Maine State Library Maine State Documents Academic Research and Dissertations Special Collections 2015 Anti-Establishing: Contemporary Graffiti's Contra- Community Homer Charles Arnold IDSVA Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalmaine.com/academic Recommended Citation Arnold, Homer Charles, "Anti-Establishing: Contemporary Graffiti's Contra-Community" (2015). Academic Research and Dissertations. Book 10. http://digitalmaine.com/academic/10 This Text is brought to you for free and open access by the Special Collections at Maine State Documents. It has been accepted for inclusion in Academic Research and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Maine State Documents. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ANTI-ESTABLISHING: CONTEMPORARY GRAFFITI’S CONTRA-COMMUNITY Homer Charles Arnold Submitted to the faulty of The Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy April, 2015 Accepted by the faculty of the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts in partial fulfillment of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _______________________________ Sigrid Hackenberg Ph.D. Doctoral Committee _______________________________ George Smith, Ph.D. _______________________________ Simonetta Moro, Ph.D. April 14, 2015 ii © 2015 Homer Charles Arnold ALL RIGHTS RESERVED iii It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. -Philip K. Dick Celine: “Today, I’m Angéle.” Julie: “Yesterday, it was me.” Celine: “But it’s still her.” -Céline et Julie vont en bateau - Phantom Ladies Over Paris Dedicated to my parents: Dr. and Mrs. H.S. Arnold. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author owes much thanks and appreciation to his advisor Sigrid Hackenberg, Ph.D. and his editor Doris A. Rose for their continued support during the writing and revision of this document. He also wishes to the thank his committee members, George Smith, Ph.D. and Simonetta Moro, Ph.D. for their input and critique as well. He thanks his parents and Ms. Ida Stowers for their unending support over the years, as well as his extended family. He also expresses gratitude to his close friends both in Austin Texas and in Southern California for their patience, humor, and understanding during this process. Lastly, he thanks his close friends at the Austin Yacht Club, and in particular his skipper Renee Ruais for making sure he kept sailing. v ABSTRACT Homer Charles Arnold ANTI-ESTABLISHING: CONTEMPORARY GRAFFITI’S CONTRA-COMMUNITY There is no denying contemporary graffiti’s prevalence throughout the modern landscape. Hailed or distained, the genre solidified its place in popular society through a manifold of discursive methods and ideologies. Now a global aesthetic, it compels a significant and wide range of assessments aimed at comprehending both the overarching heterogeneity that manifest throughout the counterculture as well as the larger socio-political impact made by the entirety of the genre. These analyses often establish their theories on the basis that contemporary graffiti originates as a statement of presence. Thus meaning that through a piece of graffiti, its author claims, “I am here.” This dissertation challenges that foundation, and rethinks the genre as a statement of absence that proclaims, “I was here.” Working from this provenance, I argue that absence constitutes contemporary graffiti’s ontology and underscores the entirety of the counterculture. Coupling this position with the genre’s continual diversification, this dissertation theorizes that contemporary graffiti is an anti-establishing. This means that as a socio-political aesthetic, it continually self-perpetuates its own self-negation and relies on both methodological and ideological differences so as vi to refute any attempts at totalization and subsequent unification originating from either within the counterculture or its surrounding discourses. Instead, the genre always places itself in-difference and a-part from itself and others thus cultivating relationships of contact without union with the various parties involved. Relying primarily on Jean-Luc Nancy’s radicalization of community, I demonstrate how these relationships are affirmations of his philosophy, as they constitute a community predicated on the exposition of finitude. From such an assignment, this dissertation expands what is commonly understood as contemporary graffiti practices and argues for the continued legitimization of the genre’s rebellious constitution despite its rampant appropriation by popular society. