graffiti comes in a plethora of forms and meanings. By examining the visibility of pieces of graffiti, scholars can complicate hegemonic assertions about graffiti.

I argue that visibility is the driving factor in ascertaining where on the continuum a graffiti falls, as visibility positions graffiti in relation to the dominant establishing the binary of oppressors-resister.

Figure 1. Saint-Henri survey area

4 7 3 5 2 1 6 Figure 2. Saint-Henri data points

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References Alberti, Benjamin. “Queer Prehistory. Bodies, Performativity, and Matter.” In A Companion to Gender Prehistory, edited by Diane Bolder.

Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.

Burton, Jeffery F, and Mary M Farrell. ““Life in Manzanar Where There Is a Spring Breeze”: Graffiti at a World War II Japanese American Internment Camp.” In Prisoners of War, edited

by Harold Mytum and Gilly Carr. New York: Springer, 2013.

Figure 3. Hydro-Québec boxes covered in graffiti tags

Casella, Eleanor Conlin. The Archaeology of Institutional Confinement. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007.

Dowson, T. “Queer Theory Meets Archaeology: Disrupting Epistemological Privilege and Heteronormativity.” In The Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory, edited by Noreen Giffney and Michael O’Rourke. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009.

Dowson, Thomas A. “Why Queer Archaeology? An Introduction.” World Archaeology 32, no. 2 (2000): 161-65.

Figure 4. Wall 1 of overpass

Durkheim, Émile. The Division of Labour in Society, translated by W. D. Halls. New York: Free Press, 1984 [1893].

Kramer, Ronald. “Painting with Permission: Legal Graffiti in New York City.” Ethnography 11, no. 2 (2010): 235-53.

Peteet, Julie. “The Writing on the Walls: The Graffiti of the Intifada.” Cultural Anthropology 11, no. 2 (1996): 139-59.

Tamo, Camille. Personal Communication.

Montréal, April 2014.

Figure 5. Wall 2 of overpass

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Power Dynamics at Past Industrial Sites: An Archaeological Study of Graffiti in Montréal Catherine Paulin There is an aura surrounding past industrial sites that grasps our imagination and requests our attention. The Omnipac and Saint-Henri sites in Montréal, each rich with an industrial past that has carried fragments of its materiality to the present, are examples of this effect that sites with an industrial past have on us. The feelings brought up at such places have been discussed in depth by scholars such as Tim Edensor, who describes them as “replete with ghosts”: They are filled with the traces of past industrial workers who are presenced by the vestiges at these sites (Edensor 2005, 328). These places may carry meaning in and of themselves, but what makes them so evocative to people in the present is what they have always stood for in the past, or what they embodied to the people who occupied these spaces. As places where power relations between workers and owners were played out in the past, these spaces still carry the ghosts of this past to the present. Alice Mah discusses this relationship between “people, places, and historical and socio-economic processes” at sites of industrial ruination, pointing out the importance of considering these factors together when analyzing space and place (Mah 2012, 131). To Mah, “the spatial is socially constituted and the social is also spatial” (2012, 129). Contemporary archaeology has been focusing on these types of spatial-temporal analyses through a direct engagement with the present (GonzálezRuibal 2008, 247-279): It is precisely at sites such as the abandoned Omnipac factory or the marginalized neighborhoods surrounding the Turcot Interchange in Saint-Henri in Montréal that we can do an archaeology of us. Since these sites are situated in the past and in the present, and are places where human relations

play out, we expect a political and ideological dimension and commentary to emerge from them (González-Ruibal in Harrison and Schofield 2010, 142). Based on the understanding that contemporary archaeology offers a political commentary and that it can deal with power dynamics in the present, my research asks: How are power relations depicted through graffiti at the Omnipac and Saint-Henri sites and what is the evidence of power struggle at these sites if there is one?

How can contemporary archaeology provide some insight into how these power relations work and are depicted in the present?

My research has been inspired by a concept proposed by Harrison and Schofield: Ideoscapes. These are described as “images and ideas that represent state ideologies and the resistance to state ideologies” (Harrison and Schofield 2010, 140). This concept easily lends itself to questioning whether seemingly abandoned industrial spaces provide a political commentary and whether this can be seen in the different types and forms of graffiti found at the Omnipac and Saint-Henri sites, such as of throw-ups, paste-ups, stencils, slogans, rollers, pieces and murals (Dovey, Wollan and Woodcock 2012, 21-41; GraffitiArch 2014). In trying to answer these questions, it is important to keep in mind that graffiti can have multiple meanings and that these meanings can vary depending on the person examining the graffiti. What I am proposing, therefore, is not to promote only my understanding of these pieces, but rather to suggest one interpretation of the graffiti amongst others.

It is significant to note that both the Saint-Henri and the Omnipac sites, although located in different boroughs, share many similarities. Looking at these sites now, it

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would be difficult to tell that both grew out of a common movement in Montréal: The industrial revolution (Linteau, 2013). If we borrow Laurent Olivier’s understanding of the production of the past, this becomes important since the past is never completely left behind; rather, sites and materials are “conditioned by the past, marked by the present and destined to be shaped by the future” (Olivier 2001, 184). Both of these sites employed the working class in the new kinds of relations of production that characterized 20th century capitalism. These places therefore emerged as centers that came to represent the power relations of the time: A large working class population laboring for cheap in industries owned by wealthy businessmen (Linteau 2013, 184). Both l’Omnipac and the Saint-Henri site exemplified power and class relations in the past.

In the present, these sites have changed purpose. The Omnipac is seemingly abandoned and in a state of ruin, a skeleton of the industrial past, covered inside and out with graffiti. It is also up for sale and a demolition permit has been asked to destroy what is left of the building (Registre des Lobbyistes du Québec; Rosdev). The SaintHenri site by the Turcot interchange is another graffiti-rich site whose purpose is changing. A city project proposes to restructure the area, displacing several hundred residents in the process (Mobilisation Turcot; GraffitiArch 2014). Citizens of the area have taken up ‘guerilla gardening’ to claim the space and make it their own (The Citizen’s Committee of the Village des Tannerie; GraffitiArch 2014).

Both sites are left in a kind of limbo, awaiting social and political relations to play out and determine the sites’ next purpose. They still reflect power dynamics in the present through these decision-making processes. Graffiti is an integral part of these sites, and its messages can be a significant part of this struggle for claiming space.

Based on my examination of the graffiti at l’Omnipac, power relations are exemplified in several ways. When arriving at the site, the most visible claim of authority is the fence surrounding the building (Figure 1). It is meant to keep people, including the graffiti artists, out of the site. The presence of the graffiti on the building, and the evident torsions and cuts in the fence surrounding it, show that this deterrence mechanism is not functional and that it is even actively defied.

It is noteworthy how the fence, in this case, does not represent a form of internment or confinement; rather, its purpose is to keep people out. Entering the space and marking it with graffiti not only defies this purpose, but challenges the proposed hegemony. In chapter 16 of Archaeologies of Internment, Casella asks important questions such as why does confinement exist, who becomes subjected to confinement and how do people experience it (2011, 285-296). The case study of l’Omnipac should consider these questions, but by turning them around. The situation requires us to consider confinement to the outside world, instead of confinement away from the outside world (or on the inside of the fence). For example, to make it relevant to this situation, I want to ask what the meaning of crossing the fence is. Therefore, although the fence at the Omnipac is different from the ones Casella examines – it is a marker of exclusion rather than confinement – it remains pertinent to question whether the crossing of this fence to enter the space and mark it is actually an effective way of challenging dominant power relations in society.

At least some works of graffiti can be said to affirm a form of counter-hegemony and can be understood as ideoscapes. The “cons, cons, ¢on$, ¢on$” piece, situated on the side of the building facing Avenue du Parc, can be a reflection of these current power relations.

From the French, “cons” can be translated as “idiots” in English, but mixed with the cent and

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dollar signs might actually be a slogan or tag meant to denounce power relations in society: Those who have money, have power. Except in this case, by situating the slogan on the illicit side of the fence, power relations are reversed and the space is not controlled by those who put up the fence but rather by the graffiti artists and others who enter the space. Other pieces such as the “fuck the police” slogan paired with an anarchy sign facing Hutchison Street can also be understood as a way to denounce state control and power. Considering the difficult relationship graffiti artists have to the police in Montréal, this may even understood as a form of taunting (SPVM). On the other side of Van Horne Avenue, opposite of l’Omnipac, a small park features a commissioned mural, which can also be taken as a representation of struggle for place and power (Figures 2 and 3). This mural, which is sanctioned by the city, strangely contrasts with l’Omnipac.

