“UUGGHH.” That’s how Minneapolis-based street artist Eric Rieger, aka Hottea, responded to the latest indication of gentrification in New York. One-ninety Bowery has stood the test of time. The imposing six-story limestone Renaissance Revival relic has long been a cultural landmark. Built in 1899, then Germania Bank of New York City serviced its surrounding community, “Little Germany” (Kleindeutschland), once the largest German-American–then-bourgeois–enclave in the country.

In 1966, long after the bank dissolved, photographer Jay Maisel bought the abandoned edifice and converted its facilities into the largest single-family home in New York City. That was until Fall 2014, when Maisel reluctantly sold his spacious dwelling to one of the most voracious real-estate developers swallowing up NYC properties today. RFR Holdings LLC bought the property for an undisclosed price in September, valued between $35 and 70 million, with plans to flip the building, marketing it as ideal for retailing at the base with condominiums above, and offices, or even an art gallery. 

190 Bowery, courtesy of erin williamson via Flickr.

Courtesy of erin williamson via Flickr.

Should we be surprised? With the New Museum a block away, a Whole Foods Market nearby, scores of luxury apartments, boutiques, and art galleries immediately South, it was only a matter of time before 190 Bowery succumbed to SoHo, the epicenter of loft living. RFR will be responsible for the “renovation” of the building’s cultural memory, of course; developers have already issued a rendering of the facade scrubbed clean of the layers of graffiti, on which artists including Keith Haring, COST, NEKST, Shepard Fairey, and others have made their marks for the last three decades. One-ninety Bowery is “the last remaining part of ‘old New York’,” lamented Hottea. “This building is so iconic… it’s been there for years. I think it reminds a lot of people of what New York used to be, and how that’s being taken away… UUGGHH. That’s all I can say. When is it going to stop?” But such is the normal arch of the gentrification narrative, 5 Pointz being a glaring example. We should, however, be concerned with the manner in which this process is taking place.

RFR Holdings LLC was founded in 1991 by Aby Rosen and Michael Fuchs, German-born real-estate tycoons who together own 71 properties globally. Over the last year, Rosen and Fuchs have spent $250 million on Manhattan land purchases, $500 million on office building acquisitions, and nearly $150 million on retail property–a spending spree to rival that of Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert who now owns most the real estate in downtown Detroit. Aside from the starkly different cities in which their properties are located, Gilbert’s Rock Ventures is an American-based firm, while RFR Holdings LLC has headquarters in New York and Frankfurt. “We can buy something more expensive because we have our own capital, plus European capital that looks for longer returns,” Rosen explained in a recent New York Times interview. “We don’t have to get in and out quickly, and having this long view allows us to be more aggressive.”

Aby Rosen, courtesy of Christopher Peterson via Wikimedia.

RFR’s acquisitions represent a broad trend of foreign investment in American real estate since the late 1980s. In lieu of escrow accounts in Swiss banks and securities in the Caribbean, which have come under intense international scrutiny, foreign investors have poured their money into global real estate, which can serve as a “convenient pied-à-terre, an investment hedge against a wobbly home currency,” according to New York Magazine, “or an insurance policy—a literal refuge if things go bad.” After the U.S. housing crisis from 2007 to 2010, property values in American cities plummeted, and while the U.S. economy has been recovering, they are still relatively “low” compared to cities around the world.

The market rate for luxury apartments in Hong Kong, for instance, is between $4,100 and $5,000 per square foot; in London the same properties are valued at $3,300 to $4,100. By comparison, Manhattan properties cost half that, ranging from about $2,100 to $2,500; alas–well out of reach for even upper middle-class inhabitants, yet quite attractive for transnational ultra-rich investors. Since 2008, roughly 30 percent of condo sales in Manhattan have been to overseas addresses, or through ambiguous entities like limited-liability corporations, such as RFR Holdings LLC, which often serve as middlemen for foreign investors. Over the last decade the majority of New York property sales have gone to investors in Russia or Saudi Arabia; over the last year, however, China has spent $22 billion on New York properties–72 percent more than they spent in 2013–claiming the lion’s share of foreign investment in American real estate. “The global elite,” according to Michael Stern, owner of JDS Development Group, “is basically looking for a safe-deposit box.”

Such gentrification on the global scale should not surprise us–it is a historical trend, and the redevelopment of 190 Bowery was inevitable. But there are dangers to this phenomenon, which reach further than the displacement of middle and working class communities, and erasure of their identity and culture. There is virtually no local market for premium properties in New York City. Urban properties as investments cease to be homes. Foreign investors lack vested interest in maintaining these properties primarily because they do not live there; the American city has effectively become a place of visitors, void of close community ties and stewardship. This hollow space is lifeless. Urban properties as investments are mostly uninhabited by their affluent proprietors; they either serve as vacation homes, or remain empty retainers of wealth. Meanwhile, middle-class homes let rooms to AirBnB, and subdivide apartments as room-shares marketed at exorbitant rates on Craigslist. We are experiencing the emergence of an absentee rentier class that not only augments our urban housing crisis; this urban real-estate bubble may threaten the systemic integrity of our economy.

What needs to change? Buyers of new construction in the city often qualify for significant tax abatements–a vestige of the neoliberal initiatives of the late 1970s and early 1980s designed to increase private investment and reverse the effects of urban crisis. Moreover, entities like RFR, based in Europe with an increasing presence in New York, have capitalized on liberal transnational financial regulations. American cities must update their zoning laws, with an eye to equitable development. New York no longer needs a mainline feed of private investment to remain viable. The effects of unfettered transnational capital currents erode the fabric of urban communities. If “UUGGHH” is not a lament, it is surely an expression of our impotence.

Ryan Purcell

Ryan D. Purcell holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York. Contact Ryan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The New Urban America: Cities of Visitors and the Absentee Rentier Class appeared first on Law Street.

Egyptian political artist Ganzeer was first featured in Political Graffiti two months ago after the Egyptian government and state-sponsored media conducted a campaign to tarnish the artist’s image. Since then, Ganzeer was profiled in The New York Times and is in New York City. After meeting him for the first time after his talk at Interference Archive in Brooklyn on July 23, he agreed to sit down for an interview.

Ryan Purcell: Where does the name “Ganzeer” come from? 

Ganzeer: Ganzeer is Arabic for “speed chain,” the sort of chain typically seen on bikes. My thinking behind the name is that these chains aren’t usually the source of motion on a bicycle, but as a mere connector it enables the motion to happen, which is very much how I feel about the role of artists in society.

RP: Can you describe the first time you produced graffiti? 

G: The very first time was in 2008. I knew nothing about making street art; I was not very much a hands on person. I was sketching a lot, but a lot of the work I was doing also involved using the computer a lot as opposed to using paint and spray-paint, and like messy tools. You know? Some friends of mine in Alexandria, much younger than myself — Aya Tarek, Wensh, and Nabil — they had already been doing street art for a while in Alexandria, and they were telling me that I should come up to Alexandria, which is a few hours away from Cairo by train. We scouted some walls, each one of us came up with an idea, and we helped each other. Without their knowledge, I wouldn’t have been able to make my first piece. 

It was three monkeys, but instead of the hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil, it was reversed. So there was a monkey looking — seeing through binoculars — another monkey who was speaking through a mega phone, and another monkey who was listening through this listening device. I sketched it out first on a piece of paper, and then had it scanned and fixed it up digitally. We printed the image on transparent sheets, and cut through them to make a stencil. Then you staple them to the wall you’re doing.

That piece lasted only about a week before it was censored, covered in black paint. But my friends had been doing street art for two years, and none of their pieces were ever censored. 

RP: When you were making art during the Egyptian revolution, were you aware of how it was influencing the protests? 

G: Everyone cheered for my slogan “Down with Mubarak and his Family;” it was meaningful to a lot of people to see it in public space. Imagine you and everyone you know knows something, which is spoken at little cafes and on the street. And one day that thing is finally chanted out loud in big numbers; and not only that, but that thing is written in public space; this thing that everyone knows but no one’s allowed to talk about in public. It’s kinda like that, but this thing has kinda been weighing on people’s chests for so long, just being spoken, and being written in public space was so massive and so important. 

Sarah Carr cc via Flickr

Of course, the more its written, though, the more it exists in public space, the less significant it is. You need to up your game. For example, if you spray the same slogan the people cheer the first time they see it, and maybe the fiftieth or the hundredth it just becomes so normal and so whatever in public space. But maybe there are still things that need to be pushed, and there are still nerves that need to be pressed, right? There will always be an elephant in the room. 

You realize that you always have to up your game, whether that means saying the same thing differently, or saying something different. So, maybe just a shitty little slogan sprayed quickly is not impactful anymore, and you need to do a nice designed stencil and that grabs people’s attention. And when you have more of those, you take it bigger to a mural size. Also, maybe the message itself must be changed. So when Mubarak was out of the picture, “Down with Mubarak” is out, and now we have to move on to “okay, actually the military that everyone is cheering is actually the problem.” 

Everyone was ready for “Down with Mubarak” — it had been thirty years, everyone was sore. But with the military, everyone was like “What do you mean, they were with us?” And maybe they’re not so ready about it. That’s when things become a little tricky, a little more difficult, when you start tackling things people are maybe no so willing to accept so easily. You have to become more subversive, less direct. 

So, with the Tank vs bicycle piece, the subversiveness is in the process of making it, where the tank takes the most time to make. When people pass, especially military police, they think you’re making a pro-military piece; they only see you drawing a really big tank. But once you’re done with the tank and you put in the bicycle, the message becomes complete, which alters the entire message of the piece. So the aspect that gives it bite should take the least amount of time so you can do it quickly and get away.

Courtesy of Ganzeer

Courtesy of Ganzeer

Courtesy of Ganzeer

RP: Who censors Egyptian political graffiti? 

G: When it’s officially a government decision, the military would cover the murals and graffiti with paint — this really horrible color on most walls in Cairo, this beige, off-white “blah” color. It’s kind of the official government supply of paint they use to cover all the walls in Cairo anyway. But for the most part, acts of censorship have been done by citizens, more so than the government.

Courtesy of Ganzeer

RP: What is the greatest source of inspiration for the content of your art?

G: It’s there in the public discourse. It’s what people are taking about; it’s an important issue. We’re all aware of it, it’s there. Other pieces require actual research for concrete information. But in general, it would be based on some kind of idea. 

One of the pieces I am working on right now, has to do with a cop who was charged with the murder of a suspect [Eric Garner]. Everyone knows about it, and it was in the news for a while, and now its just gone. 

RP: Do you perceive injustice in the United States? 

