Who’s streets, our streets: the evolution of street asphalt art and the transformation of liminal spaces for social change

ABSTRACT

The betwixt and in-between spaces in urban environments help define the zeitgeist. In transforming liminal spaces into memorials, public art provides an opportunity to assert the voice of the people and helps to catalyze social change. In recent years, the informal and formal claiming of urban liminal spaces has been central to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. This article explores the use of informal placemaking and how claiming liminal space can lead to transformative social reactions for sustained social change in subtle and direct ways. By situating asphalt art within the cultural activism literature where “art, activism, performance, and politics meet, mingle and interact” (Verson, 2007, p. 172), one of the roles of asphalt art can be understood. Existing scholarship in this area “has focused on the role of creative practices such as culture jamming, subversion, public art, performance, and rebel clowning” (Buser et al., 2013, p. 606). This article considers the relationship between asphalt art’s creative praxis in the processes of urban placemaking and how meaning is constructed in urban space that presents opportunities for new political, social, and cultural dialogues to resonate the causes some liminal spaces represent that bring activities and existing narratives that develop new civic narratives.

KEYWORDS:

• Liminal spaces
• placemaking
• asphalt art
• activism

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Hector Vasquez, Jason Rouleau, and The District of Columbia for their contributions to this scholarly manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).