Conflict Graffiti: From Revolution to Gentrification

303 Pages·2022·15.149 MB·English

by  John Lennon

ConfliCt Graffiti

ConfliCt
Graffiti
from revolution
to GentrifiCation
John lennon
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London
Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the Neil Harris
Endowment Fund, which honors the innovative scholarship of Neil
Harris, the Preston and Sterling Morton Professor Emeritus of History
at the University of Chicago. The fund is supported by contributions
from the students, colleagues, and friends of Neil Harris.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
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the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637.
Published 2021
Printed in the United States of America
30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21  1 2 3 4 5
iSBn- 13: 978- 0- 226-8 1566- 4 (cloth)
iSBn- 13: 978- 0- 226-8 1569- 5 (paper)
iSBn- 13: 978- 0- 226-8 1567- 1 (e- book)
Doi: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226815671.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lennon, John, 1975– author.
Title: Conflict graffiti : from revolution to gentrification / John Lennon.
Description: Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2021. | Includes index.
Identifiers: lCCn 2021021310 | iSBn 9780226815664 (cloth) |
iSBn 9780226815695 (paperback) | iSBn 9780226815671 (ebook)
Subjects: lCSh: Graffiti—Social aspects. | Graffiti—Political aspects. |
Art and social conflict. | Political art.
Classification: lCC Gt3912 .l46 2021 | DDC 751.7/3—dc23
lC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021021310
♾ This paper meets the requirements of anSi/niSo Z39.48- 1992
(Permanence of Paper).
ContEntS
Preface vii
an introDuCtion to
ConfliCt Graffiti 1
1. wallS, StreetS, anD
puBliC SpaCeS 23
2. the meSSy politiCS of ConfliCt
Graffiti: DeSire, Graffiti, anD
aSSemBlinG a revolution 61
3. eraSinG people anD lanD:
BankSy, the Separation wall,
anD international Graffiti
touriStS 99
4. framinG hurriCane katrina:
Graffiti anD the “new” new
orleanS 133
5. “for more than profit”:
Graffiti, Street art, anD the
GentrifiCation of Detroit 169
ConCluSion: new waveS:
early impreSSionS of CoviD-19
Graffiti 209
Acknowledgments 223
Notes 227
Index 267
Plates 1–12 follow page 70;
plates 13–20 follow page 182.

PrEfaCE
I discovered graffiti through the smell of its removal. One of my first
childhood memories of my father is seeing him in his suit and tie with a
bottle of turpentine in one hand and a rag in the other. Most mornings
before work, my dad would check our fence and lamppost for graffiti, and
if anyone had tagged it overnight, he would laboriously rub the names
out. My father is a first- generation Irish American raised by a widowed
working- class mother in the Bronx. Self- educated, he became an electri-
cal engineer by studying textbooks at night, he bought a house, and he
moved his family to Queens. This small corner house was his (mortgaged)
American dream. To him, graffiti was a violent and cowardly attack, and
so every morning, he protected our house. This vision of my dad is so in-
grained in my understanding of graffiti that sometimes when I am walk-
ing through a neighborhood and spot a fence covered in tags, I think of
him, and I can faintly smell turpentine.
As my father erased graffiti from our home, I became fascinated by it.
I remember emerging onto subway platforms—first holding my father’s
hand, then going by myself—and seeing train car after train car coated
with fantastical images. The wildstyle was illegible to me, but I was ab-
sorbed by its intricate precision. The graffiti characters were recogniz-
able—Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse were favorites—but often racial-
ized, dressed in a style of clothes I didn’t own and usually holding spray
cans. In subsequent years, the styles evolved, Mayor Ed Koch declared
(and lost) a war on graffiti, and I kept my eyes on the trains. I grew up
and went to college and then graduate school away from New York be-
fore moving to Brooklyn as an English professor. In the wake of Rudy
Giuliani’s draconian “broken windows” policies, the graffiti had changed,
but my fascination with it never lessened. I taught classes on graffiti, con-
ducted graffiti walking tours for my students, and interviewed and hung
viii : prefaCe
out with graffiti writers. Every morning, I kept my eyes on the walls of my
Greenpoint neighborhood to see who was getting up the most.
Then Egypt’s 2011 Tahrir Square demonstrations materialized. I fol-
lowed the battles on the internet, amazed by the bravery of the street pro-
testers. And I saw the graffiti. It was a different type of graffiti from what
I knew, a cacophony of Arabic and English writing and drawing on every
conceivable space. Large murals created by experienced hands appeared
next to angry, shaky lettering. The protests were bodily, violent, and pas-
sionate. The graffiti matched this visceral intensity. I joined Twitter and
Flickr, followed graffiti writers and activists, and watched the walls in a
faraway country fill up with spray paint. I tweeted at some protesters and
followed up with email and phone conversations. Staring at these graffiti
images, I found myself reciting one question: Why? When police snipers
are firing down from rooftops and the blood of friends is spilling onto the
streets, why would someone stop and write graffiti?
I traveled to Lebanon, Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Germany, and Sweden to
meet with graffiti writers and activists to find out. As my focus on Egypt
expanded, so did my understanding of conflict graffiti. I am grateful for
all those who made the time to trust and speak with me (and often intro-
duce me to their writer- activist friends). Conflict Graffiti is not an ethno-
graphic study, but my ideas could not have evolved without these gener-
ous men and women. As I discuss throughout this book, conflict graffiti
is inherently about violence (both surviving violence and counteracting
it), but the people I met through this project offered me kindness and
patient conversation.
My initial idea for this project focused exclusively on overt state vio-
lence—for example, graffiti responses to Israel’s Separation Wall—but as
my ideas progressed, I began exploring violence that is not as recogniz-
able as a border wall but is often as devastating, especially as the conflict
evolves. Here, I began thinking of state violence not only as tanks on city
streets but also as embedded within the mundane policy decisions affect-
ing the poor and working class. I traveled to New Orleans to explore the
city post- Katrina and to Detroit post- bankruptcy, interviewing more writ-
ers, activists, and real estate developers and entrepreneurs. The streets
of these rebuilding cities are filled with beautiful, new large murals and
active graffiti scenes—all while houses are being demolished and water
and electricity cut off to thousands of people. It is quite clear that racial-
ized capitalism is a violent driving force of this renewal.
In connecting my research and travels, various patterns emerged. In
each area I analyze, there was an existing graffiti scene (however small)
before the conflict that exploded onto the streets. As the conflict raged,
graffiti expanded exponentially, taking on numerous forms and created
prefaCe : ix
by people with little previous graffiti experience. As the conflict subsided,
a new graffiti and street- art scene emerged, one embraced by the state
and the business community. Like waves hitting the shore, each graffiti
wave mixes with the previous and the following one, with no clear de-
marcation between them. Anyone on the shoreline, though, still feels the
force of each wave. Conflict Graffiti is my attempt to examine the waves
from a wide- angle lens.
I first encountered graffiti through its removal and have spent a part of
my life following its traces, trying to understand the letters and images
present in every city I have visited. In truth, graffiti removal is impossible.
Graffiti emerges randomly, its meaning often just out of reach, like the
fading memory of a conversation. But just as a memory often reveals sub-
conscious desires, so, too, graffiti reveal a city’s collective unconscious.
During moments of conflict, these desires are painstakingly sprayed onto
walls, with the varied styles and messages of graffiti matching the nu-
merous yearnings of those willing to risk their lives and freedom. Conflict
Graffiti is an attempt to understand the role of graffiti in multiple con-
flicts, mapping its transformations and discovering what it can tell us
about resistance and desire.