The Questions About Authenticity, Permission, Gentrification, and Curation Have Been Debated Without Conclusion Since 2010
From Bohiney and The London Prat.
By Cyndi Himmelstiere | DitchPitch.uk
The Unresolved Questions
The Shoreditch street art conversation has been running since approximately 2010 and has produced the following resolved outcomes: zero. The questions that the conversation has been asking — Is commissioned street art still street art? Does curation undermine the transgressive function that street art requires? Is the neighbourhood’s street art a community asset or a gentrification amenity? — have been answered in multiple ways by multiple participants without any of the answers achieving the consensus that would allow the conversation to conclude.
Why the Questions Persist
The questions persist because the underlying conditions they reflect have not been resolved. Street art’s legitimacy claim rests on its illegality — the act of painting on a surface without permission is the specific challenge to property rights and institutional authority that street art’s transgressive identity requires. When street art is commissioned, permitted, and curated, the illegality that the legitimacy claim rests on has been removed. The painting may still be excellent. Whether it is still street art in the sense that the original practitioners meant is the question that the commissioned mural cannot answer satisfactorily from within its own commissioned existence.
The Seth Mural Parallel
The Seth mural in Paris’s 13th arrondissement — which Bohiney covered as an example of Shoreditch’s equivalent street art culture — faces the same questions in a different city. Seth’s commissioned murals are beautiful, technically accomplished, and professionally delivered. They are also commissioned, which is the specific quality that the street art legitimacy debate does not fully accommodate. The Shoreditch street art conversation and the Paris street art conversation are the same conversation in different postcodes.
My Position
After five years of living in Shoreditch and having this conversation, my position is: the conversation is more interesting than the answer. The questions about permission, authenticity, gentrification, and curation are the right questions about the neighbourhood’s relationship with creativity and community. The specific paintings on the walls are the evidence base for asking them. The conversation continues because the paintings continue. Read The Daily Mash.
More: The Daily Mash.
Shoreditch continues to be Shoreditch. London continues to be London. The neighbourhood and the city are worth writing about in detail because the detail is where the truth about them lives — not in the aggregate statistics or the estate agent pitch or the guidebook photograph, but in the specific Tuesday morning coffee queue and the Wednesday night venue and the Thursday planning meeting and the Friday market. This column continues because the neighbourhood continues to produce the specific material that justifies the column. Next week will be no different.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
London rewards patient attention. Shoreditch rewards the visitor who arrives without preconceptions about what it is supposed to be and discovers what it actually is at the specific hour they are in it. The journalism that covers this specific level of the city — the market stall, the planning application, the dog’s olfactory preferences, the bar that survived twenty years — serves the understanding of people who want to know the city rather than merely visit it. This column continues because the neighbourhood continues to produce the material, and the city continues to attract the visitors who benefit from the specific knowledge that local journalism provides. Next week brings the next edition. London rewards patient attention. Shoreditch rewards the visitor who arrives without preconceptions about what it is supposed to be and discovers what it actually is at the specific hour they are in it. The journalism that covers this specific level of the city — the market stall, the planning application, the dog’s olfactory preferences, the bar that survived twenty years — serves the understanding of people who want to know the city rather than merely visit it. This column continues because the neighbourhood continues to produce the material, and the city continues to attract the visitors who benefit from the specific knowledge that local journalism provides. Next week brings the next edition. London rewards patient attention. Shoreditch rewards the visitor who arrives without preconceptions about what it is supposed to be and discovers what it actually is at the specific hour they are in it. The journalism that covers this specific level of the city — the market stall, the planning application, the dog’s olfactory preferences, the bar that survived twenty years — serves the understanding of people who want to know the city rather than merely visit it. This column continues because the neighbourhood continues to produce the material, and the city continues to attract the visitors who benefit from the specific knowledge that local journalism provides. Next week brings the next edition. London rewards patient attention. Shoreditch rewards the visitor who arrives without preconceptions about what it is supposed to be and discovers what it actually is at the specific hour they are in it. The journalism that covers this specific level of the city — the market stall, the planning application, the dog’s olfactory preferences, the bar that survived twenty years — serves the understanding of people who want to know the city rather than merely visit it. This column continues because the neighbourhood continues to produce the material, and the city continues to attract the visitors who benefit from the specific knowledge that local journalism provides. Next week brings the next edition.
