Murray, Kristopher (2021) Making it Big: Street Art Muralism in a Post-Political World. PhD thesis, Concordia University.
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Abstract
Making it Big is an ethnographic exploration of the critical role that graffiti and street artists can play in resisting neoliberal attempts to pacify radical modes of artistic practice in North American cities today. Over the last decade, street art muralism has increasingly been identified as a key component in reshaping urban infrastructures and economies, namely though the development of arts districts and the organization of urban or mural arts festivals. It has also been mobilized to confront social injustices and raise public awareness to environmental and global issues. Influenced by graffiti and street art, street art muralism is argued as being a distinct form of public art, heroic to monumental in scale, and produced in public settings with consent. The shift towards professional and institutionally managed street art mural projects and programs demands a closer and critical evaluation of equality and content in place and space, and the democratization of arts in the city. As commercial and government interests grow urban arts infrastructures using street art mural-based tourism strategies, they are met with either support or resistance from purists and muralists in the graffiti and street art communities. On the one hand, purists argue that the street art muralism threatens to supplant graffiti culture and informal systems of aesthetic regulation. On the other hand, muralists see opportunities to develop their public and professional arts careers and use their art to raise awareness to environmental, cultural, political, and social justice issues. Social relations which have emerged from new configurations of work and art have also produced new subjectivities, perspectives, and worldviews which can help to expand rather than detract from counter-hegemonic struggles. This research will show how graffiti and street artists and the multiplicity of social spaces where they find themselves working have contributed to an expansion of the field of artistic intervention. As such, this research probes the struggles and tensions produced by these new and changing social relations and spatial forms surrounding their professionalization and the popularization through street art muralism to draw out the contradictions between these commercial and emancipatory projects.
| Divisions: | Concordia University > Faculty of Arts and Science > Sociology and Anthropology |
|---|---|
| Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) |
| Authors: | Murray, Kristopher |
| Institution: | Concordia University |
| Degree Name: | Ph. D. |
| Program: | Sociology |
| Date: | 28 September 2021 |
| Thesis Supervisor(s): | Nielsen, Greg |
| Keywords: | Graffiti, Street art, Street art muralism, socially engaged muralism, agonism, urban arts festival, mural festival, graffiti muralism, ethnography, repertoires of practice and knowledge, Montreal, Miami |
| ID Code: | 990093 |
| Deposited By: | KRISTOPHER MURRAY |
| Deposited On: | 16 Jun 2022 15:12 |
| Last Modified: | 16 Jun 2022 15:12 |
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