Get up of get down: bodies, walls, and industrial landscapes

Abstract

Based on the concept of embodiment, this article aspires to discern the meanings that underlie the practice of graffiti in New York City since the 1970s. The study uses as a reference the 5Pointz complex, an old post-industrial building in Long Island City, Queens transformed into an exterior graffiti museum and multiuse residence. This art mecca was demolished in 2014 and subsequently redeveloped. The text explores this building by extracting 4 episodes of the diachronic meaning of graffiti. These emerge from 4 key oppositions: self/other, powerful/powerless, nature/culture, and structure/chaos, distinctions mediated through graffiti in the space of the wall. The text begins with a study of the Chicano gang roll call and its relationship to tattooing. This precedent of graffiti is contrasted with the role of the name/tag in contemporary graffiti. Based on the socio-political context of the eighties and nineties, the wall is proposed as an embodiment of authority and as a cultural matrix within the concrete jungle. The migration of graffiti to 5Pointz in the nineties is read along with the institutionalization of urban art and the search for haven in the face of public criminalization. Finally, looking towards the future, the demolition of 5Pointz in 2014 is understood as a pivotal point that offers new meanings of the wall, framed by the reality of neoliberal speculation and junk space. The baseline of inquiry is: What do we become when we find ourselves against walls and vice versa? How is the nomological nature of walls conjugated? What does an alternative theory of the post-industrial landscape look like? Keywords: graffiti, industrial landscapes, art, architecture, embodiment.

*View of 5Pointz from Crane Street. (Image by Ezmosis). -- View of the site of 5Points from Jackson Avenue with the current pair of towers and the elevated 7 train. MoMA PS1 lies out of the picture frame to the right, one block away. (Image by: Andrew Campbell Nelson). -- Regional map situating 5Pointz within main landmarks, major neighborhoods and surrounding infrastructure. (Image by Edward A. Aguilera Pérez). -- Example of Chicano gang roll call, circa 1970. (Image by Howard Gribble). -- View of tag-covered Lexington Avenue express subway car. (Image by John Naar). -- View of 5Pointz after the incident of whitewashing. (Image by Max Touhey).