G: Police brutality, which in probably endemic everywhere in the world. The United States, and New York City in particular, is not exempt from that problem. The last incident is the guy who was choked to death for no reason whatsoever. He did not have any weapons on him, and all the eyewitnesses even claimed that he was breaking up a fight. The police arrested him for selling cigarettes illegally — which were not in his possession — and in the process of arresting him, choked him to death. The NYPD does not show shame for these acts. 

Police brutality definitely exists in Egypt and Bahrain. I think it exists in most places. Maybe we must reexamine the very concept of a police force in general, because there was a time when police forces did not exist. 

“Be Brutal” (2014) courtesy of Ganzeer

RP: Do you perceive economic injustice in the world today?

G: The global economic system, as a whole, which is heralded by the United States in particular, is to a large extent to blame for injustice throughout the world. There is already a lot of evidence pointing to the United States and the IMF leading to a lot of huge economic gaps in a lot of places in the world, and the United States itself is not exempt from that issue. There are places like Switzerland or Sweden, which have a more mixed economic system where the government is involved in providing public services; but in the United States you find that almost everything is done by a private company, and private companies only seek profit. So that is the problem. Then there is the problem of exporting that mentality throughout the world. 

Courtesy of Ganzeer

Courtesy of Ganzeer

Courtesy of Ganzeer

I think the United States has done a pretty good job at propagating the notion that a dictatorship  is somehow linked to communism and socialism, because a lot of America’s enemies in the past have been countries like Russia or Cuba. Now, to a large extent, it has a touchy relationship with China. And it’s not like China is communist anyway, for that matter. But where I come from, the notions of dictatorship, fascism, and authoritarianism can very much be linked to capitalism, because we in Egypt have been suffering from a capitalist dictatorship for a very long time, supported by the United States — it is a capitalist dictatorship. Somehow in the vocabulary of Americans, capitalism does not go hand-in-hand. Where I come from, it is exactly the same thing, because that is what we had for a very long time; we have never experienced capitalism and democracy, it’s only been capitalism and dictatorship combined. Having capitalism obviously doesn’t mean that you’re living in a free world. Finally enough, dictatorships can also relish in capitalism — having power consolidated between yourself and a handful of businessmen, that’s pretty much the idea. 

RP: Do you have any advice for artists who want to use graffiti as a political force today?

G: Street artists are going to go out there and do something risky and dangerous, but they are going to put their ideas in public space. My only advice is make it worth while, whatever it is — worth the risk, and danger of putting it out there.

— 

Ryan D. Purcell (@RyanDPurcell) holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York.

Featured image courtesy of [Wolfgang Sterneck via Flickr]

Ryan Purcell

Ryan D. Purcell holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York. Contact Ryan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Egyptian Political Artist Ganzeer on Street Art and Political Protest appeared first on Law Street.

On Friday, August 1, Moody’s Investor Service upgraded Greece’s government bond rating, indicating subtle economic growth for a country hit hard by the 2008 economic crisis. Plagued by structural weakness, along with a decade of mounting financial deficits, the Greek economy floundered from the outset of the 2008 recession, afflicting the Eurozone system until it was saved from the brink of bankruptcy in 2010. Eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund have pumped 240 billion euros ($308 billion) in the Greek economy, floating the feeble country on the promise of exacting austerity measures including drastic cuts to public spending that have triggered unprecedented levels of poverty, decimating incomes and pushing the unemployment rate to 27 percent.

Moody’s recent vote of confidence in the Greek economy may however mark at turning point for the credit-strapped country, since the Moody’s upgrade is corroborated by other reputable credit agencies. On May 23, 2014 Standard & Poor and Fitch raised their ratings of Greece from B- to B, while Moody’s predicted a gradual decline of its massive national debt. While this credit rating remains at “junk” status, or below investment grade, Greece’s economy is projected to grow by 1.2 percent, the first significant uptick in seven years signaling that the country is near the end of its dismal recession.

If graffiti in Athens can tell us anything about this recent optimism, it is that Greece’s impending resuscitation has not come without its social costs. Moreover, the capitalist “invisible hand” is not the only hand of consequence. In July, preceding Moody’s report of Greece’s economic health, iNO, a Greek graffiti muralist, unveiled his latest piece. The mural, called “Wake UP,” portrays one hand saving another that lets go of a coin. “While the economic situation in Greece remains unsettled [ne s’arrange pas],” explained the French graffiti blog ALLCITY, “iNO made a blind wall in Athens with the theme of resurrection, the hand of God bringing to life a man fascinated by money.” The black and white mural cast against dense cream concrete buildings, prescribes a redemption that necessitates letting go of money, perhaps suggesting a return to more humanitarian, social, and fiscal policies in Greece. Since the outset of the 2008 economic crisis, iNO has been at the forefront of Greek political graffiti; his murals have illuminated the social consciousness of the recession. 

“People in Greece are under pressure,” iNO told The New York Times in April. “They feel the need to act, resist and express themselves… If you want to learn about a city, look at its walls. Take a walk in the center of Athens, and you will get it.” Nearly all of iNO’s murals contain a social message, whether implicitly or explicitly expressed. “No Future,” for example, depicts two faces of a baby: one searching the sky desperately, the other stares blankly at the viewer, or at the absence of future and economic promise in Athens. “System of Fraud,” shows the heads of two hellenistic statues, the bottom melting away, perhaps critiquing Athens tourism industry, or the mismanagement of its revenue. “Wake Up” in contrast, is a hopeful message, but also an admonishment against the abuses of capital.

Political graffiti has been a mainstay of dissent in Greece since the outset of the 2008 economic crisis. Activists against the government have plastered Athens’ city walls, banks, kiosks, trains, and cars with political messages like  “Their Wealth is Our Blood;” commenting on international bailouts to save Greece, “Wake Up! Fight Now!;” and even sardonic graphics advertising democracy, “Super Democracy (as seen on TV)” with a figure giving a middle finger.

Graffiti has functioned as “counter-propoganda” for the Greek people who have been devastated by austerity measures and no longer trust the government. Going forward, however, graffiti will mean more than a statement of protest; as a voice of the people, political graffiti will play a role in discussions about the restoration of the Greek economy and society. The upgrade of Greece’s credit rating marks a turning point for the Greek economy. Will Greece resume the self-destructive path of government corruption and financial mismanagement, or will the country espouse more humanitarian policies, shifting emphasis from boosting private investors to a more robust welfare for its people? If anything is clear, it is that Graffiti will remain part of the equation.

—

Ryan D. Purcell (@RyanDPurcell) holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York.

Featured image courtesy of [aesthetics of crisis via Flickr]

Ryan Purcell

Ryan D. Purcell holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York. Contact Ryan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Graffiti Marks Turning Point in Greek Economy appeared first on Law Street.

Last Friday, July 25, 2014, three Central American leaders  — Presidents Juan Olando Hernádez of Honduras, Otto Pérez Molina of Guatemala, and Salvador Sánchez Cerén of El Salvador — convened at the White House to discuss with President Obama the recent wave of Central American immigrants, specifically unaccompanied minors, to the United States.

“Washington must understand that if you have a Central America with violence because of the drug traffic crime, a Central America without opportunities, without growth in the economy, it is going to always be a problem for the United States,” said President Hernández of Honduras. The root causes, Hernández went on, are not America’s lax border polices, but rather the demand for illegal drugs in North America, which fuels violence in Central America, causing migrants to flee their homes. In a joint statement on Friday, President Obama and the three Central American leaders pledged to address the “underlying causes of immigration by reducing criminal activity and promoting greater social and economic opportunity.”

What this estimation overlooks, though, are the perspectives of the immigrants themselves. What causes them to submit to a perilous exodus, vulnerable to a harsh desert climate, drug violence, and personal injury crossing rivers and fences, all at the likelihood of being detained by U.S. border security, and possibly being sent back? Drug violence may very well be a cause for the flight of immigrants, but I am skeptical to hear this from leaders of governments who have vested interests in the economic exploitation, and repression of their citizens. Rather, we should listen to the people.

In Central America, graffiti is a voice for a voiceless people: the agrarian peasants and the urban poor. Graffiti is an alternative medium of communication that broadcasts messages that corporate media outlets such as radio and television fail to incorporate. It is an open forum of dissent, writ large on the side of a government building, or across a freight car, traveling throughout the region. More importantly, graffiti is a vantage point from which we can discern the perspective of Central American immigrants, and the pressures behind their flight.

Ciudad de Juárez, the capital of Oaxaca, Mexico, six hundred miles from the Guatemalan border, is home to the Assembly of Revolutionary Artists of Oaxaca (ASARO). Comprised of multiple graffiti crews and independent artists, ASARO was forged in the summer 2006 following the violent state-oppression of teachers demanding better pay and working conditions. Forty-five hundred federal police forcibly removed the teachers from the streets, injuring 92 protesters and killing 17, including an American news correspondent. The brutal government crackdown on protests mobilized disparate activist groups against the government, which they saw as a common cause of their plights, and ASARO emerged as a visual amplification of their dissent through the streets of Ciudad de Juárez.

“Arte Del Pueblo y Para el Pueblo” (Art of the People for the People) courtesy of ian m via Flickr

What is more interesting, though, in regard to immigration to the United States, is the political motive and content of the ASARO graffiti. In their images and slogans, we find the root cause of strife afflicting the people in Mexico and Central America, and ultimately the systemic causes for the massive waves of immigration to the U.S. over the last five years.

“The assembly of revolutionary artists arises from the need to reject and transcend authoritarian forms of governance and institutional, cultural, and societal structures, which have been characterized as discriminatory for seeking to impose a single version of reality and morality[.]” – ASARO Manifesto

In Oaxaca, where 80.3 percent of the population lack sanitation services, street lighting, piped water, and paved roads, ASARO illuminated institutional prejudices against ethnicity, class, and sex, keeping eight out ten people in extreme poverty. Their graffiti critiqued the violence of the Mexican government in the 2006 uprising, but also demanded  equal rights for disenfranchised groups like farm workers, indigenous people, and women, as well as exposing the hypocrisies and corruption of the ruling elite. Slogans such as “Todo el Poder al Pueblo. Colonos en Pie de Lucha” (All the Power to the People. Neighbors on our feet to fight!) incited reflection and fiery debates on issues ranging from the privatization of public goods, to gender equality, democratic participate, and Indigenous rights. Moreover, images of the Oaxacan governor labeled “Cynic, Thief, Autocrat, Repressor, Murders,” and “End Fascism in Mexico!” rallied protesters against the government.

Courtesy of natarén via Flickr

“Todo el poder al pueblo. Colonos en lucha” (All Power to the people. Neighbors, on their feet for the fight). Courtesy of nataren via Flickr.