It even seems to flag the graffiti at l’Omnipac as the illegitimate form of marking. The stark contrast between both suggests that these forms of marking reflect an ideology that is either hegemonic or counter-hegemonic; they are all ideoscapes. Having these face each other reflects the power struggle for this space and reflects the diverging opinions and ideologies being promoted.

While there exists some examples of power struggles depicted through graffiti at the Saint-Henri site as well, people there typically use other methods to promote a different claim than the state. The practice of guerilla gardening is one such example. Although we cannot suppose that the two methods have different purposes (both attempt to reclaim space in some way or another), they still might not agree on how to use the space if they actually succeed in reclaiming it. The city wants to restructure the expressway, which would lead to a loss of residential space, while the gardeners wish to make the space available to the community for recreational and gardening

purposes (The Citizen’s Committee of the Village des Tanneries). According to a resident and participant of the gardening project, people in Saint-Henri feel an attachment to the neighborhood despite the “rough crowd” and the noise and dust from the highway and interchange (Anonymous interviewee 2014).

The gardening project is not disapproved by the city, but it is significant that it was made possible because of the sense of community felt in the borough (Anonymous interviewee 2014). This is what makes possible their public commentary through the use of gardening.

The purpose of the graffiti artists is not as clear at the Saint-Henri site since there is no evident consensus among them, but the presence of graffiti does point to a third and counter-hegemonic understanding of the space: That is, it is claimed as a space neither for the mainstream community living in Saint-Henri nor for the city. This threeway struggle between the city, graffiti artists and the community gardeners is made more evident through the recent initiative by the gardeners who do not want to leave the space without emphasizing their presence: Posters show the residents’ desire to begin gardening in the winter. There is definitely a struggle over space happening, as evidenced by one of the community gardeners who states that one of their methods to thwart graffiti is cleaning and planting vines. The same gardener also defines the spaces they transform as “neglected spaces” (Figures 4 and 5) (Anonymous interviewee 2014). Not everyone appreciates graffiti as an act of presence. The three-way power struggle that is going on is thus made evident by how several groups of people want to lay claim to these spaces in Saint-Henri in different manners. Each promotes a different social and political ideology and a different use of space.

Next to one of the posters for winter gardening there is a spray-painted slogan or tag that reads “Listen.” This word is also repeated on a brick wall farther off. There is a desire, through

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a show of presence by gardening or doing graffiti, to say that the space is used and should not be claimed by the city or one group alone.

All three want to be figuratively and visually ‘heard’ and are thus left struggling for some control.

There could be significant exploring left to be done at these two sites, expanding on but also going beyond the issue of power relations discussed here. From my examination and understanding of the sites, I have come to consider that the presence of graffiti in and of itself is an effective way of being ‘seen’ and ‘heard’ through visual representations. It makes a statement by proposing a counterideology that the city but also individuals and private companies clearly disapprove of and attempt to counter by, for example, installing fences and with targeted cleaning activities (Solutions Graffiti). The messages, however, are rarely purely political statements.

There seems to be more of a commitment to tagging versus outright slogans, which is corroborated at the Omnipac site by the sheer amount of tagging versus other types of graffiti (Figure 6). The purpose of tags is debatable and very subjective, and should be acknowledged as diverse. The audience of a slogan versus a tag may vary as well as the type of message intended. What the sites do show is evidence of power relations and of a debate over claiming space from the city. The SaintHenri site could be further examined since the community garden project adds a third dimension to the power relations playing out, thus proving to be a more complex example.

There is yet a lot to be examined in terms of an archaeology of contemporary graffiti on the island of Montréal.

This research has shown how these varying power relations are made visible at two sites in Montréal with the help of graffiti and it has also demonstrated that contemporary archaeology provides insight into these types of places rich with social commentaries and

ideological disputes. These sites, filled with the ghosts of the past and evocative of past power relations, are still today places where struggles are ongoing and are reflected visually through ideoscapes. They are forming new ghosts of place and are contributing to the social and political significance of these places.

Figure 1. The fence surrounding the Omnipac building, with a hole cut into it

Figure 2. Mural opposite of l’Omnipac / Van Horne Avenue

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Figure 3 . L’Omnipac as seen from the mural / on the other side of Van Horne Avenue

Figure 4. Yard and graffiti

Figure 5. Graffiti and vines

Section ID

Tags

Throw-ups

Paste-ups

Slogans

Pieces

Rollers

Stencils

Van Horne Wall

145

20

2

4

9

22

0

Hutchinson Wall

142

11

0

7

4

7

3

Railroad Wall

214

21

0

2

17

33

0

Figure 6. Graffiti recordings: Total of each graffiti type / wall Sample sheet and count by Melissa King, 2014.

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References Anonymous interviewee. Interview by Jorge Gamarra and Hannah Arseneau-Danielis.

Recording. Montréal, April 2014.

Montréal: The Story of a Great North American City. Montréal: Baraka Books, 2013.

Mah, Alice. “Reading Landscapes of Ruination, Deprivation, and Decline.” In Industrial Ruination, Community, and Place: Landscapes and Legacies of Urban Decline.

Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012.

Casella, Eleanor Conlin. “Lockdown: On the Materiality of Confinement.” In Archaeologies of Internment, edited by Adrian Myers and Gabriel Moshenska. New York: Springer Verlag, 2011.

Mobilisation Turcot.

“Expropriations.” http://turcot.info/en/node/11. As cited in GraffitiArch. “A Brief History of St.Henri and the Turcot Site.” http://graffitiarch.wordpress. com/2014/04/09/st-henri-history.

Dovey, K., S. Wollan, and I. Woodcock.

“Placing Graffiti: Creating and Contesting Character in Inner-City Melbourne.” Journal of Urban Design 17, no. 1 (2012): 21-41. As cited in GraffitiArch. “Typology of Graffiti.” http:// graffitiarch.wordpress.com/2014/04/03/ typology-of-graffiti.

Olivier, Laurent. “The Archaeology of the Contemporary Past.” In Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past, edited by Victor Buchli and Gavin Lucas. New York: Routledge, 2001.

Edensor, Tim. “Waste Matter - the Debris of Industrial Ruins and the Disordering of the Material World.” Journal of Material Culture 10, no. 3 (2005): 311-32.

Registre des Lobbyistes du Québec.

“Consultation Du Registre : Divco.” www. lobby.gouv.qc.ca/servicespublic/consultation/ ConsultationCitoyen.aspx?id=0.

Gonzalez-Ruibal, A. “Time to Destroy: An Archaeology of Supermodernity.” Current Anthropology 49, no. 2 (2008): 247-63.

Rosdev. “Built to Suit.” www.rosdev.com/ built_to_suit_availability.php.

GraffitiArch. “A Brief History of St.Henri and the Turcot Site.” http://graffitiarch.wordpress. com/2014/04/09/st-henri history.

Solutions Graffiti. “Nos Clients.” www. solutions-graffiti.com/Clients-de-nettoyageet-enlevement-de-graffiti-a-Montreal.

GraffitiArch.

“A Short History of L’Omnipac.” http://graffitiarch.wordpress. com/2014/04/09/omnipac-history.

SPVM. “Graffiti.” www.spvm.qc.ca/en/ jeunesse/enfant-graffitis.asp.

Harrison, Rodney and Schofield, A. J. “Theory and Politics.” In After Modernity: Archaeological Approaches to the Contemporary Past. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Linteau, Paul-André.

City 1850–1896.” In

The Citizen’s Committee of the Village des Tanneries. “Our Projects.” www. villagedestanneries.com/ourprojects.htm.

As cited in GraffitiArch. “A Brief History of the St.Henri and the Turcot Site.” http:// graffitiarch.wordpress.com/2014/04/09/sthenri-history.

“An Industrial The History of

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Contemporary Graffiti-Making and Its Problematic Dichotomies: Questioning Criminality, Abjection, and Marginality Geneviève Godin There is something deeply archaeological about the modern world. Archaeology is as much a way of thinking about the world as it is a discipline. It’s about the stuff that accrues around you and that makes you who you are.

It’s a feeling about ourselves and the past.

