Keeping it real? Subcultural graffiti, street art, heritage and authenticity

Abstract

This article considers the implications of framing subcultural graffiti and street art as heritage. Attention is paid to subcultural graffiti’s relationship to street art and the incompatibility of its traditions of illegality, illegibility, anti-commercialism and transience with the formalised structures of heritage frameworks. It is argued that the continued integration of street art and subcultural graffiti into formal heritage frameworks will undermine their authenticity and mean that traditional definitions of heritage, vandalism and the historic environment will all need to be revisited. The article contributes to the current re-theorisation of heritage’s relationship with erasure by proposing that subcultural graffiti should be perceived as an example of ‘alternative heritage’ whose authenticity might only be assured by avoiding the application of official heritage frameworks and tolerating loss in the historic environment.

Keywords:

• subcultural graffiti
• street art
• alternative heritage
• authenticity
• Banksy

Acknowledgements

The author would like to acknowledge the guidance and support offered by the editors of this special issue. Gratitude is also extended to those who organised and attended the Theoretical Archaeology Group 2011 Berkeley meeting session dedicated to graffiti and the archaeology of the contemporary, where an early version of this paper was presented. The author would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their critical and constructive feedback and advice.

Notes

1. The IKEA Punk as it became known eventually ended up for sale in the Keszler gallery (Corbett 2011).

2. A full photographic timeline of the Banksy–King Robbo battle can be viewed at http://www.ldngraffiti.co.uk/blog/banksyvsrobbo/timeline.html. [Last accessed 10 June 2014].