Yarn Bombing and the Aesthetics of Exceptionalism

Abstract

This essay analyzes the international discourses and practices of yarn bombing—affixing knitted and crocheted works on public objects. Yarn bombing has recently become a nearly universally celebrated form of street art. The authors argue that acclaim for yarn bombing fashions an aesthetic regime that situates guerrilla needlework as an exceptional contribution to the urban landscape, while simultaneously policing alternate expressions of public art. By examining how yarn bombing's privileged style is related to modalities of gender, race, class, and capital, the authors supplement scholarly understandings of the politics of exceptionalism by highlighting the sovereign work of aesthetics.

Keywords:

• Exceptionalism
• Aesthetics
• Graffiti
• Gender
• Race

Acknowledgements

They wish to thank Dan Brouwer, Cate Palczewski, Alex McVey, Scott Koslow, and Allison Schlobohm for their comments on this project.

Notes

[1] Connie Post, “Yellow Springs Gets Made Over with the Help of ‘the jafagirls,’” Dayton Daily News, September 16, 2012, LexisNexis Academic.

[2] “Guerilla Knitting in Leicester ‘To Reduce Crime Fear,’” BBC News, March 5, 2013, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-21659158.

[3] Leicester City Council, “Graffiti Tags,” http://www.leicester.gov.uk/your-council-services/cl/street-cleaning/graffiti-removal/tags/.

[4] Malia Wollan, “Graffiti's Cozy, Feminine Side,” The New York Times, May 19, 2011, LexisNexis Academic.

[5] “Library Knitting Groups Create Colourful Yarns for City Parks,” European Union News, July 31, 2012, LexisNexis Academic.

[6] Ellen R. Margulies, “Yarn bombing. Yay or nay?,” Timesunion.com, April 13, 2012, http://blog.timesunion.com/fiberarts/yarn-bombing-yay-or-nay/12989/.

[7] Similarly, Olek distinguishes her work as yarn art worthy of public attention, while yarn bombs as the “trite work of amateurs and exhibitionists.” See Wollan, “Graffiti's Cozy, Feminine Side.”

[8] Similarly, Olek distinguishes her work as yarn art worthy of public attention, while yarn bombs as the “trite work of amateurs and exhibitionists.” See Wollan, “Graffiti's Cozy, Feminine Side.”.

[9] Similarly, Olek distinguishes her work as yarn art worthy of public attention, while yarn bombs as the “trite work of amateurs and exhibitionists.” See Wollan, “Graffiti's Cozy, Feminine Side.”.

[10] Similarly, Olek distinguishes her work as yarn art worthy of public attention, while yarn bombs as the “trite work of amateurs and exhibitionists.” See Wollan, “Graffiti's Cozy, Feminine Side.”; Sebastian Smee, “Dave Cole Takes Knitting to New Heights,” Boston.com, December 25, 2009, http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2009/12/25/dave_cole_takes_knitting_to_new_heights/.

[11] “Web Spins a Compelling Yarn,” The Irish Times, January 14, 2012, LexisNexis Academic.

[12] Ed Power, “Knitty Gritty,” The Sunday Times, January 6, 2013, LexisNexis Academic.

[13] Janine Rankin, “Guerilla Knitters Strike Wild and Woolly,” The Evening Standard, August 23, 2012, LexisNexis Academic.

[14] Jessica Goldstein, “Tag, You're Knit,” The Washington Post, July 2, 2011, LexisNexis Academic.

[15] Roneisha Mullen, “Ohio Guerrilla Knitters Unravel Yarn Bombs as Art,” The Associated Press State & Local Wire, April 26, 2012, LexisNexis Academic; Keith Slater, Environmental Impact of Textiles: Production, Processes and Protection (Boca Raton, FL: Woodhead Publishing, 2003), 40–60.

[16] Jasbir K. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 9.

[17] Jasbir K. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 11.

[18] Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (New York: Routledge, 1993), 30.

[19] artinlove, “Yarn Bombing Alert!,” Art in Love Blog, May 19, 2011, http://artinlove.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/yarn-bombing-alert/.

[20] Dodai Stewart, “Crocheted Art and Yarn Bombing Inspire Fuzzy Feelings,” Jezebel.com, May 19, 2011, http://jezebel.com/5803581/crocheted-art--yarn-bombing-inspire-fuzzy-feelings.

[21] Dodai Stewart, “Crocheted Art and Yarn Bombing Inspire Fuzzy Feelings,” Jezebel.com, May 19, 2011, http://jezebel.com/5803581/crocheted-art--yarn-bombing-inspire-fuzzy-feelings.

[22] Dodai Stewart, “Crocheted Art and Yarn Bombing Inspire Fuzzy Feelings,” Jezebel.com, May 19, 2011, http://jezebel.com/5803581/crocheted-art--yarn-bombing-inspire-fuzzy-feelings.

