Speculating on (the) urban (of) art: (un)siting street art in the age of neoliberal urbanisation

Abstract This paper addresses the current co-optation of street art into an uncritical aesthetic supplement to the process of neoliberal urbanisation, by focusing on its unresolved relation with its own site. This is done in three steps. First, via a perambulating immersion into the complexity of a specific site. Second, via a critical engagement with the form and politics of contemporary street art. Third, via a strategic speculation on the relation between the notions of art, urban and site. Street art’s current impasse, I argue, paradoxically depends on its incapacity to become properly urban. A urban-specific street art, I contend, is not a decorative veneer nor an enchanting disruption to dramatic processes of urbanisation: it is a force-field in which these processes are made visible, experienceable, and thus called into question. The ‘Olympic’ works of JR and Kobra in Rio de Janeiro, and the iconoclastic performance by Blu in Berlin, are used to illustrate and complement the argument.

摘要
本文聚焦街头艺术（street art）与其所属场地（site）尚未厘清的关联问题，探讨当前街头艺术被不加批判地收编为新自由主义城市化（neoliberal urbanisation）进程中非批判性美学补充的现状。本文的论证分为三个步骤：首先，通过沉浸式漫步考察特定场地的复杂肌理；其次，对当代街头艺术的形式与政治意涵展开批判性审视；最后，就艺术、城市与场地三者的概念关系进行策略性推演。本文认为，街头艺术当前的发展困境悖论性地源于其无法真正成为契合城市属性的艺术形态。本文进一步主张，契合城市特质的街头艺术，绝非装饰性的饰面，亦非对剧烈城市化进程的迷人式干扰，而是一种力场——在此场域中，城市化进程得以被显现、被感知，进而受到质疑。文中以里约热内卢的JR与Kobra所创作的"奥运主题"作品，以及布鲁（Blu）在柏林的颠覆性创作实践为例，对本文核心论点予以佐证与充实。