Jessica Silbey, Foreword to Copyright in the Street: An Oral History of Creative Processes in Street Art and Graffiti Subcultures @JSilbey

Silbey, Jessica, Boston University School of Law is publishing Foreward (to Copyright in the Street: An Oral History of Creative Processes in Street Art and Graffiti Subcultures by Enrico Bonadio) in Enrico Bonadio, Copyright in the Street: An Oral History of Creative Processes in Street Art and Graffiti Subcultures (Cambridge University Press, 2023). Here is the abstract.

Most of us think we are familiar with graffiti – lettering on trains or graphic images on walls that follow us as we walk by. But Enrico Bonadio’s new book on graffiti and street art opens a door to more complex and nuanced worlds of artists and their communities. The focus is on everyday creators of graffiti and street art. Built from nearly 100 interviews and hundreds of hours of observation, the book is filled with the voices of artists and vivid details of their plein air studios and interactions. Also present in the book is the author, who weaves the artists’ accounts of their practices with his voice and reactions as he experiences excitement and awe at the people he meets and art he witnesses being made. This is a special kind of book of scholarship; it is ethnographic and legal. And it is also colorful, funny, and enlightening. In this short foreward, I could not adequately summarize the book’s rich detail, and I would feel neglectful choosing only a few artists on which to focus. I will instead highlight some of the productive tensions around which the book is framed, a kind of stage-setting for the book’s unfolding. I will also situate the book within intellectual property scholarship more generally, celebrating its methodological and reformist perspective on the study of copyright and the evolving place of copyright law in the 21st century.

Download the foreword from SSRN at the link.

Can Copyright Be Applied To Street Art and Graffiti? Interdisciplinary Panel, January 30, 5-7 PM, Middlesex University, London @enricobonadio @AislinnOC

CAN COPYRIGHT BE APPLIED TO STREET ART AND GRAFFITI?

JAN 30 5-7PM, CG76, MIDDLESEX UNIVERSITY LONDON

An interdisciplinary panel convened by Susan Hansen and Alberto Duman. It is free and open to the public. Please come along if you'll be in London!

Bookings can be made via Eventbrite: https://copyright-street-art-graffiti.eventbrite.co.uk

This panel marks the launch of the Cambridge Handbook of Copyright in Graffiti and Street Art, edited by Enrico Bonadio (City Law School). Speakers will discuss the legal tools available for street and graffiti artists to object to unauthorized exploitations of their work, and will debate whether, and to what extent, the street art and graffiti subcultures could benefit from copyright and moral rights protection.

PROGRAMME

17.00-17.10 Susan Hansen & Alberto Duman, Middlesex University

17.10-17.20 Enrico Bonadio, The City Law School

17.20-17.30 Pure Evil, London

17.30-17.45 Aislinn O’Connell, Royal Holloway

17.45-18.00 Shane Burke, Cardiff University

18.00-18.15 Paula Westenberger, Brunel University

18.15-18.30 Marc Mimler, Bournemouth University

18.30-19.00 Panel Discussion (Chair: Enrico Bonadio)

For more information, contact s.hansen@mdx.ac.uk

Niezen on Street Justice: Graffiti and Claims-Making in Urban Public Space @mcgillu @LAWMcGill

Ronald Niezen, McGill University Faculty of Law, has published Street Justice: Graffiti and Claims-Making in Urban Public Space. Here is the abstract.

It is getting increasingly difficult to avoid the notion that justice claims are not limited to the formal venues of law or even the public accountability processes of journalism, but are also expressed in everyday activities of public outreach. We can see this outreach in informal efforts toward mass communication, in graffiti and Internet communication (and connections between the two, as we will see) oriented toward passers by and browsers, consumers of information, the possible-to-convince sympathizers of the plights of others. This non-professional realm of justice claims tells us something about the extent to which justice is experienced and expressed outside the law, but at the same time through the influence of law. Human rights in particular can be seen as a source of inspiration and expression of new and emerging forms of rights-consciousness and the public expression of grievance. This consciousness, in turn, relates to the popular dynamics of human rights lobbying and a corresponding awareness of humanity as a reference point for what is fair, equitable, and honorable, grounded as they are in the “soft” processes of persuasion and mass influence.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Finchett-Maddock on Outsider Poesis in Street Art and Graffiti @Palgrave_