In addition to social struggles in Mexico, ASARO’s political graffiti illustrate issues that affect Central America broadly, such as the economic exploitation of natural resources and labor by transnational corporations, as well as documenting the physical and emotional trauma of immigration. ASARO’s political graffiti critiqued the extraction of oil and minerals from Oaxacan land, which is exported by the Mexican government at an exorbitant profit, without benefit to the Oaxacan people. One ASARO poster featuring a barefoot peasant tilling the land read, “La Tierra es de queen la Trabaja” (The earth belongs to those who work it); a wood-cut block print depicted Uncle Sam under an eagle drinking from an oil can, kicking miniature figures with guns, who represent the Mexican people.

These critiques of foreign exploitation not only speak to conditions in Mexico and Central America, but suggest a system of global colonization by transnational corporations. A block print called Body Parts on Railroad (2010) documents the perils of immigration. Body parts litter train tracks leading to the U.S.: a leg labeled “Salvador,” a finger labeled “Mexico,” a hand “Honduras,” and a head “Guatemala.” Similarly, another block print depicts small animals standing at the opening of a sewer drain like those used by some immigrants to enter the U.S., that runs under a border fence replete with police and an American flag.

In all, the political graffiti of Oaxaca, Mexico demonstrates that there is much more to the immigration debate than just the quips of politicians. In order to understand the root cause of the recent wave of unaccompanied child immigrants, and in order to address this crisis adequately, discussions must include the perspectives of the immigrants themselves. Drug violence is not the only cause for immigration from Central America; but rather a host of systemic issues force immigrants to travel to the U.S. Government corruption and economic exploitation are, perhaps, the most intolerable conditions for the people, as evidenced by the ASARO graffiti. Only from the oppressed can we fully understand their oppression; graffiti is the voice of the subaltern.

 —
Ryan D. Purcell (@RyanDPurcell) holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York.

 Featured image courtesy of [Fabricator77 via Flickr]

Ryan Purcell

Ryan D. Purcell holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York. Contact Ryan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Graffiti Describes the Struggle of Immigrants and Undocumented Minors appeared first on Law Street.

“If during a study-abroad trip to Indonesia you stumble across an image of the Führer, don’t be surprised,” reported Vice News earlier this summer. “The swastika is also everywhere — on walls, cups, ashtrays, and t-shirts — and it’s not the Buddhist kind.” Stickers, posters, and stenciled graffiti images of Adolf Hitler litter the cities of Indonesia aside images of weapons and bullets. But the Nazi graffiti is not limited to illegal marks; street vendors sell posters and framed prints of a fiery Adolph Hitler delivering an impassioned speech. A prepubescent boy wears a burgundy T-shirt that reads “PUNK NAZI” emblazoned with a swastika. “I don’t idealize Hitler, I simply adore the soldiers’ paraphernalia,” said Henry Mulyana, owner of Soldaten Kaffee (German for ‘The Soldiers’ Café’) in Bandung City, which opened in 2011. Customers can order “Nazi goring” (a version of traditional fried rice) served on swastika-motif china by a waiter wearing a black SS uniform.

The recent bizarre phenomenon of Nazi imagery in Indonesia would be absurdly laughable if it wasn’t so disturbing. Indonesia’s poor education system and historical ignorance may be at the root of the irreverent prevalence of Nazi imagery. Indonesia is a diverse country consisting of more than 300 ethnic groups and over 700 languages, yet few of the nation’s 240 million people receive formal education about race relations. Schools omit world history curriculum, which, according to the Jakarta Globe, contributes to the ignorance of sensitive social topics. “It is not uncommon,” says the Conversation, “for Indonesians to say ‘I like Hitler’ when meeting someone from Germany.”

“Contrary to their European peers, Indonesian students hardly receive any history lessons on World War II. They know nothing about the persecution of Jews, for example,” according to a history professor at the Gadjah Mada University of Yogyakarta in Java. “They see Hitler as a revolutionary, similar to Che Guevara, not as someone who is responsible for the death of millions of Jews…[T]hey’re attracted to emblems of Nazi Germany because they’ve become acquainted with these symbols through punk and hard-rock videos. In their view, these symbols are a representation of rebellion.”

Adolf Hitler bumper sticker, Lombok Barat, West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. Courtesy of Klaus Stiefel via Flickr

The evidence pointing to Indonesia’s poor education system, however, suggests a more fundamental issue at stake in the resurgence of Nazi imagery. From 1967 to 1998, Indonesia was ruled by an authoritarian, pseudo-Fascist government that strictly controlled school curriculum. “The Ministry of Education prohibited teachers from educating students on international genocide, political violence, or racial conflicts,” said Gene Netto, an English teacher from Jakarat. “Most students graduated without ever having heard of the Holocaust…Students were only taught about the glory and grandeur of Indonesia as a country.”

Indeed, Indonesia has a historic relationship with Nazis specifically and Fascism broadly. During the 1930s, while Indonesia was under the control the Netherlands, Nazi publications were translated and disseminated throughout the country; Hitler’s concept of a “Greater Germany” inspired similar ideals, “Indonesia Mulia” (esteemed Indonesia) and “Indonesia Raya” (great Indonesia), galvanizing the Indonesian National Party (PNI) that was instrumental in achieving independence from the Dutch in 1949. Soekarno, the leader of the independence movement, and subsequently the country’s first president, revered Hitler’s vision of the Third Reich, declaring in 1963, “It’s in the Dritte Reich that the Germans will see Germany at the apex above other nations in this world.” Suharto, the second Indonesian president, came to power in 1967 following a military coup that deposed Soekarno, immediately consolidating government power around the military, consequently instituting a military dictatorship. Building on Soekarno’s Nazi inspired ideals, Suharto’s regime ruthlessly killed criminal and political prisoners, and conducted genocides, most infamously in East Timor. A pro-democracy Indonesian revolution ended Suharto’s long reign in 1998, but the neo-Fascist rhetoric has resumed once again during the current presidential election.

Prabowo Subianto, one of the two front runners in the Indonesian election, is a “continuation” of Suharto’s “fascist rule,” according to Indonesian scholar Andre Vltchek writing in Counter Punch. Prabowo has historic roots in Indonesia’s autocratic government; not only did his father serve as Suharto’s cabinet minister, Prabowo is Suharto’s son in law, and commanded the Special Forces group that spearheaded a brutal occupation and genocide of East Timor in 1976. Prabowo’s resume gives a clear indication that he will be as authoritarian and as cruel as Suharto, if not more so. As Foreign Policy explains, “Suharto-style authoritarianism remains alive and well,” including politics of exclusion, fear, and intimidation; as a campaign spectacle, Prabowo rode a horse into a stadium full of supporters in formation, wearing white uniforms and red berets. Allusions to Mussolini could not be more complete.

A voting bulletin just after the official closing of elections at a voting station in Jakarta. Courtesy of Lord Mountbatten Via Wikipedia.

What is more striking, however, is that Indonesians seem to embrace the Fascist imagery and political rhetoric. “We need Adolf Hitler! In order to fully restore law and order” a businessman in Sumatra exclaimed. “I’m not personally familiar with the [Nazi] ideology, but even if I am, I don’t think I’d find it completely disagreeable,” said Mulyana, the owner of the Nazi-themed café. “For example, communism in Indonesia was prohibited, but it’s flourishing in China. Maybe it’s just a matter of politics.” In June, Indonesian pop star Ahmad Dhani released a music video in support of Prabowo, dressed in a black Nazi uniform, singing a modified version of Queen’s “We Will Rock You.”

“What is the connection between German soldiers and Indonesia?” Dhani asked rhetorically. “We Indonesians didn’t kill millions of Jews, right?”

The ballots are in but the election is still undecided. Both candidates — Prabowo and Djoko “Jokowi” Widodo — are claiming victory, citing unofficial results conducted by private polling agencies, and accusing each other of election fraud. By law, the Indonesian Election Commission must announce the official results today. Whoever wins, this election marks a clear resurgence of Indonesia’s latent Fascism. The Mussolini-style political campaigns, Nazi-themed cafés, and stenciled images of Hitler plastered through the streets, are not as horrifying, though, as the fact that the Indonesian people seem completely comfortable with the pervasiveness of Fascist symbolism. As we have seen with ‘neo-Fascists’ in Israel, graffiti is a bellwether for subterranean political currents in Indonesian society.

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Ryan D. Purcell (@RyanDPurcell) holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York.

Feature image courtesy of [Ikhlasul Amal via Flickr]

Ryan Purcell

Ryan D. Purcell holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York. Contact Ryan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Nazi Graffiti Indicates Resurgence of Fascism in Indonesia appeared first on Law Street.

Violence between Israel and Palestine has surged over the last month following a chain of antagonistic murders in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. On June 12, three Israeli students— Eyal Yifrah, Gilad Shaar, and Naftali Frenkel— were killed. Their bound and partially burned bodies were found in a field northwest of Hebron two weeks later. In retaliation, a 16-year-old Palestinian boy, Muhammed Abu Khdeir, was abducted, bound, and burned alive one day after the burial of the three Israeli students. Khdeir’s cousin, 15-year-old Tariq Abu Khdeir, a Palestinian-American vacationing in East Jerusalem was arrested by Israeli police and beaten while in custody; videos of the boy’s bloody face circulating in social media have only magnified the emotional force behind the escalating tensions between the two countries, engendering missile exchanges between Israel and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. On Monday July 7, Israel authorized the mobilization of 40,000 reserve soldiers in preparation for an invasion of Gaza, which according to Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon “will not end within a few days.”

Amid the gruesome murders and savage beatings should it be surprising that graffiti has played a critical role in the escalating violence between Israel and Palestine? Since 2008, Price Tag attacks have been a growing phenomena in Israel, though primarily in the West Bank and East Jerusalem; they originated from the “Hilltop Youth” of the West Bank, illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land — 100 small outposts scattered on strategic hilltops. “A ‘price tag’ means that when the government of Israel decides to evict a settlement, an outpost, even the smallest wooden shack in the land of Israel — it has a price,” according to Moriah Goldberg, a 20-year-old Price Tagger. “Maybe it will make them think twice before they do it again.”

Attacks involve destruction of property perpetrated by Israeli extremists against Arabs —desecrating cemeteries, burning Korans, chopping down olive trees — as well as anti-Arab and anti-Christian defamatory graffiti slogans including the phrase “Price Tag.” “Price tag, King David is for the Jews, Jesus is garbage;” “Jesus is a son of bitch,” spray painted on the entrance of a church; “A good Arab is a dead Arab, Price Tag,” spray painted on a mosque; “Death to Arabs;”  “Enough Assimilation,” “Arab Labor = assimilation;” “Non-Jews in the area = enemies.”

