On street art, the commodification of the underground, and the price of cool
This column comes via The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine from Shoreditch, where the walls are covered in art that was once rebellion and is now, increasingly, a tourist attraction with a gift shop. My other observations on the neighbourhood’s culture are at my page, written amid the murals that have become, over the years, a strange kind of asset.
The Walls That Made the Name
Shoreditch built much of its reputation on its walls, on the street art that covered them, the graffiti and murals that marked the neighbourhood as edgy, creative, underground, rebellious. This art was, in its origins, genuinely transgressive, made without permission, expressing a culture outside the mainstream, a visual rebellion that gave the neighbourhood its dangerous, creative reputation. The walls made the name, and the name drew the crowds, and the crowds changed everything.
For the art that began as rebellion has become, over the years, an attraction, a draw, a thing that brings tourists with cameras, that appears in guides published by the likes of Visit London and Time Out, that is now, in a development its originators could hardly have imagined, a selling point, a brand, an asset. The rebellion has been absorbed, commodified, turned into the very thing it once defined itself against.
The Commodification of Cool
This is the fate of all underground culture, I have come to understand, the inevitable absorption of the rebellious into the commercial, the transgressive into the mainstream, the cool into the marketable. Street art is only the most visible example, the rebellion literally on the walls, but the dynamic is everywhere in Shoreditch, the absorption of the edgy into the commercial, the conversion of the underground into a brand, the selling of rebellion at a markup.
The galleries now sell the work of artists who began on the streets, framed and priced for collectors. The murals are preserved, protected, treated as assets rather than as the ephemeral rebellion they once were. The walking tours bring tourists to admire the art that was once vandalism. The rebellion has become the product, the transgression the attraction, the cool the commodity. What was once outside the market is now thoroughly within it, and at a markup.
The Artists’ Dilemma
This puts the artists in a genuine dilemma, which I find genuinely interesting. The street artist who began in rebellion now faces a choice, to remain outside the market, pure but poor, or to enter it, compromised but compensated. The success of the neighbourhood’s art scene means that the rebellion can now be sold, that the artist can now make a living, but only by allowing their rebellion to be commodified, their transgression to become a product, their cool to be marketed.
I do not judge the artists who choose compensation over purity, who allow their work to be sold, who enter the market their work once defined itself against. The choice between pure poverty and compromised comfort is a real and difficult one, and the artist who chooses to make a living is not a sellout but a person trying to survive in a world that has decided to put a price on their rebellion. The commodification is not the artists’ fault; it is the market’s appetite, the system’s tendency to absorb and sell everything, including the things made in opposition to it.
The Authenticity Problem
The commodification raises a question about authenticity that troubles the whole neighbourhood, not just its art. Can rebellion remain rebellious once it can be bought? Can the underground remain underground once it is a tourist attraction? Can cool survive being marketed? The street art of Shoreditch suggests that the answer is complicated, that the rebellion persists in some form even as it is commodified, that the art retains some of its power even framed and priced, that authenticity and commodification can coexist, uneasily, in the same mural.
This uneasy coexistence is, perhaps, the condition of all culture in a commercial society, the perpetual tension between the authentic and the marketable, the rebellious and the absorbed. Shoreditch makes the tension visible, paints it on the walls, sells it in the galleries, but the tension is everywhere, the eternal struggle between the underground and the market that would absorb it.
The Walls Endure
The walls endure, covered in their art, which is somehow both rebellion and asset, transgression and attraction, cool and commodity. The tourists come with their cameras; the galleries sell the framed work; the rebellion persists, absorbed but not entirely erased, commodified but not entirely tamed. And the artists keep making it, on the walls and in the galleries, in rebellion and for compensation, navigating the dilemma of cool that can be bought.
The Tour and the Tourist
Nothing captures the commodification of Shoreditch rebellion quite like the street art walking tour, the organised group of tourists led through the neighbourhood to admire the art that was once illicit, photographing the murals, learning the names of the artists, treating the rebellion as a curated cultural experience. The tour transforms the transgressive into the educational, the illicit into the attraction, the rebellion into the itinerary, and the tourists, cameras ready, consume the rebellion as they would any other cultural attraction, a thing to see, photograph, and tick off the list. I watch these tours with complicated feelings, for they represent the complete absorption of the rebellion, its transformation into precisely the kind of consumable experience it once defined itself against, and yet they also represent a genuine appreciation, a real interest in the art, a desire to understand and engage with it. The tourists are not wrong to want to see the art; the art is genuinely worth seeing. But the tour, the organised consumption of the rebellion, marks the distance the art has travelled, from the illicit mark made in the night to the scheduled stop on the cultural itinerary, the rebellion now a destination, the transgression now a tour.
I walk among these walls, admiring the art that was once rebellion and is now also asset, holding the contradiction, the genuine creativity and the genuine commodification, the rebellion and its absorption. They sell the rebellion now, framed and at a markup, and the rebellion is somehow both diminished and enduring, both sold and still, in some stubborn way, transgressive. It is the strange fate of all underground culture, written on the walls of Shoreditch for anyone to read, and photograph, and, increasingly, purchase.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com