Lucy Finchett-Maddock, Sussex School of Legal Studies, is publishing In Vacuums of Law We Find: Outsider Poiesis in Street Art and Graffiti in the Art Crime Handbook (Duncan Chappell and Saskia Hufnagel, eds., Palgrave MacMillan) (forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

This piece seeks to demonstrate the striating role of property within street art and graffiti, creating a threshold where criminal and intellectual property meet to both outlaw and protect street art at the same time. Street art reveals a legal vacuum for poiesis, protest and property on the threshold of aesthetic and juridical legitimacy and illegitimacy, illustrating where law means all and nothing at once. Legal sanction is argued as affecting the aesthetics of street art, where criminalisation protects the rights of property owners over the creative rights of artists, reasserting the exclusionary nature of law, intertwined with reasserting the ‘outsider’ nature of their art. This is argued as not coincidental, but that notions of aesthetics are not only prioritised by the art ‘establishment’, but also supported by law, to the detriment of other forms of aesthetics such as street art and graffiti. As such, street art and graffiti reveals the elixir of property in both the art and legal establishments, coming to pass as a result of violent histories of expropriation through art property and real property. Ultimately, street art and graffiti is argued as a protest against the legal-aesthetic hegemony, the analysis of criminal, real and intellectual property meeting points telling us more about the congenital role of art in law and vice versa than solely explaining the legalities of random acts of illicit expression.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

ICYMI: A New Book From Alison Young: Street Art World (Reaktion Books, 2016) @scotinoz

ICYMI: Alison Young has published Street Art World (Reaktion Books, dist. University of Chicago Press, 2016). Here from the publisher/distributor's website is a description of the book's contents.

Street art and graffiti are a familiar sight in all our cities. Giant murals commemorate historical events or proclaim the culture of a neighborhood, while tagged walls can function simultaneously as a claim to territory and a backdrop for an urban fashion shoot. Street Art World examines these divergent forms and functions of street art. This strikingly illustrated book explores every aspect of street art, from those who spray it into being to those who revel in it on Instagram, from its place under highway overpasses to one on the austere walls of high art museums. What exactly is street art? Is it the same as graffiti, or do they have different histories, meanings, and practitioners? Who makes it? Who buys it? Can it be exhibited at all, or does it always have to appear unsanctioned? Talking with artists, collectors, sellers, and buyers, author Alison Young reveals an energetic world of self-made artists who are simultaneously passionate about an authentic form of expression and ambivalent about the prospects of selling it to make a living—even a fabulously good one. Drawing on over twenty years of research, she juxtaposes the rise and fall of art markets against the vibrancy of the street and urban life, providing a rich history and new ways of contextualizing the words and images—some breathtakingly beautiful—that seem to appear overnight in cities around the world. 

A New Book on Speech: Barendt On Anonymous Speech: Literature, Law and Politics

Eric Barendt has published Anonymous Speech (Hart Publishing, 2016). Here is a description of the book's contents from the publisher's website.

Anonymous Speech: Literature, Law and Politics discusses the different contexts in which people write anonymously or with the use of a pseudonym: novels and literary reviews, newspapers and political periodicals, graffiti, and now on the Internet. The book criticises the arguments made for a strong constitutional right to anonymous speech, though it agrees that there is a good case for anonymity in some circumstances, notably for whistle-blowing. One chapter examines the general treatment of anonymous speech and writing in English law, while another is devoted to the protection of journalists' sources, where the law upholds a freedom to communicate anonymously through the media. A separate chapter looks at anonymous Internet communication, particularly on social media, and analyses the difficulties faced by the victims of threats and defamatory allegations on the Net when the speaker has used a pseudonym. In its final chapter the book compares the universally accepted argument for the secret ballot with the more controversial case for anonymous speech. This is the first comprehensive study of anonymous speech to examine critically the arguments for and against anonymity. These arguments were vigorously canvassed in the nineteenth century – largely in the context of literary reviewing – and are now of enormous importance for communication on the Internet.