Recently, however, Price Tag attacks have increased in frequency and grown more violent. Attacks have surged from a handful in 2008 to 23 already in 2014; along with slashing tires, Price Tag attackers have firebombed empty vehicles, leaving their signature graffiti marks in the wake of their destruction. In response to the arrest of Israeli suspects for the murder of Abu Khdeir, Price Taggers destroyed a light-rail station in East Jerusalem, leaving Hebrew graffiti reading”Death to Israel” across the burned-out edifice. Price Tag is a “shadowy network of clandestine cells,” according to a recent profile of the guerrilla graffiti group in Foreign Policy, posing a “danger to Israeli security. Future acts of vandalism against Palestinians could escalate tension beyond their current, already dangers levels.”

In 2012, the U.S. State Department began listing Price Tag attacks as acts of terrorism in the Global Terror Report, though Israel falls short of this judgement; on July 1, Israeli Defense Minister Ya’alon defined the attacks a “illegal organizing,” stipulating more severe sentences for the Jewish perpetrators. “[T]errorism is a suicide bomber in a crowded mall or someone who shoots people,” said Dani Dayan, the former director of the Yesha Council, an umbrella organization of municipal councils of Jewish settlements. Price Tag attacks should be treated as “extreme vandalism” or even “hate crime…There’s no comparison between this and real Palestinian terrorism[.]”

Whether or not Israel defines Price Tag as ‘terroristic,’ victims still consider the attacks state-condoned violence against non-Jews due to Israel’s apparent failure to prosecute. Historically, more than 90 percent of investigations into settler violence fail to lead to an indictment. According to Slate, while Israel has condemned the recent rise in Price Tag attacks, the response by authorities has been “charitably described as sluggish.” Between 2005 and 2013, 992 investigations of complaints of Israeli violence against Palestinians were conducted, yet only 7.8 percent led to indictments.

There have been quite a few arrests of Price Tag attackers, in fact; the most recent was July 1, when a 22-year-old Israeli was detained in connection with a Price Tag attack in which assailants torched a christian monastery, spray painting “Jesus is a monkey.” “It is unbelievable to us that Israel can catch enemies, very sophisticated enemies, overseas, but they can’t catch a bunch of punks who live here,” said Jawdat Ibrahim, the owner of a local restaurant. “These attacks happen in an atmosphere, maybe an atmosphere that says, ‘Hey, it’s okay, you’re never gonna get caught.’ ” In a poll released last week by Israel’s Channel 10 News, almost 60 percent of those surveyed agreed that the government “didn’t really want to catch” Price Tag attackers, indicating that Israel condones this violence, or at least allows it to happen.

“There’s no doubt that the Price Tag phenomenon is very influenced by political processes,” said Hebrew University political sociology lecturer Eitan Alum. “They’re violent acts with logical and political goals.” Yet Price Tag is is also an expression of hate, inciting violence among and between Palestinian and Israeli communities.

“‘Price Tag’ and ‘Hilltop Youth’ are sweet, sugary nicknames, and the time has come to call this monster by its name,” famed Israeli author Amos Oz publicly declared on May 14th, 2014, his 75th birthday. “Hebrew neo-Nazis. The only difference between European neo-Nazi groups and Price Tag in Israel,” Oz continued, “lies in the fact that our neo-Nazi groups enjoy the tailwind of quite a few lawmakers who are nationalists, and possibly even racists, and also a number of rabbis who provide them with a basis that, in my opinion, is pseudo-religious.”

Oz’s sobering, if however startling, remarks point to pressing issues regarding the difference between Price Tag and other instances of political graffiti, globally. While graffiti artists like Ganzeer in Egypt, and Captain Borderline in Brazil have used their graffiti to critique oppressive government apparatuses, Price Tag specifically targets elements of the Israeli people based on race, ethnicity, and religion; the group’s intent is malicious, a vindictive visual assault on non-Jews who are otherwise victims of an apartheid Israel, or are continually subject to military violence, as is the case in Gaza.

It is important to differentiate these two strains of political graffiti: while graffiti can promote equality and liberty, it can also counter these values. Once a haven for the oppressed, founded on socialist values, Israel has become an oppressor. Price Tag is a plague of hate, radicalized by twisted Zionism, and ruthless settler politics. “Faithless Jews who don’t fear God can call me a terrorist if they want,” said Price Tagger Moriah Goldberg. “I don’t care what they say about me. I only care what God thinks. I act for him and him alone.”

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Ryan D. Purcell (@RyanDPurcell) holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York.

Featured image courtesy of [Adrian Fine via Flickr]

Ryan Purcell

Ryan D. Purcell holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York. Contact Ryan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Political Graffiti as a Catalyst for Escalating Israeli-Palestinian Violence appeared first on Law Street.

“It’s in the nature of graffiti that it can’t be contained by any established institution, commercial or educational. As a site-specific art form, it dies when separated from the where and when of its creation. Also, its energy comes from the artist’s self-identification as an aesthetic and social outlaw.“

-Ken Johnson, New York Times

Martin Wong came to New York City in 1978 as an openly gay painter and sculptor from San Francisco. He settled in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, Loisadia, full of home artist communities like the Nuyorican Poets Café. Along with the South Bronx this was an epicenter street graffiti in New York during the late 1970s and 1980s. As an outsider from the West Coast, Wong was immediately spellbound by the radiant graffiti around him, passionately seeking out graffiti writers and their art around the city. In 1982, Wong began working at Pearl Paint, an art supply store on Canal Street, and would trade art supplies with graffiti writers in return for graffiti sketchbooks, drawings, and paintings. Through the 1980s, Wong amassed a colossal collection of graffiti art of 300 objects — including 50 sketchbooks, more than 100 canvases, and more than 150 works on paper. Artists range from the well-known art stars such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring to graffiti writers such as Christopher “DAZE” Ellis, FUTURA 2000, LAII, LADY PINK, and Lee Quiñones.

In all, Wong’s collection of graffiti art is, perhaps, the largest of its kind. Wong “wanted to become the Albert Barnes of graffiti,” recalled Ellis, referring to the famous collection of Post-Impressionist and early Modern works amassed by the chemist. He was “interested in far more than collecting the artists’ works, since he became a mentor to several of them,” Sean Corcoran, the curator of prints and photographs at the Museum of the City of New York, told Art in America. “He often traded with them, sometimes selling one of his own paintings and turning around and spending all the money buying work from graffiti artists.” For a short time, Wong even operated a museum of graffiti art in a row house on Bond Street until rising real estate values forced the venue to close. When Wong was diagnosed with AIDS in 1994, he donated his entire collection to the Museum of the City of New York before he died on October 12, 1999 at the age of 53. “He could have sold off the collection piecemeal, and there were interested European buyers,” said Corcoran. “[B]ut he felt strongly that the collection should remain in New York, and he donated it wholesale to the Museum.”

Curated by Cocoran, “City as Canvas” at the Museum of the City of New York is the first exhibition of Martin Wong’s graffiti art. “The collection was never able to be seen,” said Charlie Ahearn, an early graffiti aficionado and director of the movie Wild Style. Viewers can see a wide array of artifacts from sketchbooks to graffiti painted on canvas, as well as photographs that documented the New York graffiti movement during the ’70s and ’80s. Yet underneath this vast presentation — and the pieces, especially the photographs, are stunning — lurks an unsettling suspicion. Does graffiti belong on a canvas, or in a museum?

Wild Style flyer, Courtesy of Delete via Flickr

“Graffiti is really defined as some one who writes their name in an illegal fashion on public property,” Ahearn mused before “City as Canvas” opened. During the ’70s and ’80s graffiti was a “direct response to the crumbling city,” according to urban historian L.E. Neal. For graffiti writers, tagging was political; it was an “act of defiance.” Graffiti was an act of appropriation, making the city one’s own by claiming the space, says RxArt. Amid the destruction of communities, and the failure of the government to protect working-class communities in urban crisis, the graffiti movement was a “fight for space.” Removed from the street, the graffiti aesthetic on canvas is devoid of political meaning, it is an inauthentic representation of street politics, though it might present sentimental value to viewers who can remember New York City during that time.

One canvas graffiti piece illustrates this point for the entire collection. Lee Quiñones’ “Howard the Duck” (1988) is an oil on canvas reproduction of a street mural, originally produced in the early 1980s. It depicts a cartoon duck, in suit and tie, shielding himself with a garbage lid from Lee’s tag emblazoned on a brick wall. Above the scene a message reads in graffiti script: “Graffiti is art and if art is a crime, let go forgive all.” While the colors are vivid, and the message provoking, the piece would have been more poignant, and interesting if it was presented as graffiti mural on the street, as originally intended. On canvas, however, the piece is unengaging. “[T]oday that work doesn’t interest me aesthetically in the same way it might have interested writers or just art fans back in the early 1980s” said R.J. Rushmore, a young contemporary graffiti artist, and editor-in-chief of Vandalog. Initially, Ahearn considered it a mistake for Wong to bequeath his collection to any institution, but now values the exhibition at MCNY because “it places the emphasis on the historical picture of [graffiti], rather than the art world context.”

Photography is, perhaps, an appropriate method of presenting graffiti because it captures its urban context. The New York graffiti subculture was an insular world during the 1970s; the writers depended on their anonymity to continue their work while police crackdowns intensified. As a result, the graffiti writers let few outsiders into their lives, among those were photographers Henry Chalfant, Martha Cooper, Jon Naar, and Ahearn, a cinematographer. “City as Canvas” presents a section of their photographs that candidly capture the graffiti subculture with raw passion. One photo, taken by Naar, depicts a gang of writers in a graffiti-festooned subway entrance, proudly holding papers marked with their respective tags. An iconic Cooper photograph dramatically portrays a graffiti writer at work straddling the gap between two subway trains, one foot on either train. These photos, along with the sketchbooks, in my mind, are the real gems in “City as Canvas.”

“I think we’re in the right window to look at what these kids were doing and [the] effects on culture,” said Corcoran. “For us, this show is partly about how graffiti originated in New York and became a global phenomenon…Thanks to photographers like Martha Cooper and filmmakers like Charlie Ahearn, it was disseminated worldwide. The materials in the show say a lot about what New York looked like in the 1970s and 80s.”

“It’s all over the world,” Corcoran told the New York Times, ”You have kids in Europe painting trains because of what they saw in ‘Wild Style.’” Moreover, “City as Canvas” holds particular relevance today; after Banksy’s month-long “residency,” the destruction of 5 Pointz and the subsequent surge in illicit graffiti over the course of the last six months, graffiti is once again a poignant and divisive issue in New York.

