It Makes Atlanta Feel Like a Real City: Biopolitical Urbanism and Public Art on the Atlanta Beltline
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Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University Institute for Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses Studies 5-9-2014 It Makes Atlanta Feel Like a Real City: Biopolitical Urbanism and Public Art on the Atlanta BeltLine Sherah Faulkner Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/wsi_theses Recommended Citation Faulkner, Sherah, "It Makes Atlanta Feel Like a Real City: Biopolitical Urbanism and Public Art on the Atlanta BeltLine." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2014. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/wsi_theses/38 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Institute for Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. IT MAKES ATLANTA FEEL LIKE A REAL CITY: BIOPOLITICAL URBANISM AND PUBLIC ART ON THE ATLANTA BELTLINE by SHERAH FAULKNER Under the Direction of Dr. Amira Jarmakani ABSTRACT Functioning as both a light rail transit project and a comprehensive redevelopment program, the Atlanta BeltLine is widely expected to impact the city of Atlanta as profoundly as did the 1996 Olympic Games. In this paper, the Atlanta BeltLine is examined as a biopolitical project and the manners in which its public arts program, Art on the Atlanta BeltLine, works to secure local consent to redevelopment are explored. INDEX WORDS: Gentrification, Biopower, Public Art, Spatial Theory, Atlanta BeltLine IT MAKES ATLANTA FEEL LIKE A REAL CITY: BIOPOLITICAL URBANISM AND PUBLIC ART ON THE ATLANTA BELTLINE by SHERAH FAULKNER A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Art in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2014 Copyright by Sherah Jade Faulkner 2014 IT MAKES ATLANTA FEEL LIKE A REAL CITY: BIOPOLITICAL URBANISM AND PUBLIC ART ON THE ATLANTA BELTLINE by SHERAH FAULKNER Committee Chair: Amira Jarmakani Committee: Susan Talburt Julie Kubala Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University May 2014 DEDICATION To Nathan Frisch, and Julie Kubala I would not have applied to graduate school without his stubborn and not always well-received encouragement or her example of what thinking and learning can be when done well. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Neither graduate school nor writing this thesis would have been plausible for me without the substantial support I have been generously offered by a number of people both in and outside of the Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies Institute. I would like to offer my sincere thanks to my committee, Susan Talburt, Julie Kubala and Amira Jarmakani, for their guidance, patience and excellent teaching. I owe Amira particular thanks; she has gone well beyond what I would consider reasonable in fostering my thesis writing process. I have benefited endlessly from her tirelessness and her willingness to engage me as both a student and a friend. I would also like to thank Andy Reisinger and Julie Kubala for helping me navigate the ins and outs of being in school, even when my approach was beyond scattered- brained. I'm afraid that Sherah-in-school can be a rather trying entity, so I also owe a great deal of thanks to several of my loved ones. This endeavor would not have been possible without the emotional and financial support given me by both of my parents. I would especially like to thank Mike Faulkner for his always helpful and incisive writing advice and Beth Wiggins for her indomitable encouragement. My siblings have endured my unusually erratic presences and absences—physical and mental—during this period with grace and I greatly appreciate their ever-consistent willingness to help me find my keys, wallet, confidence, sanity, and all the other things I misplace on a regular basis. I owe Lucas Power an incredible debt of gratitude for everything from computer loans to last minute coffee dates to endless thesis conversations that I'm sure strained his patience; he is, in my opinion, the model of a solid, supportive friend. Finally, I'm not sure that I even want to attempt to thank Nathan Frisch here—the unyielding encouragement and support he has offered me in every arena of my life over the past several years would make this a Sisyphean task and I simply don't have the words. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ..................................................................................................................... v 1 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Literature Review ........................................................................................................................ 4 1.2 Theoretical Framework ............................................................................................................. 15 2 SPACES OF SECURITY, SPACES OF DISCIPLINE AND THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF URBAN AUTHENTICY ..................................................................................................................... 24 2.1 Atlantic Station: Disciplining Urban Play ................................................................................. 27 2.2 Securing the Authentically Urban: The Milieu of the Atlanta BeltLine .................................. 33 2.3 Defining Freedom, Defining Urbanity ....................................................................................... 37 3 CRAFTING CABBYREN: THE AFFECTS AND AESTHETICS OF AN AUTHENTICALLY URBAN ENCLAVE ............................................................................................................................ 48 3.1 Street Art, Graffiti Vandalism and Other Weapons of Redevelopment .................................. 50 3.2 Securing CabbyRen ................................................................................................................... 58 3.3 Disciplining Gentrification ........................................................................................................ 65 4 PITTSBURGH PAST, PITTSBURGH FUTURE: CONFLICTS AND IMPASSES ON THE SOUTHEAST TRAIL ......................................................................................................................... 74 4.1 Pittsburgh Past, Pittsburgh Future: The (Re)development of an Affective Public .................. 79 4.2 Empowering Discipline: Preparing Pittsburgh for a Public Art Wonderland ........................ 83 4.3 “The Future is Killing Us Now” ................................................................................................ 89 REFERENCES .................................................................................................................................... 98 ENDNOTES ...................................................................................................................................... 117 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Co-Exist, Michi Meko ................................................................................................ 60 Figure 2: Co-Exist Detail .......................................................................................................... 62 Figure 3: Untitled, Labrona, OverUnder and Gawd ................................................................... 67 Figure 4: Graffiti Attributed to OverUnder ................................................................................ 68 Figure 6: Steel Fabric, Loss Prevention Collective .................................................................... 70 Figure 7: Hands Along the Rail, Lonnie Holley ......................................................................... 70 Figure 8: An Allegory of the Human City, Roti .......................................................................... 74 Figure 9: Allegory Details, Before and After Buffing ................................................................. 75 Figure 10: Couples: Reimagined, Karen Shacham and Mike Carpenter ..................................... 91 Figure 11: Couples Relocated .................................................................................................... 92 Figure 12: TiredOUT, Arseni Zeitsev & Anonymous Studio ...................................................... 93 vii 1 INTRODUCTION Despite some corruption, and considerable greed for the other man‘s vineyard, the intentions going into the messes we make are, on the whole, exemplary. —Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities1 On a cold, clear January afternoon in 2003, Atlanta millionaire turned eco-developer Charles Brewer stood against a backdrop of stilled machinery on the lot of an abandoned concrete facility and, holding a red and white electric guitar, prepared to regale a waiting crowd with song.2 The occasion was the groundbreaking ceremony for Glenwood Park, a brownfield1 redevelopment project Brewer had been inspired to undertake after reading Andres Duany‘s New Urbanist classic Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream in just one sitting. New Urbanism can be briefly described as a design movement that insists on the social and ethical values of carefully planned, beautifully landscaped and densely populated neighborhood- like developments, proffering these communitarian enclaves as antidotes to the socioeconomic and ecological