– Michael Shanks (in Patel 2007, 51)

peripheral voices on the other. First, I briefly explain how graffiti constitutes an additional layer of meaning within the context of supermodernity. I then consider how and why its status as an artistic expression has been trapped in dichotomies, mainly legal versus criminal, pristine versus soiled, and mainstream versus marginal. This is followed by a short discussion concerning the cultural value of graffiti.

With the growing importance of the Internet as a tool for broadcasting information, including photographs, more attention has been paid to graffiti, both in and outside of urban centers (Oliver and Neal 2010, 1). Its production has increased since the beginning of the 21st century, thus leading to the creation of typologies of graffiti – murals, paste-ups, pieces, rollers, slogans, stencils, tags, and throw-ups (Frederick 2009, 213; GraffitiArch 2014). These events unfold against the backdrop of supermodernity – a term used to describe the contemporary, characterized by an all-encompassing acceleration of life and technology. Out of this emerge new ways of experiencing time and place, or, in this particular case, surfaces (González-Ruibal 2008, 247; GraffitiArch 2014). It may be difficult to make sense of the meanings and the motivations behind graffiti-making as a practice that is deeply transgressive, especially since there is no instruction manual that can guide uninitiated eyes through the process of deciphering tagged walls (Dovey, Wollan, and Woodcock 2012, 37). Moreover, the very nature of this artistic expression is ephemeral.

Indeed, there are no guidelines as to what pieces deserve to be preserved or not, and there is no official mechanism in place to prevent or promote the covering up of non-commissioned

Graffiti has become an integral part of many urban landscapes, including that of Montréal. It can be found on street signs, alleys and rooftops, but in some instances it also claims entire structures, as is the case for the abandoned Omnipac building, located at the corner of Parc Avenue and Van Horne Avenue (Figure 1). This brief foray into the world of graffiti-making builds on an understanding of graffiti as a form of unsolicited marking, employed by people to communicate using urban surfaces as their medium (Frederick 2009, 212). Blank walls are seen as a canvas or as “unfinished spaces of potential” (Dovey, Wollan, and Woodcock 2012, 23). Graffiti can hold a multitude of meanings, be done for various purposes, and result in a plethora of interpretations. It is the product of multiple voices and responses, and neither of these constituents is static in the context of a fastpaced supermodern world where graffiti is constantly removed and replaced.

Archaeology can be used as an approach that allows us to think about the world in terms of layers and palimpsests, as well as explore societal dynamics through the study of surface assemblages such as layers of graffiti. The purpose of this analysis is twofold and results in a reframing of graffitimarking practices by blurring the line between what is often conceptualized as mainstream expressions of power on the one hand, and

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graffiti (Dovey, Wollan, and Woodcock 2012, 37; O’Connor 2013).

One of the assumptions on which this paper builds is that graffiti does not negate preexisting cultural significance, but rather adds another layer of meaning to already complex surfaces, thus constituting a form of heritage in and of itself (Merrill 2011, 60). Graffiti has been linked to traces of the past that contribute to the aura of spaces by giving us a sense of lived experiences (GravesBrown and Schofield 2011, 1385). While the Omnipac site is privately owned by the Montréal Rosdev Company and closed to the public, the paint that adorns its walls is not. It belongs to everyone in some way, as it is highly visible to all those in its vicinity, sends people a message, and exists independently of the artists who have contributed to it. This offers a sharp contrast to the artwork found in museums.

Unlike graffiti on surfaces, tangible artworks can generally be purchased, owned, moved, and controlled by an elite few (Riggle 2010, 249). I suggest that multiple layers of graffiti form a palimpsest of narratives generated from below, by marginalized groups, but also by individuals who engage with mainstream society while commenting on it in a nonmainstream fashion.

A glance inside the Omnipac building through its glassless windows and door-less entrances reveals that every available surface is saturated with multiple, frequently renewed coats of paint (Figure 2). It is highly unlikely that all five floors of the building form a homogeneous, cohesive narrative, especially since this narrative is in constant evolution and expansion. Rather, the artwork fulfills multiple roles such as protesting, claiming, responding, or commemorating, and the purpose of each of its constituents can range from humor to offense, and from aesthetically pleasing visuals to radical political statements (Frederick 2009, 231). In this case, the act of appropriating a post-industrial surface may

reflect an urge to send an important message, create an impression on the city, or assert one’s own existence and place in the supermordern world in a tangible manner (Dovey, Wollan, and Woodcock 2012, 36; Merrill 2011, 63).

The issue of graffiti production as a criminal activity and an anti-social, destructive behaviour is recurrent in public discourses and academic literature on the topic. It can be said that graffiti is a double transgression – it transgresses the law by appropriating surfaces that are not owned by the graffiti-maker, and transgresses societal norms by producing counter-hegemonic discourses and images (Dovey, Wollan, and Woodcock 2012, 22; GraffitiArch 2014). Furthermore, the lack of a set of rules regulating graffiti, and by extension the absence of designated rule enforcers among graffiti artists, leaves us with the impression of a chaotic, unstable system. However, it can be argued that a lack of formal restrictions does not necessarily entail a total absence of regulations. It is likely that the practice of graffiti-making includes embodied and tacit knowledge that is reproduced every time a new tag or piece is created – certain actions simply “feel right” while others do not, thus regulating the production of graffiti at the individual level.

In Patrick O’Connor’s 2013 film Making a Name, it is shown that these actions include an intimate knowledge of the angle at which a can of spray paint ought to be held, what type of tip needs to be attached to a spray-can in order to produce the desired lines, how to position one’s body based on the wind direction, etc. In addition to this, more than one interviewee in the film hinted at unwritten rules, for instance by condemning graffiti done on private property, maintaining that they wish to continue marking urban spaces, but have no desire to be despised by home owners.

Similarly, there is an unwritten rule among muralists stating that pieces should not be covered unless the new artwork represents an

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improvement (Bories 2014; O’Connor 2013).

The criminalization of graffitimaking practices appears to be linked to the perceived or real threat of damage to private property, as well as the issue of transforming an area into a place of abjection. Any unauthorized interaction with surfaces owned by individuals or by the city is considered an act of vandalism, which in part explains why many artists choose to work under pseudonyms and make themselves unidentifiable (Riggle 2010, 246). Graffiti is therefore both an art form and a criminal offense – with the obvious exception of commissioned pieces, which operate within the framework of legality. The status of graffitimaking as a practice is ambiguous, as it finds itself struggling with issues of authenticity and authority – can legal graffiti be authentic and uncensored, or must it only exist in the realm of criminality? I suggest that this ambiguity is an indication that graffiti-making cannot be made to fit into boxes, and should instead be seen as part of a spectrum where legal and illegal, as well as art and crime, blend in complex ways.

In addition, we may also want to question the idea that surfaces are nonvandalized, or pristine, until they become soiled and offensive through the addition of graffiti. I want to place these two seemingly contrary ideas on a continuum in order to interpret the data we collected during research at the Omnipac site. First, it was observed that the idea of a structure that exists in a perfectly preserved, authentic state is not supported by archaeological evidence in this particular case. Indeed, the building has undergone significant structural changes prior to the graffiti that now covers those same surfaces.

The differently coloured bricks that close access to the windows on the first two floors show different stages of wear, and indicate a change in function that required windows to be removed after the building had already been in use for a certain amount of time (Figure 3).

A survey of all sides of the Omnipac revealed that graffiti was in all instances done over the new brick. This feature is the most salient piece of evidence that the original state of the building had already been disturbed prior to the arrival of graffiti-makers. Detailed blueprints of the Omnipac building could not be obtained during the research process and, consequently, no claim can be made about the inside of the building, although I suspect that it also underwent physical changes over time.

The second type of evidence that puts the pristine versus soiled dichotomy into perspective resides in the graffiti that decorates the walls. As previously mentioned, graffiti forms a palimpsest in the most literal sense of the word – the outlines of older tags, faded by the elements or covered in white or silver spray paint, show through new throw-ups and pieces, or peek out from under paste-ups (Figure 4).

The graffiti that we see today on the façade of the Omnipac building is not that which was there one, two, or five years ago. The story of the site and the message its surfaces send have certainly changed over time, and did not cease to be a dynamic, ongoing process once the line between intact and vandalized was crossed.

Furthermore, I maintain that this frontier is for the most part fictional since such an imposing edifice cannot shift from a pristine state to an abject one overnight.

