Cyndi Himmelstiere on Street Art, Permission Culture, and the Specific Relationship Between Property Development and Artistic Expression
There was a mural on the hoarding outside the Shoreditch development at the junction of Curtain Road and Paul Street that lasted approximately three weeks in February before being replaced by a rendered image of the development’s proposed exterior in the tasteful palette of warm grey and pale wood that property developers currently use to suggest that the building they are selling access to will feel different from the building they are actually building. The mural — a large-scale piece by an artist I know whose name I am not using because he is currently in negotiation with several councils about permissions and does not need a journalist making things more complicated — depicted a figure in a hard hat eating a neighbourhood and was, by the standards of Shoreditch street art, not particularly subtle about its subject matter. It lasted three weeks.
The development’s PR team responded, when asked, that the mural had been ‘inconsistent with the project’s brand values’ and had been removed ‘in consultation with relevant stakeholders,’ which means the sales director saw it and made a phone call. The hoarding now shows the warm grey building with small figures in tasteful activewear using the ground floor amenity space. The amenity space will be available to residents. The mural was available to everyone on Curtain Road for three weeks. I know which I preferred.
The Permission Economy of Street Art
Shoreditch’s street art scene exists in a specific permission economy that is increasingly legible as an economy rather than a subculture. The commissioned murals — the large-scale pieces on building ends that appear in Instagram grids and are used by estate agents as evidence of the neighbourhood’s ‘creative character’ — are legal, paid, and produced with the full cooperation of the property owners who will use them as marketing material. The unsanctioned work — the quick pieces on temporary hoardings, the stickers on junction boxes, the paste-ups on shuttered shops — is increasingly rare in the areas where enforcement is consistent and increasingly concentrated in the streets where enforcement is not. The art that gets to stay is the art that developers want there. This is not a coincidence. More street art coverage at Cyndi Himmelstiere.
SOURCE: http://prat.UK