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface 1 Introduction 15 Chapter 1: I was here where you are now 36 Chapter 2: Citations 92 Chapter 3: The Non-indexical Graffiti Photograph 147 Chapter 4: Excavations and Myths 202 Chapter 5: Performing Finitude 262 Chapter 6: We are all Graffiti Writers 316 Conclusion: Long Gone 355 Bibliography 360 Notes 372 viii Preface: Train Jumping Sometime after the second plane hit the South Tower on September 11th, 2001 and sometime before my friend asked if I would keep watch one night while he and his writing crew bombed a wall, I took my first serious notice of contemporary graffiti. I was living in Baltimore at the time, attending Maryland Institute College of Art for a Post-Baccalaureate year in painting. My apartment was in a nicer part of town, near the school. But, no more than one block from my door was a poverty-stricken district full of crack addicts, drug dealers, gang bangers, and prostitutes. I know this for two reasons. One is that I wandered in there at one time looking for a Federal Union to wire some money, and the second is due to the police officer who escorted me out of the area, explaining the situation in simplistic detail. “Kids like you have no business crossing North,” he said. “You’re lucky I drove by and saw you. You could have been mugged. They don’t like people like you over there; trust me.” Maybe he was right, or maybe he was just fresh out of the academy and eager to show off his newfound sense of authority. Either way, that was the second time I ever rode in a cop car. I had never lived in a big city before, and my ignorance needed correcting. 1 Baltimore’s North Avenue runs east to west, dividing the walkup brownstones of Bolton Hill, Madison Park, and Druid Heights from the burned out brownstones of Reservoir Hill and Penn North. At certain areas along the street’s border, it can be difficult to tell the difference from where one ends and the other begins. This was my problem. I crossed at Park Avenue where, instead of being suddenly confronted with discount liquor stores, pawnshops, and a host of curious and potentially vicious looks, I saw what appeared to be a small park and a continuation of the brownstones I was accustomed to. In fact, it was not until I turned west and made it several blocks further that I began to suspect I was in the “wrong part of town.” North Avenue served another purpose for me, however. It took me from my apartment, underneath Interstate 83, to my studio building at the corner of Howard and North. MICA had only recently purchased the empty warehouse that year and was excited to have the nine of us from the Post-Bacc program be the first students to use it. We were even mentioned in the college president’s matriculation speech. That being said, while the paint was still fresh on the warehouse walls and the newly installed light fixtures where bright, we were the first wave of a gentrification that would blur that divide between privileged and poverty even more. As I understand this situation now, the corner of Howard and North is nothing like it was when I was there. 2 When I was there, it felt like a few steps across North right before the police officer pulled me into his car. Apparently, the McDonalds up the street had someone with needle tracks on their arms working the fry machine, and a week before classes started, someone had been shot on the adjacent corner. Our parking lot was gated, our door was key access only, and we had security guards patrolling the building 24 hours a day. We were definitely “on the frontier of a new beginning” as the president had stated, and it was on that frontier that I witnessed the making of a large piece that read: “Neva Loose.” Our parking lot sat between our building and another that was officially on the corner of North and Howard. It was an odd structure that had been jammed into a narrow lot, and from what I could tell, housed an oriental karaoke club, a salvage shop, and a brothel (or so it seemed as there were always very provocatively dressed ladies hanging around in front of it). The salvage shop faced Howard, and when I would walk the street’s length back across 83 to get lunch at MICA’s cafeteria, I would stop and pick through the various odds and ends for potential art supplies. The supposed brothel was upstairs, and its windows were routinely closed. As for the karaoke club, it occupied the east side of the building that our parking lot neighbored. On warm fall nights, it would open its side doors letting the sounds of badly sung American pop songs waft across on the smoke of cheap cigarettes. On the top of this building was a billboard that faced west, looking back up North and towards 83. On it was an advertisement for a new Canon digital video camera. An affluently looking white 3 couple was smiling and looking at the camera’s review screen. Beneath them the caption read: “Capture all of life’s little moments.” The unused backside of the billboard faced our studio building, and its surface was usually covered with various tags that would appear and disappear within days of each other.