Public Art as Process: The Case for Permission Graffiti Spaces as Public Art Infrastructures

Responding to the provocation of this special issue of Public Art Dialogue—to investigate the relationship between graffiti, street art, and public art, I take up the case of a permission graffiti wall. Sitting uneasily between aesthetic traditions of rebellion and the tenuous space of communal agreement, it might not violate property laws as would unsanctioned tags down the road from the permission space, but it raises crucial questions about the challenges in public art serving as an infrastructure for public life, rather than an object in its midst. Scholarship on graffiti has indicated that it is a robust form of aesthetic and social practice that generates “spaces for encounter” and vibrant forms of dialogue between site, audience, and the often anonymous artist evidencing its role as a form of vernacular public art. This article builds on conflictual understandings of democracy, and argues that the permission wall requires that conceptualizations of public art make more room for process, disagreement, and ephemerality, core elements of graffiti culture and democratic aspirations. It builds on robust work in public art scholarship on the role of conflict and affect, in public art, as well as theorizations of permission graffiti, challenging “rupture”-based narratives of the movement.