 

The Writing On the Walls

Allison Meier (Hyperallergic) discusses Matt Champion's new book Medieval Graffiti: The Lost Voices of England’s Churches (Ebury Press), and his discoveries of pre-Reformation marks and messages from the non-aristocracy on medieval church walls. These messages, says Dr. Champion, head of the Norfolk Medieval Graffiti Survey, tell us a lot, both about medieval belief and about social interaction. He also notes that these carvings, previously assumed to be the work of non-mainstream worshippers like Wiccans, for example, are actually more likely to be examples of medieval understandings of the world around them. "'[T]he fact that such finds often lead to them being ascribed to modern Wiccans, devil worshippers or hoaxers is a sign of just how mentally remote we are today from the commonplace beliefs of the medieval church.'"

Cross-posted to Law and Magic Blog.

A New Book on Graffiti and Street Art, Edited by Jeffrey Ian Ross, Available From Routledge

Available this month from Routledge: Routledge Handbook of Graffiti and Street Art (Jeffrey Ian Ross, ed., 2016). Here is a description of the contents from the publisher's website.

The Routledge Handbook of Graffiti and Street Art integrates and reviews current scholarship in the field of graffiti and street art. Thirty-seven original contributions are organized around four sections: History, Types, and Writers/Artists of Graffiti and Street Art; Theoretical Explanations of Graffiti and Street Art/Causes of Graffiti and Street Art; Regional/Municipal Variations/Differences of Graffiti and Street Art; and, Effects of Graffiti and Street Art. Chapters are written by experts from different countries throughout the world and their expertise spans the fields of American Studies, Art Theory, Criminology, Criminal justice, Ethnography, Photography, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, and Visual Communication. The Handbook will be of interest to researchers, instructors, advanced students, libraries, and art gallery and museum curators. This book is also accessible to practitioners and policy makers in the fields of criminal justice, law enforcement, art history, museum studies, tourism studies, and urban studies as well as members of the news media. The Handbook includes 70 images, a glossary, a chronology, and the electronic edition will be widely hyperlinked.

Americanized Graffiti

Jeffrey Ian Ross, University of Baltimore School of Law, is publishing Graffiti Goes to the Movies: American Fictional Films Featuring Graffiti Artists/Writers and Themes in Contemporary Justice Review (July 2015). Here is the abstract.

Since the early 1980s, in addition to the increase in graffiti and street art in many urban contexts, a number of movies have been made that have either examined this phenomenon and the people who engage in this activity, or used graffiti and street art as a backdrop to tell a story. This article briefly reviews the scholarly literature that examines movies that portray criminals and criminal actions, and then analyzes seven American-produced fictional (drama) films using graffiti writers/artists as major characters and then draws generalizations about them. Although this is not a semiotic analysis of the films, to the extent possible, it delves into the settings, plots, characters, dialog, and how realistic the movies appear to be. In general, most of the films include unrealistic aspects and/or are of poor quality, and this contributes to misrepresentations of and stereotypes about graffiti writers/writing.

Policing the Perps

Jeffrey Ian Ross University of Baltimore School of Law, and Benjamin Wright, University of Baltimore, have published 'I've Got Better Things to Worry About': Police Perceptions of Graffiti and Street Art in a Large Mid-Atlantic City at 17 Police Quarterly 176 (2014). Here is the abstract.

The majority of scholarly research on graffiti and street art has examined this phenomenon in terms of its distribution and the nature of the perpetrators. Rarely has the law enforcement response been investigated. To better understand this neglected aspect, the investigators constructed a survey that they administered to a sample of officers in a large Mid-Atlantic police department to determine their attitudes, in particular their perceptions, regarding graffiti, street art, and perpetrators of this behavior. The survey takes into consideration important police-related variables and situational factors to provide a portrait of officer perceptions. The major finding indicates that the shift and race of police officers might have an influence on their decisions to stop, question, and arrest suspects on graffiti and street art vandalism-related charges. This is consistent with other studies of police perceptions of illegal behavior.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Cross-posted at Media Law Prof Blog.