“City as Canvas: Graffiti Art from the Martin Wong Collection” is on view through September 1, 2014 at the Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue New York, NY, 10029.

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Ryan D. Purcell (@RyanDPurcell) holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York.

Feature image courtesy of [Igal Malis via Flickr]

Ryan Purcell

Ryan D. Purcell holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York. Contact Ryan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post ‘City as Art’ Exhibition Brings Massive Graffiti Collection to the Public for First Time appeared first on Law Street.

The intersection of Houston Street and the Bowery in New York City has changed dramatically since Keith Haring and Juan Dubose composed their radiant, day-glow mural on the North East corner in the summer of 1982. As Haring recalled in 1989:

“It was pretty disgusting, rat infested, almost a garbage dump, and an eyesore in a neighborhood where an eyesore wasn’t a problem. [It] was a desolate area to begin with, so we decided that we didn’t have to ask permission because the wall was covered with garbage and we thought that if we cleaned up the garbage then no one was going to ask us whether we had permission to paint it.”

Today by contrast, the area is quite clean, home to urban gentry; the vacant, and decaying buildings of the Lower East Side are now world-class luxury apartment buildings, and five-star hotels. This May the building (home to a Whole Foods Market as well as a Y and apartments that rent from $3,000 to $6,000 per month) adjacent to the site of Haring’s 1982 mural sold for nearly $400 million.

During the 1970s and 80s, the wall on the North East corner of Houston and Bowery was an irresistible canvas for illicit graffiti writers, a “highly contentious graf spot,” according to Luna Park because of its high visibility along a heavily travelled thoroughfare. In 1984 developer and real-estate mogul Tony Goldman acquired the site along with other properties in the area, which he intended to renovate and convert into residential lofts, replicating the gentrification of SoHo and TriBeCa in the 1970s. Goldman has since used the wall to present top contemporary artists from around the world; the inaugural mural was a reproduction of Keith Haring’s 1982 mural, which was completed in 2008 on the artist’s fiftieth birthday. The wall is now a revolving public art installation, which Goldman Properties hopes will spearhead “many a renaissance, forwarding movements of its own accord.”

“While we’re enjoying these murals it’s important to keep in mind their hidden subtext,” historian Jeremiah Moss tell us; that is their “transformative role in the Bowery’s conversion from Skid Row to intentionally created ‘art district’ to high-end consumer playground.” It is true that the art world has historically been a catalyst of urban gentrification, and public art, perhaps more subtly than high-end art galleries, has contributed to this process; but as we’ve seen with the case of the Mission School, public art can critique inequitable urban change as well. While the Houston and Bowery murals are legal and commissioned art works, artists have used this space to produce art imbued with radical political and social messages drawing from the site’s history as an illegal graffiti magnet.

Shepard Fairey, courtesy of Matthew Kraus via Flickr

Produced in the spring of 2010, Shepard Fairey’s May Day Mural is one of the most explicitly political pieces in the history of Houston and Bowery. Fairey, who is famous for his Obey Giant  anti-establishment campaign, which includes graffiti posters, stickers, and traditional tags, began his street art career in Lower Manhattan during the 1990s. “Haring…was a big inspiration for me,” said Fairey remembering his days tagging in TriBeCa, SoHo, and Bowery, “I’ve done illegal work on this little nook around the corner from this wall.” From the beginning, illegality has been an essential element of Fairey’s work, but the commission on Houston and Bowery has enabled him to expand the scope of his art, from stickers, posters, and tags to the entire wall of a building; “I could never do a wall this size illegally, its impossible.” The mural is nonetheless poignantly political, expressing the artist’s “frustration with the two party [political] system” in America, economic and social equality, as well as his concerns for global warming. It reflects “what’s going on politically,” Fairey said in an interview with Wooster Collective, about “how we’re reshaping America into what we want, or how other forces are shaping it into something we don’t want.”

In August 2010, following Fairey directly, Goldman Properties commissioned Barry McGee, the Mission School artist also known by his graffiti tag “Twist,” to decorate the Houston Bowery wall. Like Fairey, McGee’s mural was political, reproducing the tags of historic graffiti writers, many of whom, like “the Wiz” and Dash Snow “Sace,” produced their graffiti illegally on New York City subway trains during the 1970s and 80s. McGee’s homage to the history of political graffiti venerates the heroes — and heroines — of the street art world through a raw, traditional tag aesthetic, which McGee considers more visually abrasive, and thereby more political than most pictorial street art today.

Courtesy of Matthew Kraus via Flickr

In May 2014, Fernando Carlo, known by his tag “COPE2,” began a mural that celebrated the history of graffiti much like McGee’s work, but with Wildstyle tags and bubble letters, rather than stripped signatures, recalling a particular style of graffiti in New York during the late 1970s when it was indeed “wild.” The Houston and Bowery location is the “best wall in New York City. Most walls are ruined now,” said COPE2, perhaps commenting on the destruction of 5 Pointz this last year. COPE2’s mural also features a tag from INDIE 184, one of the few female graffiti artists in a historically male-dominated subculture.

COPE2 courtesy of Ryan Purcell

In all, the Houston-Bowery murals demonstrate how legal, commissioned public art can be subversive, ironically critiquing their own role in the process of urban gentrification. The value for political artists in such a position, however, is the added financial support behind their art, i.e. a commission from a wealthy investor like Goldman Properties, as well the immense exposure the artist, and idea in the art gain from being in a highly visible, heavily travelled intersection of New York City. “It’s not only a tribute to Haring and others being brave enough to push against the traditions of the art world and create a new valid form of expression,” said Grand Life Magazine, “but it’s continuing on an important local tradition that does enhance the neighborhood. The only glaring difference is that the artists haven’t had to mask their identities and work stealthily at night, afraid to be arrested for their vision.”

While the definition of “enhance” in this instance is contestable — as Houston and Bowery is an exclusive home of urban gentry — the murals have amplified the voices of political artists who continue to fight for social equality through subversive art.

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Ryan D. Purcell (@RyanDPurcell) holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York.

Featured image courtesy of [Matthew Kraus via Flickr] 

Ryan Purcell

Ryan D. Purcell holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York. Contact Ryan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Houston-Bowery Murals Mix Public Commissions and Subversive Artistry appeared first on Law Street.

Currently on view at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery, “Energy That is All Around: Mission School,” features a group of subversive San Francisco street artists from the late-1990s. Emanating from San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), the Mission School was a direct reaction to gentrification in the Bay Area spurred by the dot-com boom that brought an influx of young professionals, upscale boutiques, restaurants, inflated rents, and threats of eviction to the primarily working-class Latino families of San Francisco’s Mission District.

“A lot of people were displaced,” said artist Chris Johnson, “everybody got fucked over.” The art of the Mission School focused on the social, political, cultural and economic aspects of everyday life in the Bay Area during this period, embodying a radical activism railing against gentrification and rampant consumerism. “They were part of a community that responded acidly to the social and aesthetic values associated with ’80s consumer culture and corporate hegemony in the dawning of the age of the internet,” said Natasha Boas, a San Francisco-based independent curator. “With their raw, immediate, and gritty street and studio practices, these post-punk, key artists of the Mission School would soon [become] international icons for new generations of art students and makers.”

The artists — Chris Johanson, Margaret Kilgallen, Alicia McCarthy, Barry McGee, Ruby Neri — share a similar aesthetic, described by McCarthy as “urban decay,” “graffiti-based,” and “Do-it-yourself.” The art is informed by lowbrow visual culture including cartoons, billboard advertisements, graffiti, and folk art. According to Lynn Gumpert, director of NYU’s Grey Art Gallery, the artworks critique society “literally standing our culture’s notion of ‘high art’ on its head.” Often employing found objects and dumpster diving for materials, their art is bound by an “anti-establishment” and “anti-capitalist” ethos, according to art critic and curator Dian Pugh whose essay ”Off The Tracks: Ethics and Aesthetics of Recent San Francisco Art” is featured in the exhibit catalogue. “Juxtaposed against the dot-com boom culture, these artists represented the moral and political voice of our cultural community — a community that was being threatened by gentrification.”

Like a modern-day John Sloan or George Bellows, Chris Johanson refers to his art as “documentary painting;” streetscapes chronicling everyday life at the dawn of the digital age. The Survivalists (1999) is a jarring installation among the pieces in the show. Flimsy wooden beams painted yellow protrude from panels on the wall, forming catwalks on which lonely consumers push shopping carts toward the viewer, perhaps conveying the alienation of labor in capitalist society. Speech bubbles from multiple figures in the panels read: “Get out of the Mission,” “Yuppies Out Now,” “Turn the building into condos,” “For Sale: Cozy One Bedroom Basement Condo, $300,000,” “Theres [sic.] no place to stay…keep on moving.”  As a whole, the scene is too much to take in at once; only after reading each panel does the larger picture come into focus. “When people see this piece, they see the social anxiety,” said Chris Johanson. “I wanted to share the complexities of the socio-economic situation that everyone just had to deal with.” Voices are illustrated in a cacophonous and vexing exchange. It’s a “celebration of multiplicity,” said Dina Pugh, “that earnestly comments on existential issues of human identity comprised by consumer culture.”

Graffiti is a galvanizing force in each piece of this show. Barry McGee, also known by his tag “Twist,” presents a more cartoon-inspired aesthetic than Johansen, which is nonetheless political. “Growing up I used to see a group of activists, the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), who would spray-paint aggressive statements on Bank of America, government buildings, and freeway underpasses,” McGee recalled in a 2004 interview. “They shed light on atrocities being committed by the Reagan Administration’s policies in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Cuba and so on. I like that — the rawness of it.” McGee’s squat, droopy-eyed cartoon and seemingly depressed cartoon figures reflect the underside of inequitable urban change; not only the exasperated slaving masses, but also perhaps homeless, downtrodden vagabonds.

At Grey Art Gallery, the first East Coast venue to showcase the Mission School, this show is not only historically significant; it’s also relevant, according to Hi-Fructose citing “siliconvalleyization” of the Bay Area. Yet what is so striking is that the same process is currently taking place in New York City; rapid gentrification, from the city center to the periphery. Looking at the Mission District of the late-1990s, one cannot help but think of Bushwick, Brooklyn today. Both neighborhoods were inhabited by primarily working-class Latino families who, over time, have been priced out of their homes; factory buildings have been converted into artists’ lofts, and bodegas have become high-end boutiques. Public art can exacerbate the rate of gentrification, transforming working-class communities into trendy neighborhoods to which hipsters flock. But it has the potential to counter this affect as well, as Art Practical mentioned in its review of the NYU show, “there are still lessons to be learned here.”

