“Street artists” are up in arms in Melbourne over the city’s attempts to eradicate graffiti.
Young was commissioned by the city council to draw up a draft graffiti strategy last March in which she recommended tolerance zones be set up where street art and graffiti be allowed a small space within the city, where writers and artists would be at a lower risk of being arrested. “This was rejected by the city council, despite it generating lots of public support and despite evidence being presented that zero tolerance, for lots of reasons, wouldn’t work.”Instead, the council doubled its anti-graffiti budget. “The clean-up is an imposition of a supposedly mainstream, or dominant, cultural view,” says Young, “in denial of the diversity of cultural styles that actually exist within a city space.”
Imposition of a dominant cultural view? I don’t think so. How about attempt to clean up vandalism? Calling it “street art” doesn’t change the fact that the “artists” have defaced private property without the permission of the property owner, and that is (and should be) criminal.
The idea of “tolerance zones” actually makes some sense, if the affected property owners consent to allowing access to their property. But looking the other way while vandals destroy property is wrong, even in the name of “art”.
[via Boing Boing]
