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Barthel, Jennifer. "The Perceptions of Graffiti in Ottawa: An Ethnographic Study of an Urban Landscape ." Agora: Online Graduate Humanities Journal. 1.2 (Spring 2002). [Printed on: ]
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Copyright © 2001 -2002 - Maximiliaan van Woudenberg - All rights reserved - ISSN 1496-9580

For every form of visual culture there exists a writer or artist and reader or audience. What makes street graffiti so different from many forms of visual culture is that the production of the image is unauthorized and in most circumstances unwanted by the viewer. Its location and context are unconventional. Graffiti challenges and crosses the conventional physical boundaries established for individual social expression and aesthetic experience. Individual social commentary is usually confined to personal space while the aesthetic experience has traditionally been reserved for a gallery or museum setting. By relocating these social activities, graffiti puts into question the perceived physical and social order of society.
The origins of contemporary graffiti can be traced back to the isolated emergence of street graffiti in New York City in the 1970s. With increased media attention and the popularisation of hip-hop culture, graffiti became one of the hottest cultural products of cold war America. By the early 1990s, many tags and pieces could be found in cities throughout Europe and the rest of the western world[1].
>From New York to Amsterdam, Paris to Japan, graffiti has been treated by many as a symptom of the urban experience and as a result, it has been transformed from the street into a variety of institutional frameworks. Academically, graffiti has been deconstructed and theorised with a multitude of disciplines. As a result of its interrogation with multiple disciplines, and in conjunction with its widespread presence around the world, graffiti has become a vernacular term in western contemporary culture. But as sociologist Jane Gadsby explains in her book Looking at the Writing on the Wall, the terminology used to study graffiti is "imprecise" and in particular, the term graffiti has come to mean "all wall writings, pictures, markings on any kind of surface for whatever reasons" (Gadsby 2).
For the purpose of this paper, graffiti is understood as the drawings and markings created in the style associated with illegal spray-can images, which evolved from the New York style of graffiti of the 1970s. This graffiti takes place in the public space of the city street and is generally created by young people who identify themselves as "writers." I do not focus on other forms of graffiti often referred to as Latrinalia: bathroom graffiti; freight art: freight train graffiti; or political or hate graffiti.
I am concerned with the production and management of graffiti in the city of Ottawa. I have selected this city for a number of reasons. Firstly, Ottawa has been my home for the last 6 years, over which time I have observed an increased presence of graffiti in the down-town core. Secondly, Ottawa is the Capital of Canada. As a result, a great priority is placed on the appearance of the city. Thirdly and most importantly to Canadian Studies, studies of graffiti have tended to focus on its American contexts with very little attention directed at Canadian graffiti. That said, the arguments I am presenting herein should not be applied to other urban centres in Canada without conducting additional studies in these settings although I hope that they are none the less relevant to readers outside of Ottawa.
Through ethnographic study in the Ottawa region, my aim is to identify particular perceptions of graffiti that are expressed in contrasting discourses surrounding the subject. In order to identify these perceptions and their associated discourses I have conducted interviews with members of two distinct groups of people who are participants in a growing public debate about graffiti in the capital region of Ottawa. The first of these groups includes city employees, councilmen as well as concerned citizens who form the basis of what I am calling the "community of control"[2]. The members of this group share a conceptualisation of graffiti that is expressed through what I am calling the "official discourse" on graffiti. In contrast to this discourse, is the perspective on graffiti expressed by graffiti writers in the region. I have termed their conceptualisations the "graffiti discourse" and I call this group the "community of creators." As I will elaborate later, this community of creators also has characteristics of a subculture as the concept of subculture has been conceptualised in critical cultural studies, such as Dick Hebdige"s Subculture the Meaning of Style and Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subculture in Post War Britain edited by Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson[3]. Discourse analysis has revealed evidence of the polarities of perception that exist regarding the cultural production of graffiti in Ottawa. This paper will now present some of the findings that emerged through the interrogation of these discourses.
The long-standing image of the city of Ottawa has been aligned with a bureaucratic view of the capital of Canada. Clean, orderly, and safe, the capital is a favourite destination of business travellers and tourists alike and is often seen by the rest of Canada as a orderly, pretty, government town guided by the patriarchal tradition of the federal government. That is to say, I am arguing here that a widespread image of the city of Ottawa is one that parallels its image as the nation"s capital. For example we can see this in the case of the capital region"s municipal logo of "Clean and Green and Proud" whereby fundamental elements of the national image are embraced as the defining elements of the city"s municipal image. The city of Ottawa has clearly appropriated what I call here "a privileged urban aesthetic."
