The ‘Place to Be’ for Street Art Nowadays

is no Longer the Street, it´s the Internet

Abstract

The current practice of photographic presentation, documentation, circulation, reception and negotiation of street art (pictures) online leads to a reconfiguration of both the global and the local, and therefore, to new norms and power relations. This article discusses the reciprocal constitution of local street art practices and global art discourse, with special attention to the concept of location and placement. As will be shown, central photographers as well as bloggers and administrators of Facebook pages position themselves – and are positioned – as decisive experts, opinion makers and gatekeepers. By defining ‘the global view of individual cities,’ they significantly influence – and continuously reinforce – the formation of a somehow globally accepted street art canon. Whereas Facebook´s positively connoted real time stream emerged into some kind of ubiquitously present ‘street art monitoring system,’ a dominant lack of profound critique and far-sighted contextualization can be observed regarding the negotiation of street art and urban art festivals. These ‘trends,’ in the end, allude to more general questions addressing topics of the creative city, gentrification processes, urban policy and (de)centralized infrastructures. Subsequently, it becomes apparent that debates about spatial appropriation, advertising, legal restrictions, institutionalization, domestication, censorship, the quest for freedom and privacy as well as the questioning of hierarchies – which in the context of today´s street art remain tied to the framework of the physical city – must be transferred to the internet. The internet and its central nodes are places of decision making which inevitably display the current (infra)structures of power. Therefore, a possible future, decisive and consistent step for street artists might be to both reclaim the city and the internet.