The third and final dichotomy relates to power relations, more specifically the tensions between mainstream and peripheral voices. Heritage in general has a political value since it is the product of specific social and intellectual circumstances (Merrill 2011, 69).

It may favour one side of every story, and tell it in a way that reflects the views of one group more than another, even if the imbalance is very subtle. In the context of supermodernity, contemporary archaeology is most often an archaeology of us – it is a fresh look at our landscapes, our material culture, and histories that we were and continue to be part of.

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Looking at the Omnipac, the conflicting voices manifest themselves in the way the outside of the building is unmaintained, bricked up, and surrounded by a fence, while the inside appears to be blooming with colourful graffiti that may, in some instances, be political. The official narrative of the Omnipac building is one of a failed capitalist enterprise, told by the dilapidated exterior walls of the building.

The fence indicates to people that the story told on the inside is off-limits and, arguably, unimportant (Figure 5).

While one can strive for objectivity, this kind of contemporary archaeology remains the product of the social milieu in which it is practiced, with its presuppositions and biases (Merrill 2011, 68). In the case of graffiti, public discourses for the most part tend to emphasize its deviant and counter-cultural character (Graves-Brown and Schofield 2011, 1395). This has been contested in some of the academic literature. For instance, it has been argued that there is more to graffiti than criminal activity, and that it is possible to bridge the gap between mainstream and alternative views by analyzing both (Oliver and Neal 2010, 3). The content may be countercultural, but members who may or may not be marginalized created the art itself and engaged in graffiti-making practices in the present.

Another way in which graffiti overcomes the alleged divide between conformity and nonconformity is by claiming a right over the city and its walls (Dovey, Wollan, and Woodcock 2012, 22-23). In doing so, it breaks the traditional boundary between high and low culture by reinforcing the idea of Montréal as a creative city. Celebrated murals, colourful pieces, and local graffiti festivals such as Under Pressure allow the general public to engage with peripheral practices. The most notorious example of this is perhaps the work of Banksy, who is able to “move back and forth between culture and counter culture, operating inside and outside the system” (Merrill 2011, 67).

The example of well-known British graffiti artist Banksy is especially interesting since the artwork itself is culturally significant, and the value of its socio-political commentary is widely recognized. The latter offers an interpretation of the present, in addition to leaving clues for future interpretations by preserving what was seen as important at the time of its creation (Merrill 2011, 67).

If we return to graffiti that has not reached international status, we see that it takes on both positive and negative symbolic capital. It has the power to either decrease the commercial value of a space by creating places of abjection, or increase it by generating cultural capital (Dovey, Wollan, and Woodcock 2012, 21).

Those who regularly visit the Omnipac site might argue that the artwork embellishes the space and increases its symbolic value, while the Montréal Rosdev Company has been requesting demolition permits since 2012 as a result of the impossibility of selling the Omnipac in its current state.

This ambiguity permeates discourses produced around the Omnipac site and leads us to reconsider some of the dichotomies found in texts pertaining to the practice of graffiti-making – legal and criminal, pristine and abject, as well as mainstream and peripheral. My reading of graffiti serves as a humble attempt to concisely highlight some of the moments when such dichotomies become akin to continuums. By approaching graffiti as a dynamic practice carried out in the supermodern and ever-changing present, one that continuously adds to the production of palimpsests, we can challenge the idea of favouring a specific point in time of a building’s history over another. This view also rejects the claim that post-industrial landscapes such as the Omnipac building are static as a result of their abandonment, and abject due to their colourfulness, and instead portrays them as spaces of possibilities filled with creative potential.

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Figure 1. Faรงade (south), Van Horne Avenue

Figure 2. Signed piece, visible through a window on the eastern side of the Omnipac

Figure 4. Throw-ups over the traces of old outlines, i.e. a palimpsest or surface assemblage

Figure 3. Bricked up windows on the first two floors, and structural changes to the fifth floor

Figure 5. Western entrance, Hutchinson Street

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References Bories, Mathieu. Interview by the author, 2014. http://graffitiarch.wordpress.com/20 14/05/04/interview-mateo.

Merrill, Sam. “Graffiti at heritage places: Vandalism as cultural significance or conservation sacrilege?” Time and Mind 4, no.

1 (2011): 59-76.

Dovey, Kim, Wollan, Simon, and Ian Woodcock. “Placing graffiti: Creating and contesting character in inner-city Melbourne.”

Journal of Urban Design 17, no. 1 (2012):2141.

O’Connor, Patrick. Making a Name. DVD. Directed by Patrick O’Connor. Montréal, 2013.

Oliver, Jeff, and Tim Neal. Editors. Wild Signs: Graffiti in Archaeology and History. Studies in Contemporary and Historical Archaeology, Vol. 6. London: BAR, 2010.

Frederick, Ursula K. “Revolution is the New Black: Graffiti/Art and Mark-Making Practices.” Archaeologies 5, no. 2 (2009): 210237.

Patel, Samir S. “Writing on the wall: The Graffiti Archaeology Project challenges the definition of archaeology.” Archaeology July/ August (2007): 50-53.

Frederick, Ursula K., and Sue O’Connor.

“Wandjina, graffiti and heritage: The power and politics of enduring imagery.” Humanities Research 15, no. 2 (2009):153-183.

Riggle, Nicholas A. “Street art: The transfiguration of the commonplaces.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 68, no. 3 (2010): 243-257.

González-Ruibal, Alfredo. “Time to Destroy: An Archaeology of Supermodernity.” Current Anthropology 49, no. 2 (2008): 247-279.

GraffitiArch. “Typology of Graffiti.” http:// graffitiarch.wordpress.com/2014/04/04/whatis-contemporary-archaeology.

GraffitiArch. “What is Contemporary Archaeology?” http://graffitiarch.wordpress. com/2014/04/03/typology-of-graffiti.

Graves-Brown, Paul, and John Schofield. “The filth and the fury: 6 Denmark Street (London) and the Sex Pistols.” Antiquity 85, no. 330 (2011): 1385-1401.

Riggle, Nicholas A. “Street art: The transfiguration of the commonplaces.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 68, no. 3 (2010): 243-257.

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Oral Histories: 6240 Av. du Parc Jorge Gamarra

A v a i l a b l e i n p r i n t o n l y.

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A v a i l a b l e i n p r i n t o n l y.

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A v a i l a b l e i n p r i n t o n l y.

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Asserting Identity and Countering Marginalization with Graffiti Laura DeFazio Graffiti is defined by Ursula Frederick as unsolicited markings, be they texts or images, imposed upon surfaces that can be viewed publicly, such as on buildings (both privately and publically owned), elements of transportation networks (such as subway stations, buses, highways, etc), and alleyways, to name but a few (Frederick 2009).

She calls it variously “a complex mark-making phenomenon,” “an element in the liquid architecture of a mutating metropolis,” and “an act of vandalism or anti-social behavior” (Fredrick 2009, 212). On a webpage directed at children, meanwhile, Montréal’s police force, the Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal (the SPVM), calls it simply “a type of vandalism that damages property that doesn’t belong to you” (SPVM).

Various explanations are offered as to why people create graffiti. The SPVM’s is that “[s]ome people think it’s cool or they are trying to impress other people. Some people do it to become more popular or to defy authority.

Some people want to express their frustration, anger or revenge and don’t know how else to do it. Street gangs also use graffiti to mark their territory” (SPVM). Frederick notes that graffiti is often studied in association with gangs, deviance, and territorializing behavior, with an assumption that it is generally used “to make claims over space” (2009, 212). Even within the graffiti subculture, there is heated debate as to whether people tag for themselves or to gain notoriety (O’Connor 2013).

To enrich understanding of the practice with a different perspective, I examine how graffiti-writing can be considered “a manner of performing one’s presence and place in the world” (Frederick 2009, 213) and be used to assert identity in the face of marginalization and oppression. I first

provide a brief overview of the use of graffiti as a means of self-expression, historicizing the practice with examples from various temporal and geographical contexts. I then examine the subculture of graffiti-creators, or “taggers,” in contemporary Montréal, drawing on formertagger Patrick O’Connor’s 2013 documentary Making a Name as well as our own data (photographic, typographic, and oral history) from an abandoned office building at the corner of Avenue du Parc and Avenue Van Horne.

