Copyright Beyond Law

Regulating Creativity in the Graffiti Subculture

Marta Iljadica

• Publisher: Hart Publishing
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781509902026
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Derecho
• Subtopic: Ley de derechos de autor

The form of graffiti writing on trains and walls is not accidental. Nor is its absence on cars and houses. Employing a particular style of letters, choosing which walls and trains to write on, copying another writer, altering or destroying another writer's work: these acts are regulated within the graffiti subculture. Copyright Beyond Law presents findings from empirical research undertaken into the graffiti subculture to show that graffiti writers informally regulate their creativity through a system of norms that are remarkably similar to copyright.
The 'graffiti rules' and their copyright law parallels include: the requirement of writing letters (subject matter) and appropriate placement (public policy and morality exceptions for copyright subsistence and the enforcement of copyright), originality and the prohibition of copying (originality and infringement by reproduction), and the prohibition of damage to another writer's works (the moral right of integrity). The intersection between the 'graffiti rules' and copyright law sheds light on the creation of subculture-specific commons and the limits of copyright law in incentivising and regulating the production and location of creativity.

Panel I

Context

1

Graffiti History and Development

I think the graffiti movement throughout the world has tried to emulate [the golden era of the New York graffiti] movement and hasn’t swayed much from those original aesthetics or rules or kind of, yes, street rules that are associated with that scene. You bomb the system, you tag trains, you paint pieces on trains, you vandalise public property. … And also … the rules handed down through generations of writers: this is how it was, this is how it should be. (Anon4)

Introduction

Drawing on sociological accounts of graffiti writing, this chapter provides an overview of the history of graffiti, the London scene, and the structure of the graffiti subculture all of which are important to understanding the operation of the graffiti rules. The rules—and this is something the graffiti rules have in common with copyright—are the product of particular social contexts that reflect, or seek to embody, certain justifications for the protection and regulation of creativity.¹ The discussion in this chapter will help to ground the analysis of the graffiti norms in subsequent chapters especially chapters five, seven, nine and ten which consider the empirical data and also chapter two which addresses the literature on creativity, the intellectual commons and the public domain, and other examples of alternative frameworks for regulating creativity.

This chapter has two parts. The first part considers the definition of graffiti writing and its historical development. The second part examines certain elements of the subculture: motivations and identity, fame and hierarchy, visibility, placement and style, and the relationship between illegality and the graffiti rules.

Historical Development

This part considers the definition of graffiti, the origins of graffiti writing and the evolution of the London/UK scene as an example of a transplant of graffiti culture from the US. Understanding this background is relevant because it demonstrates that the graffiti rules described here are the product not only of a collection of individual justifications for how and why graffiti creativity ought to be protected within the subculture but that the rules also crystallise the practices of graffiti writers at the inception of the subculture. Graffiti history is necessarily a series of impressions dependent on imperfect documentation,² as indeed is any history. Therefore, the information from secondary sources is supplemented with observations from graffiti writers contained in the interview data.³

Defining Graffiti Writing (and Street Art)

The use of walls as a medium for artistic expression has a history that can be traced back thousands of years to the paintings in the Lascaux⁴ and Chauvet caves.⁵ An article on the metaphorical significance of walls to art published in 1979 (oblivious to the contemporaneous evolution of graffiti writing in Philadelphia and New York) argues that walls and other surfaces have also been used for political slogans⁶ and protest,⁷ declarations of love, hate speech and the marking of gang territory.⁸ These types of ‘graffiti’ are not relevant here. The remainder of this section considers the definition of graffiti writing vis-a-vis street art including highlighting the crucial element of graffiti culture: the tag.

This book distinguishes between graffiti writing and street art, a distinction drawn by many of the research participants. A major element of graffiti culture is the promulgation of a name, specifically tagging (writing a graffiti name). Tagging ‘encompass[es] place, style and purpose’.⁹ This goes to the heart of any definition of graffiti—and, as discussed below, distinguishes it from street art—because graffiti writing is a practice: the way the work is created and where it is placed are both crucial. It cannot be discussed simply in terms of its finished products: the ‘tag’, the ‘throw-up’ (usually a large, two-coloured rendering of the tag in block or bubble letters) or the ‘piece’ (large, complex work of many colours which may include figurative elements).¹⁰

Graffiti is usually created in urban public space. Its visibility in turn means that it affects communities rather than just the owners of a property on which graffiti is found.¹¹ As such it has some affinity with public art in the form of murals¹² but is different from artistic production commonly associated with the art market (ie works created to be sold). Graffiti writing and street art as it is understood today is the latest incarnation of the artistic drive to alter and decorate walls; to make the creator present in space. Yet with graffiti writing, it is not only walls but also trains that are important as surfaces. Train writing marked a shift away from the static medium of the wall to embrace the danger and movement of the train that took a writer’s name out of his/her neighbourhood and around the city (and later, between cities).¹³ Writing on trains remains the pinnacle of achievement for graffiti writers.¹⁴ Graffiti writing must therefore be considered as a point in a process of moving through the city to create works and, importantly, to create these works as part of a community of creators.

