University of Melbourne CCDP20001: Artwork Street in Melbourne The walking tour format can establish locations in physical or digital space, set rules for

University of Melbourne CCDP20001: Artwork Street in Melbourne The walking tour format can establish locations in physical or digital space, set rules for moving through the city, draw upon not just visual but also olfactory, audio or tactile resources in a location. Invest thinking in the journey as much as you do the “stops”. Before you start writing, I would encourage you to plan out your tour: 4Write key ideas as dot points you want to convey at each stop and then check that these maintain a consistency and a coherence between stops. Move your dot points around to help develop your structure. I also find it can help to record key phrases and terms you want to use at each stop. Planning this over a few different sittings, with substantive breaks in between can really help you approach it with fresh eyes each time, to see what should be cut. Then you should write as a final step. I will upload some pervious examples for you. CCDP20001 Street Art Assessment 2: Walking Tour / Derive
40% Weighting.
Due: FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 20, 11:59PM.
Submission: A PDF or word doc submitted through Turnitin on the LMS. Please include
your personal details, including student number, in a header.
Word Count: 1,000 words, references not included.
Referencing style: Chicago 16A Footnote or Chicago 16B Author-Date. (See RE:Cite
for instructions: https://library.unimelb.edu.au/recite).
P L E A S E N O T E:
There is NO group presentation component to this assessment (despite what is in the
course handbook on the LMS). Course enrolment numbers mean that such a
presentation is not feasible.
Outline:
Construct a walking tour that includes 3 to 5 locations and provide written descriptions at
each location totalling 1000 words. For example if you choose 5 locations, you would be
aiming to write about 200 words for each location. Please include photographs to help
illustrate your tour as needed.
The walking tour format can establish locations in physical or digital space, set rules for
moving through the city, draw upon not just visual but also olfactory, audio or tactile
resources in a location. Invest thinking in the journey as much as you do the “stops”.
The tour may have temporal dimensions (e.g. a single location at multiple times of day).
The tour may also rely upon more subjective ‘experiential’ interactions with public space.
You should consider the term ‘walking tour’ in the broadest possible sense. If street art
temporarily reutilises public space for artworks, you may consider your walking tour as a
similar type of reappropriation (like the psychogeographical surveys of the Situationists).
The tour can function as a public space intervention or a kind of performative street art.
To provide some examples, your tour could:
• Follow a conventional tour format of a series of stops with information about
each location (for example it could be a tour of works by a single artist or 5 works
connected by a common theme).
• Be at a single location but at several different times of day.
• Be a tour through a single artwork, for example through a series of letters in a
graffiti writer’s piece
• Create a Situationist style tour that establishes a series of rules to facilitate
new experiences within the city (for example wait for a man wearing a white shirt
and then follow them for as long as feasible while in public space).
• The tour may take place entirely within the online space (through various
Instagram pages and / or hashtags).
• Your tour may have a specific audience in mind; it could be designed
specifically for children or tourists or it could encourage all participants to roleplay as children or tourists.
General Advice:
Similar to assignment 1 and 2, you will be marked on:
1. Your ability to develop a creative/original/considered premise and thus
demonstrate independent critical thinking.
2. How well you engage with academic material from the course and beyond the
course, to evidence breadth of research.
3. The coherence of your argument or observation across all stops.
4. The quality of your writing, image composition and general tour structure.
The most important thing is to have a clear and rich idea at the centre of your
assignment.
Try to write in a style that is natural to you.
Before you start writing, I would encourage you to plan out your tour: 4Write key ideas
as dot points you want to convey at each stop and then check that these maintain a
consistency and a coherence between stops. Move your dot points around to help
develop your structure. I also find it can help to record key phrases and terms you want
to use at each stop. Planning this over a few different sittings, with substantive breaks in
between can really help you approach it with fresh eyes each time, to see what should
be cut. Then you should write as a final step.
Now that spring is upon us, use this assessment as a chance to explore; you will be
conducting research and generating ideas merely by taking a walk around in the
sunshine and observing and thinking critically about street art and graffiti.
Introduction – ‘Start’
Stemming from the situationist principle of psychogeography, Debord’s idea of the ‘dérive’ posits a
“technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances,” using the urban environment as a stage for
play (1956). The unplanned journey mandates an individual discard their “usual motives for
movement and action” and instead let their path be directed by “attractions of the terrain and the
encounters they find there”.