Several studies exemplify the use of graffiti in expressing identity. In one example, a study done in Melbourne, taggers use politically-themed “stencils” (GraffitiArch 2014), a type of graffiti, to assert resistance to mainstream ideology and engage in discourse with globally-contextualized anti-war and anti-corporation movements. The violently and sexually graphic graffiti, created in Australian prisons between the 1970s and the 1990s scream out against the criminalization and marginalization of the incarcerated and attempt to claim a historical voice (Costanzo 2013). Young men dubbed “horselads,” low status farmhands in 19th and 20th century Yorkshire, used graffiti to forge a sense of group identity vis-à-vis their high-status employers who turned up their noses at these laborers (Giles and Giles 2010). Their graffiti, scrawled on the walls of their living quarters, included satirical cartoons of the bosses, complaints about the work day, and sketches of day to day chores, pastimes, and yearnings. Graffiti created by members of the punk community in 1970s Montréal used band iconography to protest federal government policies and to underline the anarchist mood of Québec’s separatist movement, thus asserting nationalist, political, and counter-cultural identity (Archives Radio-

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Canada).

supermodernity. Augé characterizes urban supermodernity as a condition whose highspeed transportation and communication technologies and general excesses make the modern world replete with “non-spaces,” that is, places “which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity.” In non-spaces, people can move in anonymous isolation throughout highlytraversed locations such as subways, train stations, supermarkets, and highways. This world subjects individual consciousness to new and unfamiliar “ordeals of solitude” (Augé 1995, 93) that were not typical of previous eras and makes it easy for people to wallow in “the passive joys of identity loss” (103). Produkt’s fears about mind-numbing and complacency with a detrimental establishment certainly echo this interpretation of modernity.

To this end, Harvey’s comments on the post-modern condition are also salient: he contends that, since the 1960s, market processes have countered “a ‘natural’ human affinity for diversity and produce[d] a stifling conformity of land uses” (Harvey 1990, 76-77).

Since then, he claims, postmodern planners have inarguably pandered at expressing diversity, but the theoretically-democratic freemarket system ultimately results in a tyranny of the majority and turns a blind eye to the plights of minorities, the underprivileged, and members of various counter cultures. Thus, the free-market system really only serves “the reproduction of the established order and the perpetuation of the domination” (Harvey 1990, 79).

An interviewee from the oral histories we collected similarly credits his own malaise to this supermodern condition, specifically the commodification of human consciousness and the frequent encouragement to conform, often by the purchasing of specific products. He says, “I never had self-worth as a young kid.... [h]ow this society is designed, we’re told that we’re not beautiful enough, we

Contemporary Montréal has a very active graffiti subculture, as demonstrated in O’Connor’s documentary Making a Name.

Common locations for tags include sides of buildings, rooftops, alleyways, bus and metro stations, trucks, trains, overpasses, abandoned buildings, billboards, and highway walls. Highly visible, hard to reach, or public locations can afford greater prestige to taggers (O’Connor 2013), but on the other hand, more obscurely-placed markings have a greater chance of longevity. Some survive the elements, municipal clean-up campaigns, and re-writes by other taggers for decades (O’Connor 2013).

Unlike in the previous historical examples, O’Connor’s documentary and our own data collection suggest that contemporary graffiti practitioners in contemporary Montréal are not obviously marginalized, criminalized, or relegated to a political minority for the activities they engage in when not doing illegal graffiti. However, I would argue that a related phenomenon takes place in this context, in that graffiti art can be at least partially be seen as a response to the post-modern urban condition.

This condition exists in many places, including contemporary Montréal, and feels insidiously oppressive to many who experience it. In O’Connor’s film, one tagger, “Produkt,” described the oppression he felt by modern, urban consumerism, claiming that our “brains are commodified by marketing” and deploring the numbing quality of modern advertising that is ubiquitous in city space and entreats us to purchase and conform (O’Connor 2013). This suggests that for individuals such as Produkt, who feel overwhelmed by the deluge of modern advertising and are particularly sensitive to its relentless campaign of consumption, graffiti can serve as subversive alternative or an outlet for the stress.

Here it is useful to contextualize the feelings experienced by individuals such as Produkt within Augé’s descriptions of urban

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don’t belong enough... we don’t have a watch so we’re not worthy” (Anonymous interviewee 2014). In the face of this, graffiti is a way for him to say “fuck you, I’m worthy, I’m putting myself out there” (Anonymous interviewee 2014). This personal testimony dovetails with the statements of several taggers in Making A Name, who cite their motivations for tagging as it being a way of “taking control,” “a private thing,” a way that “people know you exist,” a means to “avoid anonymity,” and a way to say “fuck you, I’m alive too” (O’Connor 2013).

For the aforementioned interviewee, graffiti was more specifically a way to reassert control in the face of the severe bullying he experienced as a child, because “when you’re bullied, you don’t feel like you’re in control.

You feel like the world is, like, against you” (Anonymous interviewee 2014). He gives greater insight by saying that tagging was “something that was [his]” and “an emotional purge” (Anonymous interviewee 2014). He explains that by channeling his pain into art, he can better deal with depression and express issues that are important to him. These are all ways to assert individual identity, and he contends that for him, tagging “wasn’t about recognition, and it never has been really.”

As evidence to the fact that he has pointedly shied away from notoriety, he notes that he has changed his tagging name many times.

He claims that, had he been pursuing fame, it would have been easy to make himself known by now (Anonymous interviewee 2014). As to the oft-cited connection between graffiti and vandalism, he says, “I never liked vandalism...

I don’t like destroying property, it’s never my motive.” In response to inquiries as to whether he has used graffiti to claim space, he says, “No, it’s not like I own the thing I painted, it’s more the action, the process... the final products, the artwork, more” (Anonymous interviewee 2014). That being said, he acknowledges that he does not speak for all writers, and that he does not think “there is any art... that is

completely selfless” (Anonymous interviewee 2014).

The specific site studied for the writing of this paper is the Omnipac building, on the corner of Avenue du Parc and Avenue Van Horne, a derelict, five-level office building whose exterior and interior, are replete with tags, throw ups, elaborate pieces, and other types of graffiti. The building is technically private property, but it has a long history of graffiti use (GraffitiArch 2014). It can be better understood as a site of resistance to the suffocating supermodern ethos when contextualized within Edensor’s study of modern ruins, in which he first describes the universal desire of societies to order their material space according to ideas of acceptable aesthetics: “a place for everything and everything in its place” (2005, 312). The author then notes that industrial sites that are abandoned and left for ruin have had their means of stabilization retracted and thus begin to decay (Edensor 2005, 313). In their chaos, however, they have a certain visceral and sensual appeal that allows people to engage with material in ways that are usually illicit and interpret the world anew; the “ruin feels very different from urban space” (Edensor 2005, 325-326).

Different types of graffiti are better suited for expressing different types of identity.

In the Melbourne example, people who felt politically marginalized by the government and mainstream establishment used graffiti to engage in a political dialogue and assert a community identity with others of their political standpoint, and also to reach out to expand this community. For this, they primarily used stencils, a form of graffiti that is easily accessible even to people outside the graffiti community (Frederick 2009, 212). In Montréal, as we have seen in Making a Name and based on the oral histories we collected, the identity that is being asserted is a more personal one, a way of channeling one’s feelings and

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emotions – indeed, one interviewee spoke of using his work as a sort of journal (O’Connor 2013). This suggests that tags would be more common than stencils in Montréal, given that tags are highly personal, stylized, and not very comprehendible to outsiders. Indeed, analysis of the outer walls of the Omnipac site reveals a much higher frequency of tags than any of the other types of graffiti.

Below are tables that break down the numbers of various types of graffiti on the six outer walls of the Omnipac building, as viewed from the outside. We divided the walls into sections based on roughly equivalent

existing architectural partitions. On this first wall, the northern one that faces Avenue du Parc, there were a total 183 graffiti inscriptions.

A full 133 of them were tags. This amount obviously dwarfs that of any of the other 6 types (throw-ups, paste-ups, slogans, pieces, rollers, stencils).

Note: In the following section, data for the Van Horne, Parc, and railroad-side walls was collected in one day, on April 7, 2014, by Melissa King. Data for the Rue Hutchison wall was collected on April 8, 2014, by the author.