However, the lines between graffiti writing and street art are blurred. One participant referred to himself as a ‘Graffiti writer slash artist. Graffiti writer slash graffiti artist’ (Anon15). Broadly speaking, graffiti refers to the writing of letters while street art refers to more figurative work including stencils, paste ups (wheat paste posters) and large scale murals. Indeed, the earliest graffiti writers simply called themselves ‘writers’ and their work ‘writing’.¹⁵ The terms ‘graffiti writing’¹⁶ and ‘graffiti art’¹⁷ were rarely used. Participants in the fieldwork—the data largely consist of interviews—were hesitant to draw a bright line between graffiti and street art though the extent to which they were prepared to do so depended on the extent of their own identification as writers or artists. Graffiti writers who identified closely with the graffiti writing subculture tended to draw a clearer line, focusing on lettering and execution.¹⁸ Some writers identify specifically as taggers¹⁹ meaning that they exclusively, and often prolifically, write their names in their own, individual style.

Many of the participants recognized that the lines between graffiti and street art are blurred. While graffiti works are usually made free hand with a spray can and are composed of letters these works may well also include elements such as cartoon characters or pictorial representations of a kind that are common to street art which may also be made free hand with a spray can (but the practice also encompasses ordinary paint, stenciling, stickers and the like). A good example of this blurring (brought up by a few participants in interviews and in the course of informal discussions) is the London crew²⁰ Burning Candy. The crew combines a street art aesthetic with a graffiti sensibility. The crew—made up of several members²¹ each with their own distinct avatar including a trident, clothes peg, crocodile, owl and monkey face—take risks to create their works in difficult to reach places and so gain the respect of graffiti writers and crews for their daring and visibility. It is irrelevant in terms of the respect they gain that they also produce prints and participate in gallery shows. Although not, strictly speaking, writers since they usually use figures rather than letters, they might be described as ‘graffers’. As one writer put it:

[I]f you’re Burning Candy crew, those guys do shit super high up in the air what they call the heavens. … nine storeys up, gigantic, high-traffic, 24/7. I mean they’re real graffers, those guys live the graff life … (Anon20)

This suggests that graffiti writing is distinguished not only by the use of letters or its style but also how it is done: illegally, in dangerous yet visible places. Indeed alongside the writing of names, illegality, as the history and structure of the graffiti subculture demonstrates, is one of the defining aspects of graffiti practice and may explain why graffiti writers eschew copyright laws in favour of the internal regulation of their creativity. Furthermore, what the above interview excerpt suggests is that there is another element to the definition of graffiti—the authenticity that comes from the practice of creating graffiti—that cannot be evident from simply looking at the substance of the graffiti work. Of course much street art is also placed on walls without permission but the thrill associated with illegality does not appear to be a motivating concern.

Finally, both graffiti and street art are distinguished from what is commonly referred to as ‘public art’, for example, sculptures in public squares and parks.²² The academic discussion over public art is often concerned with how such art might represent the public.²³ By contrast, graffiti writing is discussed, inter alia, in terms of crime, marginality, the reclamation of space, or otherwise as a challenge to the aesthetic and/or social ordering of space.²⁴ This literature often acknowledges a wider social unease with graffiti writing (and less so with street art as Banksy’s continuing popularity indicates)²⁵ that has led to its close identification, in both political discourse and some case law relating to criminal damage with dirt, disorder and disease.²⁶

Origins of Graffiti Writing

There are a multitude of personal accounts of the origins of graffiti writing, most of which will never be known due to the ephemeral nature of the work and the anonymity of its creators. Still, graffiti history remains important for writers. As one participant put it:

Yeah, I don’t know, I wasn’t there. This is the funny thing … In the early 70s I wasn’t even born so I know about the 70s through documentation and my interpretation—and also you know the kind of, the rules handed down through generations of writers: that is how it was, this is how it should be. (Anon4)

This section provides an account of the historical development of graffiti writing from its origins in the 1960s in the US with a particular focus on the period of New York graffiti train writing in the late 1970s and early 1980s (since this period was referred to by numerous participants as significant). It then considers the transplantation of graffiti writing to other countries, specifically the UK. Attention is paid to the evolution of the London scene, including the distinction between old school and new school graffiti writers. This is important because identification as new or old sch...