Borne from Debord’s critique of ‘the society of the spectacle’ and his desire to subvert the hegemonic
norms that restrain us, the dérive presents the individual with the opportunity to engage with the
urban space in a fashion “[unmediated]” by a dominant ideology of movement (1967, 10).
As such, a dérive is “defined in accordance both with its own logic and… relations with social
morphology” (Debord 1956). To counter the predictability of the modern, capitalist existence,
Debord suggests a journey defined by other, abstracted criteria, ones that allow the individual to
engage with their surroundings in new and atypical ways.
This ‘tour’ involves traversing Fitzroy, a suburb only a short tram ride from the CBD where
“Melbourne’s alternative and creative thinkers have found a home” (Schneider 2018). Through their
own dérive, the traveller will explore Fitzroy’s street art landscape following a series of directions
that aim to engage with the suburb’s unique culture and characteristics. The combination of
artworks discussed herein is but one out of a near-infinite set of encounters than an individual could
experience using these same (underlined) directions – indeed, the purpose of a dérive is to
experiment, to have fun, and to find something that otherwise might have remained undiscovered.
‘Stop One’
‘Wu-Tang Clan’ – Unknown
I began by following a stranger wearing a particularly unique piece of clothing – in this case, a young
man wearing a replica of Ryan Gosling’s scorpion jacket from the film Drive. After a while, I turned
left into an alley that we passed. Here, I encountered an artist who was in the process of painting a
mural of his own, an ode to famous New York rap group, Wu-Tang Clan. The artist said that he had
been a fan of the group’s music since he was a teenager, and that he thought the hip-hop-savvy
residents of Fitzroy would appreciate his work.
Happening upon the creation of a piece of street art was an incredibly fortuitous way to begin my
dérive. For me, the random nature of this chance encounter perfectly illuminates the place that
street art has in Fitzroy’s culture. In the mid-afternoon, locals are simply going about their daily
business – shopping, dining out, travelling ‘from A to B’. For many, street art – indeed, creating in
general – is seen as just another part of everyday life, a sentiment which I believe reflects the
suburb’s unique, creative culture.
‘Stop Two’
‘George Costanza’ – Skr3am
I asked a stranger (the artist painting the ‘Wu Tang Clan’ piece) to recommend a bar/restaurant/café
in the local area. His favourite, he said, was George’s Bar, an establishment inspired by the 1990s
sitcom Seinfeld and its popular character, George Costanza, a motif that has extended outside of the
premises to include the local streetscape. While following the artist’s directions to the bar, I
happened upon an adjacent wall hosting a larger-than-life mural painted by Melbournian artist,
Skr3am, depicting a half-naked Costanza in one of his most infamous poses. First instinct may
suggest that the mural is a deliberate extension of the bar’s advertising presence, but a conversation
with one of the bar’s staff revealed that the owners had not commissioned the piece.
Both George’s Bar and the Costanza mural encapsulate how Fitzroy engages with popular culture in
creative and exciting ways. Popular media texts– TV shows, movies, albums, comic books etc. – that
have resonated with Fitzroy’s residents are projected outwards and reproduced as visual signifiers
on the suburb’s visual landscape. As such, an exploration of physical terrain and its features offers us
a unique window into the cultural heart of Fitzroy and its residents.
‘Stop Three’
‘Harlem Globetrotters’ – Obe1
To continue my dérive, I decided to listen out for a loud noise and walk in its direction. Initially, I
followed a particularly attention-grabbing sports car down Johnston Street, but turned down a side
road after being grabbed by the repetitive beeping of a reversing truck. This detour revealed a walllength mural depicting the famous Harlem Globetrotters. In addition to images of the group’s
members and signature basketball tricks, I also noticed several references to popular Harlem
establishments, including The Cotton Club and the Apollo Theatre. In fact, current members of the
team have actually visited and posed in front of this mural. (Denholm 2018).
What struck me about this mural was its similarity to my previous two stops – here was another
example of an artist celebrating an element of popular, American culture, and using it as inspiration
for their own work. This consistent theme reveals the extent to which the globalised world, and the
United States’ dominant position in it, has impacted Australian culture. Our consumption – and
creation – of films, television, and sporting spectacles has certainly been influenced by America (ABC
2018), and this is clearly reflected in the street art landscape of Fitzroy.