According to Barry McGee, the landscape of contemporary public art is politically benign. “The stuff people do now doesn’t antagonize anyone at all. It has become like the mural art, which is fine in its own right but doesn’t anger people when they see it…[T]here was a time in graffiti when it was fun to do images. In hindsight, it opened the floodgates to tons of terrible art school graffiti and non-abrasive images.” McGee now advocates illicit “fundamental graffiti acts” such as tags and throw-ups, which, precisely because of their illegality, have the potential to affect social change. In such a way, the Mission School teaches us to produce graffiti as a “social practice” based on “radical pessimism” about the social environment.

The takeaway message from “Energy That is All Around: Mission School” is that art not only documents, but also has the potential it change society. And that power is open to the people.

You can see the exhibit “Energy That is All Around: Mission School” featuring artwork by Chris Johanson, Margaret Kilgallen, Alicia McCarthy, Barry McGee, and Ruby Neri at the Grey Art Gallery, New York University, 100 Washington Square East, New York, NY 10003. The exhibit is open until July 13, 2014.

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Ryan D. Purcell (@RyanDPurcell) holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York.

Featured image courtesy of [victorgrigas via wikipedia] 

Ryan Purcell

Ryan D. Purcell holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York. Contact Ryan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Subversive San Francisco Street Art on Display at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery appeared first on Law Street.

“According to the mural, soccer is the opium of the masses, the bread and circuses of today’s Brazil: let them eat football!”
-The Guardian

On Thursday, June 12, 2014 police clad in riot gear and wielding clubs fired tear gas, rubber bullets, and noise bombs into crowds of protesters in São Paulo, about 10 km away from the Corinthians arena where the first game of the 2014 FIFA World Cup took place. Six people were injured, and three protesters arrested. This is only a sample of the protests surrounding the soccer tournament over the past year. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, the country’s first female leader of the so-called Workers’ Party, has subsequently deployed 100,000 police and 57,000 military to guard stadiums, teams’ hotels, and training grounds for the duration of the World Cup.

Such incendiary scenes of social protest in Brazil might conjure images of France in 1789 at the eve of revolution. Parallels abound: the people demand basic services in a grossly unequal society, and their government responds flippantly with gestures of added luxury for the wealthy; ‘Let them Eat Football.’ Brazil hosts the FIFA World Cup at an estimated cost of $11.5 billion in preparations, dolled out from public coffers, not to mention the lives of eight workers who died while constructing grandiose stadiums across the country. The expenditures for the most expensive World Cup in history are well documented (here, here and here) as are the nefarious practices of FIFA (here and here); an additional $12 billion is being spent on projects to host the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio De Janeiro. Meanwhile, the Brazilian people lack basic healthcare services, affordable public transportation and education, adequate housing and security, while suffering from trenchant institutionalized racial and economic discrimination.

According to President Rousseff, anti-FIFA demonstrations across the county are part of a “systemic campaign” against the Brazilian government, yet protesters do not see their plight as one isolated to the country. “The crisis is worldwide,” an anonymous member of the Brazilian anarchist Black Bloc group told the Global Post. “People are seeing that representative democracy doesn’t represent anyone — here in Brazil, in London, in Greece or anywhere.” And political graffiti is the undercurrent of this global cacophony of dissent.

Graffiti that reads “FIFA go home” or “Fuck the World Cup” have appeared on walls from São Paul to Rio De Janeiro, distilling the disdain of the Brazilian people into iconic slogans that they repeat during protests. Murals that celebrate the World Cup have been vandalized; a mural in Rio de Janeiro depicting Neymar da Silva Santos was painted over so the figure wore a hood used iconically by the anarchist Black Bloc. The most pervasive political graffiti, however, are murals that explicitly illustrate the concerns of protesters: One piece by Brazilian artist Cranio depicts a man flushing money down the toilet bowl; in another, the 2014 World Cup mascot points a rifle at a message that reads, ‘We Want Education’ and ‘Not Repression’. Protests iterated at demonstrations physically are thus represented on walls throughout the country.

“People already have the feeling and that image condensed this feeling,” São Paulo-based graffiti artist Paulo Ito told Slate in May when photos of his mural in Rio de Janeiro began circulating through social media. The piece shows a weeping, emaciated Brazilian boy, fork and knife in hand, being served a football on a silver plate. “The message of this painting is powerful,” the Guardian interpreted. “Amid the sporting hysteria, poverty not only goes on, but the lives of the marginalized have arguably been made worse.” The image has since gone viral accumulating 3,310 likes and 4,749 shares on Ito’s Facebook account alone; on the popular Facebook page TV Revolta it has been shared and liked more than 40,000 times. Graffiti is a “good way to expose the country’s problems,” Paulo Ito explained. “If the government doesn’t want to expose these things it’s because they feel ashamed. If they feel ashamed by this they might take it more seriously – at least, that’s our intention.”

Artists B. Shanti and A. Signl of Captain Broderline, an international graffiti collective that was outlawed in Egypt last year, share this aim, producing their own political art in Brazil. “We just want to support the people on the street and give them like a voice that when all the people come here and look at the nice World Cup they also see the resistance movement.” Their mural, organized with Amnesty International Brazil, stands across from a police headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, displaying construction shovels attached to a giant soccer ball demolishing favelas along a regal red carpet — it is dedicated to all Brazilians evicted during the preparations of the World Cup.

But can such graffiti be harbingers of revolution? “Look at these images from far enough back – from the point of view of world television, with its cameras aimed at the football pitch – and they become a sideshow to the spectacle in the stadiums,” said Jonathon Jones in the Guardian. “But perhaps this is one of those moments when the images break open, the dreams and nightmares of society spill from fantasy into reality, and the hungry kid gets fed. In that case, these paintings will become icons of a revolution started by sport. It is, however, more likely they are simply adding a bit of a sting to the usual, overfamiliar opiate.” In the case of Brazil, we cannot hold up graffiti’s illegality as an indication of its political effectiveness. Graffiti has been legal in Rio de Janeiro since 2009, when the Brazilian government passed Law 706/07; today, artists can mark public buildings, including columns, walls, and construction siding, as well as private property if done with the consent of the owners. As compared to Egypt, where the government has banned political graffiti, Brazil has a relatively liberal policy regarding street art, and why not? — public art has been statistically proven to increase the value of real estate.

There is, however, definite political meaning in the graffiti critiquing the government and the World Cup; and what is more significant, in my opinion, is the solidarity that this graffiti has given to the disparate protests in Brazil. All voices rally behind the slogans echoed by the graffiti in the street — eg, “FIFA go home.” The inclusion of international graffiti collectives like Captain Borderline, moreover, aligns Brazilian dissidents with those around the world. Allusions to the French Revolution are not overstated. “When people go on the street and create pressure they become political actors,” said an anonymous Brazilian anarchist, this “new generation is very radical.” And graffiti plays a fundamental role in making it so.

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Ryan D. Purcell (@RyanDPurcell) holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York.

Featured image courtesy of [Jordi Bernabeu Farrus via Flickr]

Ryan Purcell

Ryan D. Purcell holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York. Contact Ryan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post World Cup Brazil: ‘Let Them Eat Football!’ appeared first on Law Street.

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi won the Egyptian presidential election last Wednesday with 96 percent of the vote, according to Aljazeera. This landslide comes as no surprise, since Egypt’s largest media outlets — namely Egypt’s largest state-owned newspaper, Al Gomhuria, and Al Kahera Wal Nas TV Network — have backed El-Sisi since July 2013 when, as Minister of Defense, he led the ousting of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi. Nonetheless, El-Sisi’s election does not change much in Egypt as repressive authoritarian policies, instituted after the ousting of Morsi, continue to plague the Egyptian people.

One measure, proposed in November 2013, banned “abusive graffiti” on buildings in Egypt, and organized government committees in cities to monitor political street art. Violators could end up with four years in prison or EGP 100,000 in fines, according to Egyptian Independent. On the road to Democracy, El-Sisi has promised to restore stability to the State, vowing to “care for the interests of the people,” and build a stronger Egypt. Apparently this means arresting and executing political dissidents, maintaining a tight state-propaganda machine, and setting loose the military as a police force among the Egyptian people. But banning graffiti?

Since 2011, protests swelled into riots that would topple former President Hosni Mubarak, Egyptian graffiti has surged. “Almost every event that happened was mirrored on the streets with art,” according to Basama Hamdy, co-author Walls of Freedom, which chronicles the rise of political graffiti since January 25, 2011. It was the “people’s newspaper,” said Hamdy, with a subversive edge. “Some messages were really dangerous,” said co-author and German graffiti artist Don “Stone” Karl, “they told stories that the state, the military or the police wanted to cover up…Graffiti was never more powerful as it is in Egypt today…Where have you seen mothers cry in front of the graffiti murals of their sons? Where have you seen men pray in front of the portraits of their friends?” Graffiti art has since become a devisive political weapon, and a key target for El-Sisi’s repressive regime.

Graffiti artist Mohamed Fahmy, who goes by the name Ganzeer, is the face of El-Sisi’s recent crackdown on political graffiti. On May 9, 2014, Egyptian news anchor Osama Kamal on his show Al Raees Wel Nas (“The President and The People”) labeled the artist a “terrorist” supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood. This is a serious accusation since the El-Sisi regime sentenced ten Muslim Brotherhood supporters to death last Saturday for inciting violence and political protest. Ganzeer, who was arrested for this political art in 2011, is now in hiding, although he and his cohorts, Finnish street artist Sampsa and the German-based art collective Captain Borderline, refuse to be silenced. In the summer of 2013, Sampsa and Ganzeer collaborated on a poster critiquing aggressive military crackdowns ordered by El-Sisi, then Minister of Defense; “The Army Above All” depicts a bloodthirsty soldier standing triumphant.

“Ganzeer” courtesy of Gigi Ibrahim via Flickr

Sampsa and Ganzeer have used social media, particularly the hashtag #SisiWarCrimes, to publicize their graffiti and call attention to military abuses. On August 14, 2013, news broke of the worst mass killing in modern Egyptian history, during the military suppression of encampments of pro-Morsi supporters. “We sat watching YouTube clips of Egyptians getting murdered,” Sampsa recalled. “What Sisi needs to begin to understand is that a larger audience is now watching his every move.”