But while the city of Ottawa identifies with this privileged urban aesthetic of a clean and safe capital of Canada, its visual manifestations of graffiti are clearly not consistent with this aesthetic. Rather, the presence of graffiti is seen as unnatural and threatening to the community of control. The resulting power struggle over what is legitimate for Ottawa"s urban landscape fundamentally revolves around what urban anthropologist John Rennie Short refers to as "the meaning of the city: what it represents, what it could represent and what it should represent" (Short 390). I am arguing here that graffiti and its associated discourses are sites of political and ideological struggle[4]. As Dick Hebdige writes in Subculture: the Meaning of Style, "the struggle between discourses is a struggle for the possession of a sign"(Hebdige 18). In this case, the sign is the city street: the visual aesthetic of the urban landscape. Both the community of control and the community of creators understand how the aesthetic of the urban landscape is imperative for the identification of a place. However, these two groups conceptualise the value of graffiti in this aesthetic in very different ways.
I will first consider the community of control whose members believe that graffiti threatens their ideal of the privileged urban aesthetic. Indeed, members of this group have responded by promoting an official discourse that perceives graffiti as a form of pollution and an indicator of danger.
Exploiting western societies known concern with dirt and decay, the community of control has raised the public"s awareness of graffiti through their conceptualisation of it as a form of pollution that is attempting to contaminate the city of Ottawa. However, in her book, Purity and Danger, anthropologist Mary Douglas explains that "there is no such thing as absolute dirt" (Douglas 1) and I agree with her view that dirt and the degree of its existence lies in the "eye of the beholder" (Douglas 1). An association of graffiti with dirt and decay is therefore not necessarily held by all members of a society. In Ottawa, this association is clearly held by members of the community of control for whom graffiti is "dirty" and "disgusting"[5]. For them graffiti is a form of pollution that tarnishes their urban aesthetic. The moral implications of contaminating one"s environment including someone else"s private property, links their official discourse on graffiti with a call for a public response.
Therefore, the removal of graffiti from unapproved and inappropriate locations in the city is integral to their privileged urban aesthetic. This is both the physical and ideological removal, a cleaning up, a scouring off of dirt from the city street. For them the elimination of graffiti from the surface of the city is not a negative movement. Rather, the elimination of pollution is in Mary Douglas" words "a positive effort to organise the environment" (Douglas 2). By ordering the environment in a way that removes the pollution that is graffiti, these Ottawa citizens are making the environment of the city "conform to an idea" (Douglas 1). This idea is based on the privileged urban aesthetic of the capital of Canada as it is enforced by the community of control. I would argue that this depiction of graffiti as pollution is adopted in an effort to shore up the lines of order and clarify the legitimacy of the urban aesthetic as a reflection of the city versus a counter image of Ottawa as an arena of personal expression for members of a youth subculture.
The second image of graffiti that completes the official discourse held by the community of control is the perception of graffiti as inherently dangerous: an indicator of deviance as it is understood by cultural theorist Howard Becker in his book Outsiders. Like the inscription of graffiti as pollution, this conceptualisation is also manufactured by those in positions of authority who stress the illegal and dangerous nature of graffiti.
They do this by associating graffiti, specifically tagging, with criminally organised gangs. Moreover they assert that two forms of graffiti, namely tags and pieces are created by a disenfranchised youth ready to strike back at society at any time. Having conducted interviews with the producers of graffiti in Ottawa, I have concluded that graffiti is not always an element of gang warfare or their markings of territorial possession. Through the adoption by the community of control of a language that repeatedly refers to "gangs," "destruction," "senseless," "violent," "angry," "isolated," "youth" it is obvious that what has occurred is a relocation of knowledge and experience from other urban centres, specifically the United States, to Ottawa"s community of control. Through the association of Ottawa graffiti with gangs, the community of control is able to associate graffiti with danger and deviance.
Graffiti writers, like youth subcultures elsewhere, are seen by the community of control as "active agents of social breakdown" (Hall and Jefferson 72). A transformation occurs as a result. Graffiti is no longer only a nuisance to business owners, but also fundamentally effects the order of the city, scaring stay-at-home parents, park users and children coming home from school. As this understanding of graffiti grows within the wider citizenry, it becomes less and less obvious that the origin of this perception lies in the ideologically motivated agenda of the community of control, which is to protect their desired aesthetic of the city of Ottawa.
