The upcoming Interventionist Guide to Melbourne show has given me plenty of time to think about the role artists play in our society and how much art is constrained by our economic system.

Any artist that spends more than five minutes thinking about the world around them will be aware of the effect gentrification has on their lives.  But it seems very few really understand how it works.  I see far too much art around me – especially street art – that plays into the hands of the gentrifiers.

I was gonna write a big rant on this but instead I URGE you to download and listen to this episode from the Renegade Economists instead.  It sums up so brilliantly the economics behind why artsists are just pawns in the speculators profit game.

What really frustrates me is when I see really brilliant creative minds who go cap in hand to the land lords asking for good deals on rent for creative spaces when really it should be the other way around.  Especially if you think about how much value artists contribute to communities.  Or arguably even worse is when artists set themselves the task of ‘prettying up’ a decaying suburb.  Rather than questioning why there’s row after row of boarded up shops, they just go and paint pictures on them.  The owners freakin love it, I assure you.

There are countless examples of how artists move into a run down area, get cheap rent, make the place awesome and desirable and then get priced out of the area when the speculators cash in on their efforts.

The question I have to ask is, as artists when are we going to educate ourselves on these issues and collectively stand up against it?

Rent is one of the reasons we started the Craft Cartel.  We wanted to create a market space for crafters who were doing truly interesting things.  It was apparent to us that so many crafters were making stuff that was palatable for the retail sphere not out of desire but out of need.  There’s no point making stuff unless you know for sure someone is going to buy it, especially if your craft is a major source of income.  And if you want to sell your stuff in shops the pressure is even greater as the shop owners have such massive overheads.  Especially rent.

So we made a real concerted effort to have super low stall fees at our markets because we wanted people to be able to have a space to bring the really crazy stuff.  The political stuff, the kooky stuff and the stuff that really makes you squirm..

It’s very much a labour of love for us.  The stall fees went to covering the costs of the market but didn’t go near covering our costs to organise and promote.  But the payment was in the fantastic community that arose out of it.  We had sellers say to us that they loved coming to our markets, not to make money but to have a great time!  So as far as we were concerned, it was a raving success.

So it really gets me going when I know that crafters are busting their asses to make sustainable, interesting, awesome things and there’s so many people out there sitting around trying to figure out how to make money off them.  Be it stupidly expensive markets, yet another bloody internet marketplace or (what really makes my skin crawl) advertising space – we even rip each other off!

It is the monopoly capitalist system that makes it so hard for makers.  Yet it’s so rare that we sit down AS MAKERS and use our creative skills to come up with new ways of doing things.

But sometimes people do. And I want to pay massive respects to those people.

If you want some inspiration or some more info I recommend you check out some of these resources:

• Community Land Trusts – a bloody good working example of reformed local economics
• I Want To Live Here – Born to Rent – win $3000 by making a short film about gentrification. And there’s some good writing about gentrification on that site. Especially check out the blog.
• The Antagonist Movement – just discovered this NY crew and LOVE!  Actually gives me a reason to want to visit that fine city..  What really pressed my buttons was this short doco I found on Wooster Collective. It’s brilliant.  Watch.

The Antagonist Art Movement – For Dummies from Anthony Ferraro on Vimeo.

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Not only are the big banks getting free handouts from the state but petrol stations in LA are getting free PR help!

Genius

props: Wooster Collective

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You’d expect an outpouring of indignant outrage that someone could take the life of a young man over something so minor as small scale property damage. Maybe a public reaction similar to the virtual lynching of Junior Bailey Kurariki? No instead this man received generous helpings of media and public sympathy.

Sympathy for taking a life?

A few months down the track, The Wellingotn Police have jumped on the ‘tagging is the root of all evil’ bandwagon. They have decided to add a layer to the standard clean up duty punishment handed out to taggers. Now when a young kid gets caught scrawling his name on something he will be doing clean up in a bright pink jacket with TAGGER written on it.

Yes, the comparisons have already been made to Nazi Germany and the pink triangles homosexual people were forced to wear. And when the Police representative says “It was no reflection on anyone’s sexuality, it’s a loud colour,” I say ‘bullshit.”

Of course they chose pink because it brings along the homophobic peer pressure shame associations that all boys growing up know extremely well. If the Police claim that they didn’t think that was the first issue that would be raised, then they really are thicker than we already thought.

One of the biggest issues that young men deal with in New Zealand is bullying and the pressure to conform to a very white, sporty, straight, blokey, drinking culture. Sadly, too many of our young men don’t find ways of dealing with this pressure and this is one of the major contributors to our shameful teenage suicide rate.

The whole issue of tagging is symptomatic of a wider issue faced by all young people in New Zealand and that is a complete refusal by older generations to attempt to see the world from their perspective.

Wanna know why kids tag? ‘Cause they’re bored.

Wanna stop them from doing it? Give them something better to do.

It’s not fucking rocket science.

Everywhere on the planet where councils, communities, governments or whatever support street-based graffiti art programs see reductions in ‘illegal’ graffiti. EVERYWHERE. And they don’t cost very much. Certainly not as much as the price of housing a convicted murderer for a year…

And the benefits can be enormous. If you get some experienced graffiti artists with a bunch of kids, a pile of spraycans and a sanctioned space, the kids not only learn some decent skills and some basic behaviour codes. But they get to experience making a positive contribution to their community, learn new skills and all the other positive flow on effects of working in a group on a collective task.

Of course, we know it can also lead on to bigger and brighter things. People are now selling property at premium prices because it has Banksy art on it. Obviously the extreme example, but there’s a huge amount of people making a decent income from street art both commercially and as gallery artists.

I have so had enough of this issue. I think it’s time we start speaking out against this ‘community opinion’ that thinks tagging is such a hideous crime it is comparable with rape. Tagging is only a minor misdemenor and the biggest crime, in my opinion, is a lack of artistic skill.

I have spraypaint on the wall out the front of my house and sure it bothers me. But not as much as the fact that only 15% of women feel confident enough in the Police force to report a rape.

As a way of speaking out on this issue, I decided to cross stitch it.

And if you want to make one like this here’s the pattern for the text. Be as creative as you can.

Love and rage
xox

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The most obvious is turning plastic bags into even better plastic bags and the proliferation of fused and knitted/crocheted grocery bags out there is very heartening. A friend of mine has even made an entire lace curtain out of crocheted plastic.

But this tops all of that.

These plastic bag animals are tied to subway grates in New York. When the train goes underneath they act just like Marilyn’s skirt.

That’s clever street art. The world needs more of it.

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