Section ID

Tags

Throw-ups

Paste-ups

Slogans

Pieces

Rollers

Stencils

P1

9

0

0

2

0

0

0

P2

26

1

0

2

0

3

0

P3

8

1

0

0

0

1

0

P4

11

2

0

2

0

1

0

P5

8

3

0

0

0

1

0

P6

10

1

0

0

0

3

0

P7

7

1

0

0

0

2

0

P8

5

2

0

0

1

2

0

P9

10

2

0

0

0

3

0

P10

13

2

0

0

0

2

2

P11

26

2

0

3

0

2

1

Table 1. Northern wall (sections from north to south) The other walls present similar results to those of the northern wall. On the eastern wall, 234 out of 307 inscriptions are tags, with the closest contender being rollers at 33.

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Section ID

Tags

Throw-ups

Paste-ups

Slogans

Pieces

Rollers

Stencils

R1

39

6

0

1

1

5

0

R2

39

6

0

1

0

2

0

R3

25

1

0

0

2

5

0

R4

18

1

0

0

3

3

0

R5

11

2

0

0

2

2

0

R6

12

0

0

0

2

2

0

R7

16

0

0

1

4

1

0

R8

19

1

0

0

1

2

0

R9

9

2

0

0

0

3

0

R10

18

2

0

0

1

6

0

R11

8

0

0

0

1

2

0

Table 2. Eastern wall (sections from east to west) On the western wall, 96 out of 111 inscriptions were tags.

Section ID

Tags

Throw-ups

Paste-ups

Slogans

Pieces

Rollers

Stencils

H1

15

1

0

0

0

0

0

H2

30

3

0

2

0

0

2

H3

3

0

0

0

0

1

0

H4

5

0

0

1

0

0

0

H5

3

1

0

0

0

0

0

H6

5

0

0

0

0

0

0

H7

34

0

0

0

0

0

1

H8

4

0

0

0

0

0

0

H9

3

0

0

1

0

0

0

H10

13

0

0

0

0

0

0

H11

23

2

0

0

0

0

0

Table 3. Western wall (sections from east to west) On the second, smaller part of the western wall, 44 out of 61 inscriptions were tags.

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Section ID

Tags

Throw-ups

Paste-ups

Slogans

Pieces

Rollers

Stencils

H12

7

2

0

2

1

3

0

H13

13

1

0

1

2

2

0

H14

17

0

0

0

1

1

0

H15

7

1

0

0

0

0

0

Table 4. Western wall (sections from north to south) On the southern wall, 130 out of 183 inscriptions were tags.

Section ID

Tags

Throw-ups

Paste-ups

Slogans

Pieces

Rollers

Stencils

V1

3

3

0

0

0

1

0

V2

16

3

0

1

0

3

0

V3

14

3

0

1

1

2

0

V4

18

2

0

0

0

3

0

V5

19

1

0

0

1

3

0

V6

7

2

0

0

2

1

0

V7

23

1

0

0

2

0

0

V8

7

2

0

1

0

2

0

V9

11

2

0

0

0

3

0

V10

7

1

0

1

0

2

0

V11

5

0

0

0

3

0

0

Table 5. Southern wall (sections from north to south) And finally, on the short wall section that forms a perpendicular angle to the southern wall, 21 out of 25 were tags.

Section ID

Tags

Throw-ups

Paste-ups

Slogans

Pieces

Rollers

Stencils

SW1 (east)

9

0

2

0

0

0

0

SW2 (west)

12

0

0

0

0

2

0

Table 6. Southern wall (sections perpendicular to Van Horne-side wall)

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Given the personal nature of tags, this archaeological analysis supports the hypothesis that there is a high frequency of contemporary Montréal taggers that engage in graffiti as a means to assert a personal, individual-oriented identity.

In conclusion, it is obvious that different people have various motivations for practicing graffiti art. I do not claim that some people may not simply do it for fame or in order to stake a claim on space, but I suggest that not everybody does it purely for those reasons. Graffiti can also serve as an invaluable means of self-expression, an outlet for emotion, a means to share one’s opinion, or generally a way to assert identity (be it an individual identity or a community identity) in the face of oppression or marginalization. While this oppression is not as obvious in the demography of contemporary Montréal taggers as it is in some of the other examples cited here (such as in the case of prisoners’ graffiti), many people living in the supermodern urban landscape feel oppressed by its impersonal, corporate, consumerist, “non-space” ethos. For some, graffiti is a useful way to pit one’s individuality against this oppressive landscape. Many people are also bullied or marginalized on a personal scale. Thus, graffiti in contemporary Montréal also serves as an outlet for some individuals to assert their identities in response to an individually felt oppression. Collecting oral histories, as we have done, was very helpful in bringing this interpretation to light, seeing as intense investigation into personal motivations is largely missing from scholarly accounts of graffiti.

References Anonymous interviewee. Interview by Jorge Gamarra and Melissa King. Recording.

Montréal, April 9, 2014.

Augé, Marc. Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, translated by John Howe. London: Verso, 1995.

Archives de Radio Canada. http://archives. radiocanada.ca/arts_culture/musique/ dossiers/43-1259 (Last accessed 8 Apr. 2014.)

Edensor, Tim. “Waste Matter - The Debris of Industrial Ruins and the Disordering of the Material World.” The Journal of Material Culture 10 (2005): 311-332.

Frederick, Ursula K. “Revolution is the New Black: Graffiti/Art and Mark-Making Practices.” Archaeologies 5, no. 2 (2009): 210237.

Giles, Kate, and Giles, Melanie. “The Writing on the Wall: The Concealed Communities of the East Yorkshire Horselads.” International Journal of Historical Archaeology (2007): ISSN 1092-7697.

Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry Into the Origins of Cultural Change.

Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1990.

O’Connor, Patrick. Making a Name. DVD. Directed by Patrick O’Connor. Montréal, 2013.

SPVM. “Graffiti.” www.spvm.qc.ca/en/ jeunesse/enfant-graffitis.asp.

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An Archaeology of Supermodernity: Towards an Understanding of Place in Urban Landscapes Samantha Easy This entry aims to explore the St. Henri and Omnipac sites in terms of space and landscape and to analyze them in light of the theoretical concerns of contemporary archaeology. The methods for this project were developed utilising a heuristic approach which used spatial data, aerial photographs and photographs taken in person in an attempt to provide contextual knowledge of the Omnipac and St. Henri sites. This approach, although informal in nature, was guided by theoretical concerns arising from contemporary archaeological theory as well as by intuitive knowledge of contemporary sites. I aim to draw on the data that has been collected by the students involved in the project and the works of relevant scholars to examine how urban landscapes may be understood within this project’s scope.

The term ‘supermodern’ has been applied to the late 20th century. This is a time period which encompasses processes of destruction and consumption more excessive than at any other point in history, accelerated modes of transportation and communication, and rates of technological change on extraordinary scales (González-Ruibal 2008, 247). It is commonly applied from the late 20th century onwards, a period beginning after World War II and extending into the present day. The super-modern landscape is intimately familiar to those who study the contemporary (González-Ruibal 2008, 248). Contemporary archaeology is primarily an archaeology of the here and now, of the present and familiar and of supermodern sites. This entry discusses the contemporary, urban landscape and the role of graffiti in the creation of places based on data from two sites in Montréal. An analysis of the landscapes of the recent past demands

different modes of reflection than is typically employed by historians and archaeologists.

Since supermodern landscapes play an intimate role in the lives of modern researchers they can sometimes lie beyond conscious reflection. This analysis will attempt to understand familiar landscapes via the lens of contemporary archaeology in order to deconstruct the creation of anthropologic places within our own lived experiences.

The anthropological place has been described by Marc Augé as areas which are relational, historical, and concerned with identity (1995, 77). Places are geographic areas that have ‘character’ and are marked by lived experiences; they are areas which are intimately familiar and recognisably symbolic. Included in this definition are the discourses, descriptions, and historical processes surrounding places, as well as the possibilities for engagement, which characterise them.

In the supermodern landscape, one moves on a daily basis between areas with known identities and associations, without considering the spaces which separate the two, or structures which facilitate that travel such as roads, railways, sidewalks etc. The latter is what is known as a non-place, an area characterised by a lack of identity and symbolism, and is transitive and largely asocial (Augé 1995, 78).

Augé argues that the supermodern condition creates an intertwining landscape of nonplaces and places (1995, 107). Although it might be tempting to contrast symbolised and non-symbolised space, this would land us in the awkward situation of ascribing binary categories to urban landscapes, or seeing them as a patchwork of negative and positive geographies. What I propose is more abstract.