[23] See, for example, Stuart M. Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Robert D. Johnson, The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question of Capitalism in Progressive Era Portland, Oregon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003); and Dror Wahrman, Imagining the Middle Class: The Political Representation of Class in Britain, c. 1780–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

[24] egrant, “Unusual Decorating Trend: Yarn Bombing Hits Colorado Springs Downtown,” Colorado Springs Arts Blog, June 17, 2011, LexisNexis Academic; and Danielle Wong, “Urban Bombers Blitz with Yarn,” The Hamilton Spectator, December 7, 2010, LexisNexis Academic.

[25] Art Mary Abbe, “Bombs Away,” Star Tribune, June 10, 2011, LexisNexis Academic; Power, “Knitty Gritty.”

[26] Beverley Skeggs, Class, Self, Culture (New York: Routledge, 2013), 3.

[27] Liam, “Yarn Bombing and Its Discontents,” Limited News, August 31, 2012, http://limitednews.com.au/2012/08/yarn-bombing-its-discontents/.

[28] Skeggs, Class, Self, Culture, 15.

[29] Post, “Yellow Springs.”

[30] Mullen, “Ohio Guerrilla Knitters.”

[31] Mullen, “Ohio Guerrilla Knitters.”.

[32] Danielle Wright, “Street Art Who-dun-knit?,” The New Zealand Herald, September 12, 2011, LexisNexis Academic.

[33] Sara Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 34.

[34] Smee, “Dave Cole Takes Knitting”; and Tyler Rudick, “The Heights Feel Good Yarn Art is Destroyed by a Vicious Old Woman,” Houston Culture Map, June 17, 2013, http://houston.culturemap.com/news/entertainment/06–17–13-the-heights-feel-good-yarn-art-is-destroyed-by-a-vicious-old-woman-vandal-this-happened/.

[35] Rudick, “The Heights Feel Good Yarn Art.”

[36] Kristin Tillotson, “Yarn Bombers Stitch Warm n’ Fuzzy Graffiti,” The Pantagraph, August 27, 2010, LexisNexis Academic.

[37] Mandy Moore and Leanne Prain, Yarn Bombing: The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2009).

[38] John Metcalfe, “Shoes Over Telephone Wires: This Probably Doesn't Explain It,” The Atlantic, April 4, 2012, http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2012/04/shoes-over-telephone-wires-probably-doesnt-explain-it/1669/.

[39] Alastair Pennycook, “Linguistic Landscapes and the Transgressive Semiotics of Graffiti,” in Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery, ed. Elana Shohamy and Durk Gorter (New York: Routledge, 2008), 307.

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[41] Scape Martinez, GRAFF: The Art & Technique of Graffiti (Cincinnati, OH: Impact, 2009), 71.

[42] Will Ellsworth-Jones, Banksy: The Man Behind the Wall (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2012), 37.

[43] Robert George Reisner and Lorraine Wechsler, Encyclopedia of Graffiti (New York: Macmillan, 1974), vi.

[44] James Ciment, Atlas of African American History (New York: Infobase Publishing, 2007), 232.

[45] brad, “Most Graffiti Writers Don't Become Some Cult Hero or Iconic Figure—They End Up in Jail: Mickael Broth's Gated Community,” RVA Mag Blog, September 20, 2013, http://rvamag.com/articles/full/22357/most-graffiti-writers-don%E2%80%99t-become-some-cult-hero-or-iconic-figure-they-end-up-i.

[46] Janice Rahn, Painting without Permission: Hip-Hop Graffiti Subculture (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002); and Roberto Pani and Samantha Sagliaschi, “Psychopathology of Excitatory and Compulsive Aspects of Vandalistic Graffiti,” Psychological Reports 105 (2009): 1027–1038.

[47] Hamilton Nolan, comment on “Graffiti Mecca 5Pointz Will be Demolished,” Gawker, comment posted on October 10, 2013, http://gawker.com/graffiti-mecca-5pointz-will-be-demolished-1443420624.

[48] Andrew Crisp, “Smart Bombs: Yarn Bombing Lacks the Stigma of Graffiti Art,” Boise Weekly, February 8, 2012, http://www.boiseweekly.com/boise/smart-bombs/Content?oid=2597615.

[49] Joleen Oshiro, “Trio Knit and Purl Fanciful Show,” The Honolulu Star-Advertiser, July 1, 2012, LexisNexis Academic.

[50] Wright, “Street Art.”

[51] Rodney D. Coates, Covert Racism: Theories, Institutions, and Experiences (Leiden, Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2011), 257.

[52] Crisp, “Smart Bombs.”

[53] Frijolera, “On Graffiti, Women of Color Writers, & Yarn Bombing,” Frijoliz Blog, January 1, 2013, http://frijoliz.tumblr.com/post/39435177037/on-graffiti-women-of-color-writers-yarn-bombing.