Egyptian street artists like Ganzeer and Sampsa see “a clear progression in Sisi’s silencing of opposition from the NGOs, the Muslim Brotherhood, the youth movement, non-compliant journalists,” writes Bob Duggan of Bigthink.com, “and now, at the bottom of the food chain, street artists.” It is a disgrace that artists would be targeted in such a “Stalin-ish way,” Sampsa exclaimed. “This is the democracy that Sisi is offering in Egypt — absolute rule — absolute oppression of dissent.” In a blog post responding to the recent defamation, Ganzeer sees political graffiti as a source of information to the State, rather than a threat: “By paying attention to what we do, perhaps the State can better understand popular grievances and adjust its policies and governance accordingly, rather than invest so many resources into trying to shut us up.”

As El-Sisi assumes the presidency, though, we can expect more of the same repressive tactics used against the Egyptian people; the military will continue to arrest, and execute political dissidents, while State propaganda will discredit and censor contrarian voices in media. It is much more difficult, however, to control the decentralized protest of graffiti artists. “People forget that the streets belong to the people,” said Ganzeer in an interview with the Christian Science Monitor. “They think that they’re some kind of official government-controlled entity. I think it’s important to remind people that they’re not.” Going forward, political graffiti will remain a voice of democracy in Egypt.

Ryan Purcell

Ryan D. Purcell holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York. Contact Ryan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Defining Egyptian Democracy Through Graffiti appeared first on Law Street.

This weekend marked the eighth annual Bushwick Open Studios (BOS), a local arts festival in Brooklyn, NY. BOS has become an annual summer festival, growing in size and intensity since volunteers formed Arts in Bushwick, a non-hierarchical council of artists and community members in 2007. The event now encompasses five districts (nearly 600 venues), featuring open air concerts, food trucks, and even community garden initiatives. According to Arts in Bushwick, BOS has become “one of the largest open studio events in the world,” which I am nearly inclined to believe.

Last summer was my first Open Studios experience, and while I was not wholly impressed with the art, I was overwhelmed by the event as a community-oriented phenomenon. BOS 2013 coincided with numerous local block parties, hosted by working-class Hispanic families who welcomed me with free food and drink; it was an altogether heartwarming experience. This year, while there very well may have been neighborhood block parties, BOS was much different. I surveyed the scene on Sunday, accompanied by my partner, Amy Lucker, an art librarian, and Lee Mandel, the founding manager of Boswyck Farms, an urban farm based in Bushwick. Amy and Lee, who both served on the inaugural Arts in Bushwick council in 2007, were astounded by how large BOS had grown. “Can you believe this is Troutman Street?” Lee asked rhetorically as we navigated through the crowds of spectators, painted burlesque dancers on stilts, food vendors, and blaring concert stages. “When I moved here, this was a street you did not walk down alone.” We continued down St. Nicholas Avenue, stopping to notice a restaurant that opened that week on a site that was once a car dealership and mechanic warehouse. Bushwick is changing rapidly, we concurred; even I, who was new to the area, recognized the new boutiques, galleries, restaurants, cafes, and bars opening in the neighborhood.

It is no secret that the incursion of the “creative class” spurs gentrification. Since Lee moved to Bushwick in 2006, rent has almost tripled. Ten years ago, a two-bedroom apartment priced at $1,100 a month would have been expensive in Bushwick, according to Diana Reyna, who represented the 34th District (Williamsburg, Bushwick, and Ridgewood) on the New York City Council from 2001 to 2013. “Today we’re talking about people who are charging $3,000.” In 2011 alone, the average monthly rent for a studio apartment in Bushwick increased 27 percent, according to MNS, a residential and investment sales brokerage. Average monthly rents for one- and two-bedroom apartments have also increased commensurately. With the exponential rise in rent and cost of living it is becoming more and more difficult for working-class communities to raise families in Bushwick; it is no wonder then that I could not find bock parties at BOS 2014 as I did the year before. What is more concerning, though, is that from 2000 to 2010, the number of white residents in Bushwick has nearly doubled. “There is a lot of anxiety about the pace at which Bushwick is changing,” said Deborah Brown, an artist who served on the local community board in 2013. “It’s been faster than I could imagine.”

Beneath the surface of BOS 2014 — or rather on the surface— however, a voice of opposition raged. We noticed stenciled tags on the sidewalks throughout Bushwick, messages that critiqued the gentrification of the area.

Courtesy of Ryan Purcell

Courtesy of Ryan Purcell

The tags were strategically placed: two tags read “Build Community Not Condos” outside of a newly renovated apartment building and next to a low-income housing unit along Maria Hernandez Park; “increase in minimum wage = increase in living wage” outside a new health foods store.

Courtesy of Ryan Purcell

Courtesy of Ryan Purcell

The tags were targeted at specific indicators of gentrification, like new cafés, restaurants, and luxury apartment buildings, and the messages seem to have come from victims of gentrification. “Which is more criminal,” asked Lee, “these illegal tags, or the trash next to them on the sidewalk?” Amid Bushwick Open Studios these subversive tags challenge culture authority, asking tersely “Art For Whom?”

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Ryan D. Purcell (@RyanDPurcell) holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York.

Featured image courtesy of [Ryan D. Purcell].

Ryan Purcell

Ryan D. Purcell holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York. Contact Ryan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post ‘Art for Whom?’: Bushwick Open Studios 2014 appeared first on Law Street.

“I have a confession to make,” Patti Smith said on a dimly lit stage, “I am Banksy.”

On May 19 2014, the ‘godmother’ of punk rock presented the Webby Award Person of the Year to Banksy, the street artist, activist, and all around prankster, who in October 2013 took New York by force in a month-long residency engaging the city with tags and stunts. The eighteenth annual ceremony took place at Cipriani Wall Street (once home to the New York Stock Exchange, and headquarters to the National City Bank), celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Internet, honoring “excellence on the internet” – a distinction that becomes evermore dubious in America post net-neutrality. The elusive street artist did not make an appearance of course, but he did issue a video response summarizing his month in New York. In October 2013, the video begins, Banksy became New York City’s Artist in Residence, “an honor so prestigious he made it up and awarded it to himself.”

The month-long tour began October 1, 2013 when the artist vowed to produce a new piece of work every day somewhere in the city. Banksy’s website named the residency “Better Out Than In,” which, as Roberta Smith of the New York Times pointed out, “may seem to elevate the streets and the outsider artist above insiders and their pristine galleries, but it is also a crude British version of ‘gesundheit,’ except for expulsions other than sneezes.” The name evokes the playfulness of Banksy’s aesthetic, which he sometimes uses to convey stark political messages. “This British graffiti artist, purported millionaire, activist, filmmaker and prankster spent the last month roaming the city,” Smith continued, “perpetuating what is — depending upon your point of view — street art, political resistance or vandalism.” Banksy’s art was a social experiment, “using the city as a rat maze into which he dropped different kinds of bait to see how New Yorkers would react.”

What type of political graffiti? For starters, “The Sirens of the Lambs,” was an obvious critique of the meat processing industry; the piece consisted of a delivery truck overflowing with adorable animated heads of sheep and cows, screeching to the public on their way to the slaughterhouse — appropriately driving through Manhattan’s Meat Packing District.

carnegenyc via Flickr

On October 4, the artist made a traditional spay-paint tag in Bushwick, “OCCUPY! The Musical;” another tag he produced on October 23 read, “Today’s art has been cancelled due to police activity.” On October 16, Banksy staged a performance piece where a dirty young man shined the shoes of a Ronald McDonald statue, which frowned down at the wastrel. The piece critiqued the low wages in the fast food industry, and even drew complaints from the passersby for the working rights of the performer.

the cardinal de la ville via Wikipedia

My favorite piece, however, was a stall that Banksy set up selling original artworks. The art would have totaled half a million dollars; however, “without any of the art hype,” Banky’s recent video explains, “the results — a total take of $420.”

If Banksy’s residency was a series of “social experiments” as Roberta Smith interpreted, what do they tell us about New York — about America? Banksy points out obvious yet controversial social issues such as the ethics of animal slaughterhouses, and wage-slavery of fast food service, but he does so with subtle ironic playfulness, making his art appealing to a popular audience. Banksy invites public interaction, and in doing som discussion of the issues he presents, which I think is the prime value of his dada-esque confluence of political prank and art. The public responded resoundingly to Bansky’s New York odyssey; in October 350,000 people followed Banksy’s Instagram account and spread photos of his art further on Foursquare, Tumblr, Vine, YouTube, and Twitter, where #banksy was used more than 38,000 times during the month. Ultimately, Banksy has demonstrated how social media influences our daily lives, shaping social and political discussions; he presents the intrinsic value of public space, both physical and virtual, as a space for political and social dialogue. As transnational private wealth continues to conquer the public sphere, Banksy ever more so stands out as a beacon of public resistance.

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Ryan D. Purcell (@RyanDPurcell) holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York.

Featured image courtesy of [Infrogmation via Wikipedia]

Ryan Purcell

Ryan D. Purcell holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York. Contact Ryan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post What did we Learn from Banksy? appeared first on Law Street.

Julian Castro has long been promoted as one of the rising celebrities of the Democratic party. Formerly the Mayor of San Antonio, now the Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, his name has definitely been floated by those who are familiar with the who’s who of the Democratic party, but hasn’t quite hit the national stage yet. It leads to a lot of questions: who is Julian Castro? How did he end up leading the Department of Housing and Urban Development? And what is that department doing under his leadership?

How did Castro become HUD secretary?

On Friday May 23, 2014, President Obama nominated Mayor of San Antonio Julián Castro to replace Shaun Donovan as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Donovan, who had held the post since January 2009, became Secretary of the Office of Management and Budget, as Sylvia Matthew Burnwell moved on to head the Department of Health and Human Services, a position from which Secretary Kathleen Sebelius had recently resigned following the botched roll-out of HealthCare.gov. Julián Castro, 39, who had served three terms as Mayor of San Antonio,  faced the daunting Senate confirmation process and passed. Castro is the second former Mayor of San Antonio to direct HUD, after Henry Cisneros who was appointed by Bill Clinton in 1993.

Catro’s Qualifications

Since declining President Obama’s offer to lead the Department of Transportation in 2012, the top HUD job became a prime opportunity for Castro to gain national-policy experience. And as a Latino on the national stage, Castro could potentially appeal to a growing Hispanic voting base, shoring up the Latino vote for Democrats in future elections. “Having his understanding of the needs of the Hispanic community—having a cultural affinity about that—will lend quite a bit of depth to his policy and understanding of the role,” said Javier Palomarez, CEO of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Indeed HUD plays an increasingly vital role for underrepresented populations, as Latinos and the black community continue to bear the brunt of inequitable urban ‘revitalization’ across America. “We are in a century of cities,” Mayor Castro explained on Friday May 23, following the announcement of his nomination. “America’s cities are growing again and housing is at the top of the agenda.” He vowed to “do housing right,” implying a change from previous HUD policies, which primarily entailed large grants to cities spawning private investment and exorbitant costs of living without protections for the poor.