Non-places and places are not mutually

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exclusive nor do they exist as objective absolutes. For the purposes of this analysis I follow Augé’s understanding of non-places as distinct from, but not in opposition to, places.

This analysis attempts to describe the presence and creation of non-places and places within the urban landscape using data from two sites which have visible and prominent graffiti.

Based on the anthropological reading of a place as an area concerned with identity, and nonplaces as areas devoid of organic socialisation, I ask whether graffiti can create places out of non-places.

The St. Henri and L’Omnipac sites both contain areas that are concerned with history, characterised by community projects or ruination, or marked by other distinct sources of identity. The most significant community features within the St. Henri study area are the community garden center and Turcot overpass (pg. 4 of this volume). Both areas have graffiti placed on adjacent surfaces but the graffiti by the community garden is mainly small and composed of haphazard tags (Figure 1) whereas the graffiti underneath the overpass is much more elaborate (Figure 2). It is difficult to ascertain the motives of the artists who created these images, but what is evident is that the site is used by a variety of people; those who engage with graffiti under the overpass, those who participate in ongoing community projects, and those who create small tags. The two need not necessarily be mutually exclusive however, the study area can be seen to have areas with distinct characterisations, showing evidence of elaborate and varied engagement.

The factory at L’Omnipac could best be described as an abandoned, industrial ruin, although it may be argued that landscapes of industrial ruin are rarely truly abandoned. Alice Mah describes industrial ruination as a lived process which remains relevant in the present (2012, 132) while Paul Shackel and Matthew Palus have discussed how abandoned industrial projects contain important reminders of a

region’s history and have intimate associations for people currently living in these landscapes (2006, 49-71). Mah argues that landscapes of ruination within present day communities continue to have relevance for the people living there and their community history (2012, 152). At L’Omnipac the lack of business, industry or construction at the site does not negate involvement or rule out daily interactions.

Although no photos were taken inside the Omnipac building due to concerns over legality and safety, it was possible to see inside from certain angles and to see that graffiti covered most available surfaces. On the outside, it was visible that sections of walls or windows have fallen in or been removed, and what remains has been covered with tags, slogans, throw-ups and rollers (Figures 3 and 4). Local graffiti artists have changed it from a site principally characterised by ruination to a place of artistic expression with evident symbolic associations. Evidence of graffiti can be seen from every point at the site, is highly visible and is evidence of the continued use of the site. L’Omnipac has become known as a graffiti hub in Montréal, and, as has been argued by other scholars (Edensor 2005, 323), it is made familiar through widespread diffusion of information about these places and the associations created from lived experiences within these landscapes.

Areas which have graffiti are given character because this art style is familiar to people who experience the city of Montréal and this place in particular. People continuously interact with places within the urban landscape, they are familiar and subject to changes created by the people living here.

Thus, L’Omnipac becomes a place of associated meaning and character and is much more than an abandoned building.

Across from the factory, on the other side of Van Horne Avenue, lies a large, city commissioned mural (Figure 5), which

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is surrounded by houses and looms over a children’s park. The images of children, flowers and crops in the mural invokes sentiments of community, youth and nature and creates a welcoming, diversified atmosphere. The factory and the mural face one another, both projecting a distinct aura. The former conveys a variety of uncensored and disconcerting images, whereas the latter presents a unified community sanctioned by normative society.

The graffiti highlights the building’s state of ruin and amplifies it with the presence of graffiti, which the City of Montréal still classifies as vandalism, in direct contrast to the unified and childlike innocence portrayed in the mural.

At St. Henri movement and traffic surround the study area. The highway and overpass creates a constant background noise as cars move above, next to, and through the site. The size of the highway and the constant presence of speeding vehicles creates an effective barrier between the overpass and community garden. In this way the roads become an impassable space, characterised by movement and denying exploration, description or engagement. In contrast to L’Omnipac site, the graffiti under the overpass at St. Henri gives character and narratives to an area which otherwise discourages engagement due to the inaccessible nature of the area.

L’Omnipac is enclosed by two main roads (Van Horne Ave. and Parc Ave.) which both have heavy traffic. Parc Avenue effectively creates a barrier between L’Omnipac and the buildings across from it, including the mural. Standing at the intersection between the mural and the factory (Figure 6), one is immersed in movement as the cars roar by and is forced to navigate through spaces, which inhibit movement when engaging with the study area. These non-places – the highways, intersections, and roads – have no identity and could be seen and described as non-places, areas in-between well-known areas rather than

areas with identity in and of themselves.

It may be possible to see similar processes of place-making at the St. Henri overpass and the Omnipac factory. Both are inaccessible areas which discourage engagement and yet are covered in the evidence of graffiti artists. The tags at the community garden conversely, create contrast between the wishes of the community organisers and those who create tags. It is evident that the community gardening space is already a place of symbolic meaning and identity. It is possible to see conflict here in the ways in which the use of space differs between community organisers and graffiti artists.

Kim Dovey, Simon Wollan and Ian Woodcock argue that graffiti is a form of symbolic capital that has both positive and negative dimensions (2012, 21-41). In both its positive and negative aspects, graffiti serves to demarcate space and to create identities within an area. It shows evidence of engagement with an area and can characterise individual surfaces or areas as a whole. Graffiti creates place as the makers assert their own marks and leave evidence of their presence. The images create character and associations which are very much relative and individual experiences depending upon the viewer. Applying these insights to L’Omnipac site, the graffiti on the factory highlights the abandoned nature of the area and draws attention to it as a stark, industrial ruin just as the mural promotes images of diversity and community. Likewise at St. Henri, graffiti under the overpass and at the community garden shows evidence of personalised impacts upon the landscape and give symbolic meaning to otherwise stark or unmarked surfaces.

It can be seen that those areas which have graffiti, could be described as anthropological places due to the associations and character which graffiti creates. There are no concrete borders between places created by different people and the characterisation of

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space is largely subjective. Graffiti artists may value tags but community garden organisers at St. Henri may see them as an intrusion. The community garden may already be considered a ‘place’ for the organisers and community gardeners who actively engage with and shape the site while the place making under the overpass may be more similar to the processes occurring at L’Omnipac. Graffiti artists may see L’Omnipac as a place of expression and freedom while the building owners may see it as destructive and intrusive. Similarly artists at St. Henri may see their work under the overpass as a positive mark upon the site’s features which lend the area character and positive associations.

The contrast between the graffiti at the relatively unused area beneath the overpass and the inhabited space at the community garden is a complex one when it comes to creating places. We may imagine places themselves as contested sources of identity as different people interact with and experience these areas in a variety of ways. Graffiti and places can be understood entirely differently depending upon the viewer however, in the positive or negative, graffiti facilitates the creation and demarcation of place. Thus, both St. Henri and Omnipac would have evidence of non-places and places as described above.

In today’s urban landscapes, places and non-places intertwine to create complex mosaics of relative symbolism and identity. An understanding of the supermodern landscape in this sense is of absolute importance to the study of the contemporary. The sites studied could best be understood as a mosaic of places and non-places; as areas of un-engaging movement, restricted interactions and, at the same time, areas with history, character and distinct identities. The edges and boundaries of places and non-places blur depending on the viewer, but the overall picture of a landscape composed of places and non-places remains. The graffiti at the two sites creates

both positive and negative associations, yet in both cases they distinguish these ‘painted’ areas from the unmarked roadways and highways, which transverse the sites. Thus, the two sites make up a landscape of places and non-places, or a subjective palimpsest of forms, uses and identities superimposed upon one another as different views and opinions are taken into account.

Other scholars have already critically examined the implications of understanding urban landscapes as a palimpsest of different forms, processes and identities. David Harvey argues that the postmodern condition creates an understanding of the urban fabric as fragmented (1990, 66). If we indeed consider the two sites here discussed as palimpsests of identities and characteristics, as the layering of places and non-places, this raises large and highly relevant theoretical concerns for an archaeology of the contemporary.

How might we as archaeologists describe the contemporary past in light of the constant change and fragmentation of identity which characterises supermodernity?

The contemporary landscape is not fossilized or static; rather, it includes constant change and contesting identities, varying viewpoints and associations. Many scholars have rejected the production of academic accounts that attempt to regulate or investigate changes in contemporary landscapes via more traditional archaeological methods (Harrison and Schofield 2010, 221). Rather, it has been argued that subjectivity and personal engagement should become part of studying the contemporary.