‘Stop Four’
‘Playtime is Over’ – Frosk
For the final stage of my dérive, I elected to follow several strangers, switching ‘targets’ when I
noticed someone using a different mode of transport. A series of walkers, cyclists and skateboarders
led me to a brightly coloured piece depicting a soft toy and socket puppet duo. From my previous
experiences in Fitzroy I recall seeing other paintings involving the same characters.
Some Instagram research revealed that the artist, @frosk_one, has indeed built a recognisable profile
upon his unique style and memorable characters – similar scenes adorn walls all throughout the
suburb. Whilst ‘graffiti’ and ‘street art’ can, in other locales, carry negative connotations, an area like
Fitzroy instead embraces the practice, which has afforded artists like Frosk a degree of celebrity and
acclaim. In this way, the suburb’s culture – much like its walls – fosters and provides a canvas for
creativity that sets it apart from other areas of Melbourne.
For photographic accompaniments, see following pages…
Body Word Count: 999 Words
Bibliography:
Australian Broadcasting Corporation [ABC] 2018, Popular culture post-war, visited 1st October 2018,
.
Debord, G 1975, Report on the Construction of Situations and on the International Situationist
Tendency’s Conditions of Organization and Action: Translated by Ken Knabb, visited 1st October
2018,
Debord, G 1967, The Society of the Spectacle, Zone Books, New York.
Denholm, G 2018, 775124842GD019_Harlem, photograph, viewed 1st October 2018,
.
Schneider, E 2018, Local’s Guide to Fitzroy, viewed 1st October 2018,
.
All included photography by
Stop One:
‘Wu Tang Clan’
Stop Three:
‘Harlem Globetrotters’
Stop Two:
‘George Costanza’
Dérive
Route
Stop Four:
‘Playtime is Over’
McCuddy 1
Elora McCuddy
Student number: 1003293
CCDP20001 Street Art
Subject Coordinator: Chris Parkinson
12 October, 2018
Assessment 3: Walking Tour
McCuddy 2
“When you think Melbourne, some of the words that come to mind surely must be
‘coffee’, ‘laneways’, and ‘street art,’” writes common tourist-searched website, timeout.com
(Time Out editors, 2018). Whether it be from a picture on instagram or a chat with a local,
Hosier Lane is surely to land close to the top on tourists’ ?Melbourne Must-Do? list. With the
lane’s reputation of being the ‘central point of the city’s street art scene’ (Time Out editors,
2018), it could be assumed that what lies on the lane’s walls is representative of what street art
actually is. To a tourist uneducated about art, all of the lane’s spray painted images, words and
stencils, murals, stickers, sculptures, and even hanging socks are emblematic of the complexity
of ‘street art’. But what is street art, exactly? How does it differ from graffiti, or public art? The
defining lines between these three prove to be unclear when looking at the defining components
that make up their genres. The genre of an art piece is dependent upon its text, audience, and
industry. Text is based upon the makeup of the physical artwork; what it is and what it’s made
of. Audience refers to who discusses, or consumes, the artwork, as well as their opinions on it.
Lastly, the industry involves the modes of production, marketing, and exhibition of the work
(Honig, 2018). In consideration of these three determinants, a tour of Hosier Lane perfectly
exemplifies just how messy the genre of ‘street art’ truly is- ?literally?.
Stop one of the tour:
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A look up the lane from Flinders Street gives a great view of an enormous mural created by
popular, commissioned, street artist, Adnate. According to common notions of genre, this piece
could be considered street art as well as public art. The text, audience, and industry of the mural
supports this. In regards to text, Adnate has used paint to create a picture of a young,
Indigenous, boy looking up to the sky. The audience is anyone who looks, and with attention to
the conversations of other tourists, it can be heard that the work is spoken about with much
McCuddy 4
respect and admiration. With its large scale and impressive detail, it can be assumed that the
work’s industry involved commissioning and planning. Therefore, it’s production is legal.
Support for the piece rises from tourism and social media, as well as from press sources. In no
way would this piece be considered graffiti, as it’s too aesthetically pleasing. (Honig, 2018)
The genre of graffiti differs greatly from that of street art. As for graffiti, the text is
typically known to be grapheme-based, messy, and illegible. It’s audience is typically connected
to crime and is limited to, and only appreciated by, members of the graffiti culture. The industry
of graffiti, unlike street art, it is almost always illegal, unpaid, and completed in a matter of
seconds (Honig, 2018). The second stop of the tour is a perfect example of how these guidelines
aren’t inclusive of all graffiti.