But graffiti writers struggle to combat this control of public space. And as they do so, the presence of graffiti in Ottawa continues to increase. The graffiti writers understand that the privileged aesthetic of the community of control is sustainable only through the defamation of graffiti and its producers. Not long after Ottawa city-councilmen Alex Cullen announced via every media imaginable that the city was at "war with graffiti," writers from Ottawa responded with a campaign of their own. After many tedious hours of production, hundreds of stickers were affixed to numerous surfaces in the down-town core. The stickers asked "What war?" It would seem that Ottawa's graffiti writers are contesting the desire and ability of the community of control to sustain the privileged urban aesthetic. I would suggest that fundamental to the graffiti discourse as expressed by Ottawa's graffiti writers is the admiration of graffiti for its (inherent) utility. That is for them, graffiti transforms the city into a colourful reflection of the community that serves to unite youth in the city, and allows them to use graffiti to gain a sense of self-awareness and empowerment.
The urban aesthetic that is both desired and advocated by graffiti writers is one in which the citizens of the city can appreciate their ingenuity and artistic creativity; where authority is not threatened by dedicated and organised youth. While the privileged urban aesthetic is one that can be defined using words like "clean," "maintained," "predictable," "private" and "ordered" graffiti writers share a belief that words like "free," "creative," "harmonious," "competitive," and "highly stylised" should inform their own vision of an urban landscape.
The discourse of graffiti writers then, conceives of city streets as public space. Graffiti writers themselves understand their own existence in Ottawa as an inherent element of the urban landscape. Graffiti is meant to be seen on private walls in public spaces. Since fame can only be rewarded through exposure, the city will always be the basis of their style. For them the city is their rightful place; it is the only stage upon which they have roles to play out. Therefore it is the understanding of the writers that an urban aesthetic can only exist with the inclusion of graffiti. Their exclusion from the privileged urban aesthetic is seen as illegitimate. I would argue that graffiti writers in the city are attempting to address the exclusionary nature of the privileged urban aesthetic and have formed a subculture as a result.
As a subculture, graffiti writers in Ottawa are organised around distinct values and beliefs not generally held by members of the dominant culture. As I have already suggested, these values and beliefs contribute to their oppositional conceptualisation of an urban aesthetic. In their opinion, the community of control has confused the "breaking of rules with the absence of rules" (Hebdige 92). As my interviews with members of the subculture have revealed, graffiti writers do have a system of organized production that is governed by a number of rules of engagement. These rules determine the norms and standards by which an individual writer is judged by his peers; they guide the aesthetic boundaries of production; they demarcate rules of engagement regarding the selection of location and the hierarchical nature of crew organization[6]. The internal structure of the graffiti subculture is characterized by extreme orderliness (Hebdige 113). It is through this ordered structure that the graffiti writers are able to make sense of their world.
Subcultural theory has traditionally argued that a subculture"s expression and resolution of the contradictions in a society is magical or somehow symbolic (Hall and Jefferson, 66). However, I believe that the resolution evoked by the production of graffiti in Ottawa is not only symbolic, but also has a material effect on the visual nature of Ottawa's urban landscape. Graffiti writers transform the image of the city in a way that more accurately reflects the alternative visions of its constituent groups. Although the adequacy of this transformation is limited by the length of time graffiti is left up in the city, graffiti has the potential to challenge the taken for granted nature of the privileged urban aesthetic which I submit, it attempts to subvert.
What also enables the subculture of graffiti to continue to exist in Ottawa is the material effect that its production has on resolving issues for the youth that create it. I do not believe that these issues have remained the same for the new generation of Canadian writers as they were for the "original" subcultural innovators from New York. For graffiti writers in Ottawa, the subcultural style of graffiti has become a tool by which they are able to gain a personal sense of accomplishment, pride, fame and adventure. But more importantly, graffiti has taken on a new meaning and use in the context of the city of Ottawa. The subcultural style of graffiti has become the way through which young, white, men are able to actualise their own presence in a city of their own design[7].
To conclude, I turn to sociologist and cultural critic Janet Wolff who states that "to demonstrate the origins of a judgement is not to comment on its truth" (Wolff 17). Through my investigation of the production and management of graffiti in Ottawa I have uncovered some of the relations of power and perception that are at work in the public space of the city street. The degree of variance that appears between the two discourses I have discussed in this paper indicates that truth is in fact contingent. Through language "truth" is merely learned and reinforced by a community of others and later entrenched into perspectives guided by certain values and norms. Graffiti is a physical embodiment of the tensions that arise between differences in perception. By looking at graffiti in this way, we are able to illustrate the idiosyncratic quality of perception as it is played out in the shared environment of an urban landscape.

