When Cities Apologize for Buffing Graffiti
April 30th, 2010One city’s plague is another city’s blessing.
You might have heard the news that the Melbourne city council issued a pubic apology for accidentally painting over a piece of graff by the world famous artist banksy. This blew my mind, in a good, but confusing, way. Of course I find it encouraging that a city council can recognize the cultural and creative heritage of street art, but it brings up so many questions.
Before the questions, I want to start with a few facts I dug up about the situation in Melbourne.
Melbourne seems to have a strong history of street art going back to the 1970s, but has just recently started officially sanctioning specific pieces, walls, alleys, and tunnels throughout the city. The city has issued 26 permits so far, 16 of them being retroactive, meaning they were already bombed out spots that were later recognized and officially approved. Just look at this official city government url: http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/ForResidents/StreetCleaningandGraffiti/GraffitiStreetArt/Pages/Registeredstreetartapplications.aspx.
The official website for Melbourne tourism promotes walking tours of these areas dripping with graff. The tours ironically conclude with an hour of “fabulous wine and cheese”.
One quote from the recent news reports caught my eye.
“We will now be acting to implement retrospective legal street art permits to ensure other famous or significant street artworks within the city are protected.” said Melbourne city council chief Kathy Alexander.
Protected from …. the city? What about protected from modification or destruction by other artists? or when property changes ownership? or when a property owner decides he’d like to sell the wall itself to an art collector, at auction, or on ebay? What about later modification by the same artist? If it’s protected, who owns it? What happens when that famous artist paints outside a sanctioned zone (this is apparently what happened with the parachuting rat)?
Apparently, recreations of the buffed banksy work are now popping up, and while they are not generally attributed to him, could this live in a grey area of legal clearance?
Being curious about the actual letter of the law regarding street art in Melbourne, I wrote to the city council as follows:
Lots of news around the banksy paint over, i’m wondering if i could ask some historical questions around street art in Melbourne?
I found the list of street art applications, many being retroactive. Is there much prosecution in Melbourne for graffiti?
Do painters still create this work in secret?
Is there any official distinction between ‘tagging’ and ‘art’?
If prosecution does still happen, how would the new banksy copies be handled, specifically as stencils are almost digital in the way they can be reproduced. Is there anything happening in terms of graffiti piracy?
Are copyrights recognized for street art in Australia?
I read in one report that your city council is considering issuance of graffiti licenses for famous artists, how will the identity of there artists be established, especially international ones who need to remain anonymous?
In the case of the ‘banksy woz ere’ instance, does that council consider that an act of vandalism? Would those perpetrators be liable for a higher property destruction fine? what if they claim to be banksy himself? what if they were a licensed street artist?
i know this is a lot of questions, if you have time to answer just a few, it would still be much appreciated.
cheers,
If I hear back, I’ll be sure to update this post.
Here are some images of Hosier Lane where the accidental buff took place.
The conversation about permission or sanctioned street art isn’t limited to Melbourne, here is a conversation on fatlace.com asking artists what legality might mean for the art form itself, historically based in a confrontational stance against prevailing laws.
Here is another relevant quote from an essay by Caleb Neelon (aka Sonik):
… the notions of “legality” and “permission” are pretty fuzzy. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve personally been arrested for painting a legal wall, and have been painting a wall illegally only to have the property owner walk up, tell me how nice I was for painting his wall, and buy me lunch. There are plenty of abandoned and public property spaces that are painted regularly by graffiti writers where the property owner could never be found in order to ask permission. In any case, the process of obtaining permission to paint, for free, what is by any objective account an act of community service deserving of respect and gratitude, is often completely degrading to an artist and guarantees bland art in the spirit of compromise. It is to the artistπs credit that they get fed up and create multiple works without permission in the time that it would take for the paperwork to clear (or not) for one.
Not all permission walls are safe. Sometimes cops buff them, sometimes bizarro anti graff vigilantes buff them, but then get arrested themselves because buffing graffiti without permission just makes you a really boring street artist yourself!