Stop 2 of the tour:
McCuddy 5
This piece is a typical form of graffiti referred to as tagging. A good majority of this work’s
characteristics are cohesive with that of the genre of graffiti, but there are some which make its
categorization a challenge to all audiences. In fact, the audience is involved in this struggle to
categorize the piece. In the setting of Hosier Lane, viewed and shared by tourists from around
the world, the work’s industry promotes its consideration as more of street art than graffiti
(Honig, 2018). Its legality, as it is in a publicly condoned area, also supports this notion. What
determines the genre of the work more? Its letter-based theme and illegibility, making it graffiti?
Its widespread audience and support from tourism, more characteristic of street art? The line can
be blurry, although all the lines in this piece look clean and precise. The genre of the next piece
is just as indistinct, even without lines at all.
Stop three of the tour:
McCuddy 6
This last piece can be seen on the right wall as you walk along the laneway which loops from
and to Hosier Lane. The text of its genre is figurative, making use of its environment, and
undemanding of a high degree of interpretation. Its audience is inclusive of all passers-by and
those who view it on online forums, discussed by those with little art experience. Lastly, it has
an industry of an assumed non-professional production, cheap use of material, and support from
tourism. All these components promote the work’s genre as being street art (Honig, 2018). But
it’s unrefined, messy, unpaid, generally unappreciated, and high-profile in contrast with its paint,
stencil, and sticker-based environment. These descriptions align more with the genre of graffiti
(Honig, 2018). So what is this large heap of art? How would police treat it if it continuously
popped up around city streets with which there was an implemented graffiti management plan?
Would it be considered street art, and respected as thus, or would the action of mounting the
piece be punishable like that of graffiti? What’s the difference if they share similar aestheticism.
To a tourist in Melbourne, completely new to the concept and definition of ‘street art’,
these three works show the lack of distinction between the genres of street art, graffiti, and public
art. This absence explains the vast grey area of legality which surrounding the works. Dearth of
clear definition is a cause for conflict between artists and public authority, not only in
Melbourne, but all around the world. Street art, hence, exists without a clear place in culture and
the physical world. Graffiti management plans are vague in their definitions of graffiti and
therefore, what is legal. Yarra Valley’s 2015 to 2019 Graffiti Management Framework states
that graffiti, “?can be an inscription, figure or mark written, painted, drawn or otherwise displayed
on any surface.” (Yarra City Council, 2015). Does this description not include almost every
form of painting and drawing, even the plastic form displayed in Hosier Lane? The real
McCuddy 7
determining factor of whether something is street art, graffiti, or public art is based on the
subjective opinions of financially and politically powerful members of the community. These
leaders range from law enforcement to wealthy landowners, political figures, museum curators,
and philanthropists. Unfortunately, artistic power equates to nothing in comparison to the power
of money and politics. This is the power and control that graffiti and street artists rebel against.
Can you blame them?
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References
Honig, M. (21 August, 2018). CCDP20001: Street Art, week 5 notes [PowerPoint slides].
Retrieved from
https://app.lms.unimelb.edu.au/webapps/blackboard/execute/content/file?cmd=view&content_id
=_6904922_1&course_id=_372696_1&framesetWrapped=true
Time Out editors (8 August, 2018). Where to find the best street art in Melbourne. ?TimeOut.
Received from
https://www.timeout.com/melbourne/art/where-to-find-the-best-street-art-in-melbourne
Yarra City Council (2015). Yarra City Council. ?Graffiti Management Framework. ?Received
from ?www.yarracity.vic.gov
THE COMMERCIAL
SCAVENGER HUNT
The street art and graffiti tour that challenges and
reinforces notions of the three Cs; control, consumerism,
commercialization.
This walking tour encourages participants to think about and challenge the hegemonic
ideas surrounding the value of images in public space. Together, we will disseminate
the relationship between the authoritatively legitimized appropriation of public space
and the illegalized reappropriation of this space. We will show how graffiti and street
art can both embody and oppose notions of control, consumerism and
commercialization. After the guided tour we will encourage participants to view
everyday images…
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