Works Cited

Becker, Howard. Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: The Free Press, 1963.

Blundel, Valda. Changing Perspectives in the Anthropology of Art. Ottawa: The Golden Dog Press, 2000.

Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger. London: Routledge, 1966.

Gadsby, Jane. Looking at the Writing on the Wall: A Critical Review and Taxonomy of Graffiti Texts. Online Resource: www.graffiti.org/faq/critical.review.html.

Hall, Stuart and Tony Jefferson. Eds. Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subculture in Post War Britain. London: Hutchinson, 1976.

Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: the Meaning of Style. New York: Routledge, 1979.

Short, J.R. The Urban Order: An Introduction to Cities, Culture and Power. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1996.

Thronton, Sarah. Ed. The Subcultural Reader. London: Routledge, 1997.

Wolff, Janet. Aesthetics and the Sociology of Art. Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1993.

Endnotes:

[1] Tag refers to a writer"s signature with marker or spray paint. A piece refers to a graffiti painting, usually consisting of more than one colour and dimension. It is short for masterpiece. [Back]

[2] In regard to the community of control, I am making reference to the authority or the potential ability to exert authority that is characteristic of their positions in the city. [Back]

[3] See also The Subcultural Reader edited by Sarah Thornton. [Back]

[4] I am referring to ideology in its critical sense. See Valda Blundel"s "critical and restricted working" definition of ideology as "the ideas of the dominant class or group which are promoted as universal but work against the interest of the subordinate groups" (Blundel 67) informed by John B. Thompson"s work, Studies in the Theory of Ideology. [Back]

[5] Quoted from interviews that I conducted with Paul McCann, Coordinator of the Community Pride Program for the city of Ottawa and Ottawa City Councilman Alex Cullen respectively. Councilor Cullen. [Back]

[6] Crew is the term used to describe a social organization of graffiti writers. Members of a crew are selected based on shared philosophy and style. They produce pieces together and are also responsible for supporting and improving the reputation of the crew. [Back]

[7] No female graffiti writers participated in the interviews or co-operated in this study. There are very few female graffiti writers in Ottawa. Graffiti in general, remains largely a male-dominated subculture. [Back]

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