Castro’s track record is good, but not without blemishes. One instance of ‘revitalization’ in San Antonio under the Castro administration took place in the city’s historically impoverished Eastside neighborhood, once the heart of the city’s black community. In 2012 Castro successfully wrangled a $30 million HUD grant with which he demolished the Wheatly Courts Public Housing Project, and redeveloped the area for moderate-income families and market-rate households. With renovation costs exceeding $1 million, the program didn’t adhere to the affordability requirements. In January 2014, President Obama subsequently selected San Antonio’s Eastside as one of his first five anti-poverty “Promise Zones.”

Similarly, through city fee wavers and tax abatements, Castro revitalized San Antonio’s downtown district, drawing 11.5 million visitors and generating $3.1 billion annually. Since 2010, developers have completed or are building 2,700 housing units within five square miles in the downtown area, though few low-income families could afford such prime real estate and have been subsequently pushed to periphery of the city center. Indeed, San Antonio ranks forty-second in City Lab’s report of the most gentrified cities in America, and seven percent of San Antonio’s low-price tracts have been gentrified over the last year.

What were the concerns over Castro’s nomination?

Aside from Castro’s history of questionable urban policy, he lacked actual executive leadership experience. Unlike the strong-mayor governments of Chicago or New York, San Antonio’s is a council-manager system: a council is elected to serve as legislative branch and it appoints a manager to serve as the executive who has the authority to execute laws and the administration of the city government. The Mayoralty is merely a ceremonial post, a figurehead, and has no real power over the council. Castro was elected to city council in 2001 at the age of 26–the youngest in history–serving two consecutive terms. During his tenure on the city council, he successfully curbed urban sprawl by defeating plans for a PGA-approved golf coarse and suburban development outside the city in 2005; he has no executive experience in the city government, though, which could be problematic.

Castro did a “fantastic job” revitalizing San Antonio by “planning thousands of housing units downtown, attracting hundreds of millions of dollars of investment,” President Obama reasoned during his announcement of Castro’s appointment. In reality, though, Castro’s mayoral tenure was less than laudable, specifically pertaining to the urban minorities whom he supposedly seeks to help. In 2008, congress approved an $8.6 million HUD grant to San Antonio as part of the National Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) as a means to ameliorate the escalating rate of foreclosures at the height of the 2008 financial crisis. With the grant, the program stipulated, cities must buy, refurbish, and resell homes left vacant after eviction; a 2012 HUD Inspector General report concluded, however, that between 2009 and 2011, $1.1 million was allocated to houses that were then sold at market-rate and not reserved for low-income families as the HUD program demanded. It is fair to say that the HUD grant package was awarded before Castro came to office, but the infections to the program nonetheless took place under his leadership.

So, how has the HUD fared under Castro?

So far, so good, but given that Castro has only been in the job a few months, there’s still a lot that needs to happen before anything resembling a final judgment can be made. However, Castro and his administration have absolutely had notable success–for example, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) is no longer in debt after the severe problems it experienced during the 2008 financial crisis. Although that won’t automatically lower loans for people seeking them from the FHA, it’s certainly a step in the right direction. Overhauling struggling institutions like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have also taken top priority for Castro. Overall, it seems like he’s finding his place at HUD.

Conclusion

Calling Castro a rising Democratic star probably isn’t too far from the truth, but it’s still tough to predict who will fight their way onto the political landscape in years to come. After all, President Obama’s rise was almost meteoric–most people did not know who he was just a few years before he accepted the nomination for President from the Democratic Party. Whether or not Castro will end up living up to his potential can only be told by time.

Resources

Primary 

Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland: Gentrification and Financial Health Report 2013

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development: Office of Inspector General, Memorandum NO: 2012-FW1804

White House: President Obama Nominates Julián Castro as Next HUD Secretary, and Shaun Donovan as OMB Director

Additional

Latin Post: Julián Castro HUD Secretary Nomination Endorsed by National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals

Inman: National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals backs Julián Castro to lead HUD

Bloomberg: Castro Move to HUD Sets Up Possible VP Selection in 2016

Politico: For Julián Castro, Plenty of Challenges at HUD

Texas Monthly: Alamo Heights

Politico: Julián Castro’s San Antonio Misused HUD money

Washington Post: Julián Castro Nominated as HUD secretary

Monitor: Commentary: Should Julián Castro Go to DC to Head HUD?

New Republic: Why Would Obama Put a Rising Democratic Star Into a Cabinet Backwater?

CityLab: Why Julián Castro’s Record as a Mayor of San Antonio Doesn’t Necessarily Tell Us Much About Hist Future at HUD 

NPR: Obama Taps San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro For HUD Secretary

LA Times: Obama Picks San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro to be Housing Secretary

Washington Examiner: Barack Obama Names Julián Castro for HUD, Shaun Donovan for OMB

Washington Examiner: If Chosen For HUD, Julian Castro’s Work, Big Payday Could Face Scrutiny

Ryan Purcell

Ryan D. Purcell holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York. Contact Ryan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Is Julian Castro’s National Democratic Star Still on the Rise? appeared first on Law Street.

“Spray a square around the tag and then fill it in.”

This is a new anti-graffiti tactic described in the latest NYPD internal directive issued May 2, 2014. Police officers now carry black, red, and white aerosol spray paint with orders to photograph graffiti, then “box it out” and paint it over “in a professional manner.” According to the directive, officers should target “identifiable tags, not large murals” such as those produced legally by the Bushwick Collective in areas such as Williamsburg and Long Island City, where the internationally famous graffiti mecca 5 Pointz was recently white-washed by developers. Graffiti patrols are currently stalking Bushwick, Brownsville, and Bedford-Stuyvesant, and the policy will be under way in all five boroughs this summer. “It’s supposed to discredit their work,” an officer said to the New York Post, “and break their manhood.” The May 2 directive is only one part of a new anti-graffiti campaign, as Police Commissioner Bill Bratton alluded to on Wednesday while speaking to reporters. “The issue of graffiti is something we will be addressing more significantly…We can’t just keep doing the same old thing all over again,” said Bratton, rationalizing the new tactic. “We need find new ways to basically make the arrest.”

Commissioner Bratton, perhaps, misinterprets graffiti though, and in doing so, his re-ignition of the “Graffiti Wars” between artists and police will cost the city millions of dollars, not to mention destroy the lives of artists whose “crime” is victimless, while diverting valuable police resources in a city where shootings have spiked seven percent over the last year.

We should read graffiti instead as political statements; or as a response to the inequities of urban development, as criminologist Jeff Ferrell argued in his 1993 landmark study of the indigenous urban art form. Ferrel saw graffiti as an “anarchistic resistance to cultural domination, a streetwise counterpoint to the increasing authority of corporate advertisers and city governments over the environments of daily life.” Moreover, graffiti was a protest against the “aggressive disenfranchisement of city kids, poor folks, and people of color from the practice of everyday life; and finally, the careful and continuous centralization of political and economic authority.” Aesthetically, it attempts to break the “hegemonic hold of corporate/government style over the urban environment.” This interpretation of graffiti is quite convincing, especially considering the rampant gentrification of Brooklyn and Queens — indeed the very neighborhoods the NYPD has chosen to deploy its new campaign.

In order to understand the antagonism between graffiti artists and police today, however, we must revisit the genesis of contemporary graffiti in the hip hop movement during the 1960s in the South Bronx, and the evolution of the city’s response to graffiti developing as cultural and political force. During the mid-1960s — at the outset of urban crisis — graffiti taggers, or writers, began signing urban surfaces such as park benches, buildings, and subway trains with marks distinct to each artist. The practice grew through the 1970s as the marks became more elaborate. New York graffiti was subsequently met with strict public policy, and police directed anti-graffiti campaigns to eradicate graffiti from the urban environment, especially on subway trains where it was particularly noticeable. Mayor John Lindsay outlawed the sale of graffiti paraphernalia in 1972; Mayor Koch militarized train yards with razor wire and attack dogs in the early 1980s and  declared vandalism a felony, sentencing offenders to community service or jailing graffiti artists at Rikers Island. The “Graffiti Wars” between artists and police persisted till the 1990s when graffiti crime tapered under the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations due to increased police enforcement of “quality of life offenses” such as the ubiquitous squeegee-men, and homelessness — a trend that paralleled the exponential gentrification of Manhattan and surrounding boroughs of the City.

If the NYPD’s May 2 directive is indicative of a new “Graffiti War,” as Bratton’s comments suggest, it will come at a great cost to the city. “This whole graffiti program is ridiculous,” one officer said. “Some of these neighborhoods are really dangerous. There should be more of a focus on serious crime.” A high-ranking officer commented to the New York Post: “Summer is right around the corner. Shootings always go up in the warmer months. This year is no exception. You can’t have officers wasting their time on graffiti taggers.” If one thing is clear from these statements, it’s that police are not happy with their new duties, and citizens should not be complacent either. The May 2 directive will divert police resources away from crime and problems that actually affect the city, and thus will cause more harm than good.

But much larger issues are at stake here. Instead of experimenting with new ways to eradicate graffiti, New York City government should spend more time addressing systemic problems that cause graffiti in the first place. If we accept Jeff Ferrel’s assertion that graffiti is a response to inequitable conditions of urban life, as I believe has been the case in New York since the 1980s, then the real problem facing the city today is not graffiti, but the structural inequities of urban development such as the alienation of lower-middle and working-class communities displaced from the rising cost of city living.

If graffiti is on the rise in New York, as Bratton would have us believe, then we should read this trend as a sign that something is terribly wrong. “We’ll be dealing with that graffiti as far as the vandalism aspect, the gangs or crews, if you will, use that to spread messages,” said Commissioner Bratton, “as a way to mark their territory.” This is a dated view of graffiti, based on unfounded analyses from the 1970s that border on racism. Do graffiti writers really “mark their territory,” as would a dog or a wild animal? Of course not. Perhaps the real problem at stake here is with the leadership of the NYPD, and the obsolete ideology that informs their tactics.

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Ryan D. Purcell (@RyanDPurcell) holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York.

Featured image courtesy of [Youngking11 via Wikipedia]

Ryan Purcell

Ryan D. Purcell holds an MA in American History from Rutgers University where he explored the intersection between hip hop graffiti writers and art collectives on the Lower East Side. His research is based on experience working with the Newark Public Arts Project and from tagging independently throughout New Jersey and New York. Contact Ryan at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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