[54] Cheryl Rossi, “Vancouver Boy Offers Yarn Bombing Workshops,” Canwest News Service, October 9, 2012, LexisNexis Academic.

[55] “Council Says Sorry after Workman Removes Yarnbombs,” The Herald Express, July 26, 2012, LexisNexis Academic.

[56] Lisa Bachmayer, “Close Knit Crowd,” Portside Messenger, June 20, 2012, LexisNexis Academic.

[57] Nancy Macdonald, The Graffiti Subculture: Youth Masculinity and Identity in London and New York (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 63–93.

[58] Alexis Zimberg, “The Spray Can is Mightier than the Sword: Street Art as a Medium for Political Discourse in the Post-Soviet Region” (master's thesis, Georgetown University, 2012), iii.

[59] Barry Brummett, A Rhetoric of Style (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008), 55.

[60] Greg Tate, Everything but the Burden: What White People are Taking from Black Culture (New York: Random House, 2003).

[61] Thea Lim, “A Historical Guide to Hipster Racism,” Racialicious Blog, May 2, 2012, http://www.racialicious.com/2012/05/02/a-historical-guide-to-hipster-racism/. The term hipster should not be understood as an identity or individual, but rather as the logic of this mode of racism wherein the practitioner declares his or her ironic distance from racism.

[62] Billy Reid, White Chicks and Gang Signs, 1:32, YouTube Video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKTDRqQtPO8 (posted December 23, 2006).

[63] Talia Meer, “Die Antwoord—Are We Missing the Misogyny,” Thought Leader Blog, January 2, 2013, http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/taliameer/2013/01/02/die-antwoord-are-we-missing-the-misogyny/.

[64] Talia Meer, “Die Antwoord—Are We Missing the Misogyny,” Thought Leader Blog, January 2, 2013, http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/taliameer/2013/01/02/die-antwoord-are-we-missing-the-misogyny/.

[65] Tate, Everything but the Burden, 2–3.

[66] Mathew Hughey, “The Harlem Shake, Cultural Appropriation, and the Making of White Racial Identity,” mathewhughey.com Blog, March 11, 2013, http://www.matthewhughey.com/Index/Blog/Entries/2013/3/11_The_Harlem_Shake_and_Cultural_Appropriation.html.

[67] Mathew Hughey, “The Harlem Shake, Cultural Appropriation, and the Making of White Racial Identity,” mathewhughey.com Blog, March 11, 2013, http://www.matthewhughey.com/Index/Blog/Entries/2013/3/11_The_Harlem_Shake_and_Cultural_Appropriation.html; See also Gust A. Yep, “Pedagogy of the Opaque: The Subject of Whiteness in Communication and Diversity Courses,” in Whiteness, Pedagogy, Performance: Dis/Placing Race, ed. Leda M. Cooks and Jennifer S. Simpson (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), 89–90.

[68] Yep, “Pedagogy of the Opaque,” 90.

[69] Cornel West, “The New Cultural Politics of Difference,” in Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures, ed. Russell Ferguson, Martha Gever, Trin T. Minh-ha and Cornell West (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), 29.

[70] Andrew W. Neal, Exceptionalism and the Politics of Counter-Terrorism: Liberty, Security, and the War on Terror (New York: Routledge, 2009), 80.

[71] Giorgio Agamben, Means without End: Notes on Politics, trans. Cesare Casarino and Vincenzo Binetti (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 4.

[72] Ahmed, Promise of Happiness, 229.

[73] Puar, Terrorist Assemblages, 31.

[74] Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 181.

[75] Puar, Terrorist Assemblages, 31.

[76] Post, “Yellow Springs.”

[77] Michael Walsh, “Fla. Teen who Tagged Deserted McDonald's Dies after Cop Uses Taser,” NY Daily News, August 8, 2013, http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/fla-teen-tagged-deserted-mcdonald-dies-taser-article-1.1421818.

[78] Braden Goyette, “Miami Beach Police Officer Involved in Fatal Tasing of Israel Hernandez-Llach Put on Paid Leave: Report,” The Huffington Post, August 8, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/miami-beach-police-tasing-israel-hernandez-llach_n_3728962.html.

[79] Braden Goyette, “Miami Beach Police Officer Involved in Fatal Tasing of Israel Hernandez-Llach Put on Paid Leave: Report,” The Huffington Post, August 8, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/miami-beach-police-tasing-israel-hernandez-llach_n_3728962.html.

[80] Braden Goyette, “Miami Beach Police Officer Involved in Fatal Tasing of Israel Hernandez-Llach Put on Paid Leave: Report,” The Huffington Post, August 8, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/miami-beach-police-tasing-israel-hernandez-llach_n_3728962.html.