I propose that the supermodern, urban landscape is a mental construct composed of places and non-places, is subject to constant change, and is a territory in which different perspectives have equal validity.

The contemporary can best be understood as phases of development and change and layers of distinct characteristics, as combinations of

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social, economic and political circumstances, and as a palimpsest of non-places and places.

In light of this understanding of landscape and the theoretical concerns of contemporary archaeology, I conclude that sites such as St. Henri and L’Omnipac may best be studied by extending the archaeological gaze beyond seemingly static materials and structures, and into the lived experiences of the contemporary

people who engage with them. This could invite resources such as oral histories or personal accounts into archaeological methods.

These landscapes are intimately familiar to people and researchers who interact with the contemporary environment and create new modes of archaeological investigation with the possibility of incorporating the unique data from the lived experiences of the contemporary.

Figure 1. Graffiti by St. Henri’s community garden

Figure 2. Graffiti under the Turcot overpass

Figure 3. L’Omnipac graffiti

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References Augé, Marc. Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, translated by John Howe. London: Verso, 1995.

Dovey, Kim, Wollan, Simon, and Ian Woodcock. “Placing graffiti: Creating and contesting character in inner-city Melbourne.”

Journal of Urban Design 17, no. 1 (2012):2141.

Figure 4. L’Omnipac graffiti

Edensor, Tim. “Waste Matter - the Debris of Industrial Ruins and the Disordering of the Material World.” Journal of Material Culture 10, no. 3 (2005): 311-32.

González-Ruibal, Alfredo. “Time to Destroy: An Archaeology of Supermodernity.” Current Anthropology 49, no. 2 (2008): 247-279.

Harrison, Rodney, and John Schofield.

After Modernity. Archaeological Approaches to the Contemporary Past. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Figure 5. Mural facing the Omnipac warehouse

Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry Into the Origins of Cultural Change.

Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1990.

Mah, A. Industrial Ruination, Community and Place: Landscapes and Legacies of Urban Decline. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012.

Shackle, Paul, and Matthew Palus.

“Remembering an Industrial Landscape.”

International Journal of Historical Archaeology 10, no. 1 (2006): 49-71.

Figure 6. Intersection between the Omnipac warehouse and the mural

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Par t

III

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Epilogue Benjamin Baker the project transformed and took on new dimensions, ones that were at times unexpected. Documenting and mapping graffiti were the catalyst for this transformation.

Graffiti became the vehicle through which we addressed broader social issues such as discourses of criminality, performance of identity, forces of gentrification and its effect on marginalized populations.

Through studying on-going issues in the context of this project, we captured two snapshots of two different areas. However, these moments are not representative of the entire history of the sites. Instead, they are fragments of an ever-changing world and as such the moments captured by our project no longer exist. This volume presents a specific moment in the recent histories of the sites, moments influenced by their respective pasts and the people who frequent them.

A key aspect of the nature of the contemporary is that of constant change.

Nothing remains the same, as buildings and places change, albeit at unique rates. If this constant change is symptomatic of all contemporary archaeology, what is the merit of a practice that sees its ephemeral subject matter wither away? By choosing specific spaces and places in time, and preserving them, one can reconceptualise contemporary archaeology as a form of heritage salvation, preserving moments of our present and creating an archaeology of us.

Yet, seeing this kind of archaeology as purely being about historicizing an everchanging present limits its potential. I do not want to construct contemporary archaeology as only being about heritage, preserving an ever-changing present. I would argue that one of the strengths of this kind of archaeology is the fact that it is boundless.

Initial Goals Choosing two sites from separate geographic areas allowed us to highlight the dynamism and diversity of the MontrĂŠal graffiti scene. This was both a strength and a limitation of the project. Due to the nature of the project, there were an infinite number of sites we could have chosen to depict the vibrant graffiti scene. However, lack of available bodies and limited work hours limited us to only two, and yet there was still potential for many more interpretations of these two sites.

After selecting sites, the group established goals to reframe contemporary graffiti as being archaeological. Some group members delved into the history of the Omnipac building and Saint-Henri, providing a background for us to understand the contemporary context, while others created a typology, which allowed us to catalogue and document the plethora of graffiti encountered.

Further Developments Completion of this project led to the development of two conclusions: it illustrated the multiple ways one can approach graffiti, and showed the dynamism of former industrial sites and non-places. While the first conclusion highlights our achievement of the original goals of the project, it does not speak to all that this project accomplished. As my fellow contributors and I assembled this volume, the project evolved. This second conclusion moves past the realm of graffiti and is concerned with the growing field of contemporary archaeology.

The true impact of this project resides in the second conclusion, which demonstrates the potential value of contemporary archaeology.

During the writing process,

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engagement, but instead it provides a different avenue for the expression of grievances.

Archaeology of contemporary graffiti has the potential to challenge previously held social norms and ideals. For example, abandoned industrial spaces are rarely entirely abandoned. Instead, marginal groups for a variety of purposes actively use them. However, framing such places as abandoned and derelict tends to perpetuate the idea that these places must disappear. By conducting archaeology at the Omnipac building, we demonstrated how this former industrial space continued to thrive in the contemporary as a space for the expression of an artistic medium, graffiti.

Archaeology of the contemporary past serves to elucidate the processes that shape our social world. Papers in this volume have demonstrated contemporary archaeology has the capacity to harness its subject material as a vehicle for exploring the circumstances of our daily existence. It allows one to begin to peel back the layers covering up broad societal processes. However, contemporary archaeology does not necessarily study these processes directly. Instead, it studies the materiality and landscapes associated with these processes to gain a different perspective.

Our work captures a fleeting moment of MontrĂŠal, as ephemeral as graffiti.

Places such as the Omnipac and portions of Saint-Henri no longer exist as we encountered them in the making of this publication. The fact that these sites are entirely different raises some questions as to the merit and value of an archaeology that captures a moment that will soon cease to exist. Archaeology is more than the sum of a set of methodologies; it is also a way of thinking, a way of perceiving the world.

This resonates strongly with an archaeology of the contemporary. Conducting the archaeology of the contemporary past requires one to forsake traditional understandings of time as a linear progression of events, and instead to see the moments for what they are.

Possibilities Subsequent paragraphs will provide examples of some of the directions contemporary archaeology can follow.

Directions presented in the following sections are only suggestions. I maintain that an archaeology of the contemporary can take the form of whatever one desires. There are no strict rules; instead I believe that contemporary archaeology encourages one to push back against rigid disciplinary rules, and perhaps even break them.

Contemporary archaeology has great potential to incorporate community perspectives and interests into academia. As archaeologists concerned with the now, we can incorporate living memory and informant interviews into projects. No longer is it just about the archaeologist coming to profound insights whilst excavating. Instead, the archaeologist engages with people, asking them what they think and what they want accomplished.

Living memory enables the archaeologist to consult directly with people who lived through an event, in order to gain greater insight. In this graffiti project, we made the effort to incorporate stakeholders through interviewing them. By incorporating their perspectives in the project, we enriched our experiences in both sites. However, contemporary archaeology can do more than just incorporate other perspectives.

Contemporary archaeology can turn its unique talents into activism. This kind of activism is not about giving agency or providing a voice, but instead opens up a space for the agency and voice of marginalized populations.

Contemporary archaeology has the ability to act as a platform for acknowledging the contributions of various groups, and to highlight their concerns and grievances. I do not mean to suggest that this platform is better than other traditional means of community

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Acknowledgements We would like to thank our classmates for their input and writing. This project would not have been possible without the help of Melissa King, Hannah Arseneau-Danielis, Andrew Lythe, and all contributors to this volume.

We would also like to extend our deepest thanks to Patrick O’Connor for screening his film Making a Name to us, and for sharing his remarkable insights into the MontrÊal graffiti scene.

We are indebted to the participants who generously agreed to collaborate with us on this project, be interviewed, and give us a glimpse into their lives. Thank you to Cam, Mathieu Bories, and to all those who wish to remain anonymous.

Alonso, Ben, Catherine, Geneviève, Laura, and Sam would like to express their gratitude to Maria Theresia Starzmann for being a devoted professor, a brilliant scholar, a caring mentor, and one of the most excellent human beings out there.

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Thank you for reading

F i e l d s | Te r r a i n s Sp e c i a l I s s u e Winter 2015

Me r c i d ’ a v o i r l u

F i e l d s | Te r r a i n s Édition spéciale Hiver 2015

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