Dispatches from Urban Acrobatics New York: The Panel Session

Yesterday we held our inaugural panel discussion, titled, "Interrogating Shared Histories: Publicity, Movement, and Spectacle in NYC Circus and Graffiti." It was held at the NoMAA (Northern Manhattan Art Alliance) Gallery. We had about twenty people with us, a mix of circus artists, graffiti artists, and other artists form the Northern Manhattan area. Although a range of issues were discussed, from the colorful aesthetic that both genres may share, the emphasis on movement, migration, and even being subject to public fear because of immigration/strangeness, ephemerality, and public stigma for being low-brow or "not art," another key theme emerged.

Polly Solomon, project co-organizer explained during her presentation: "I think what all artists can share is that you dance, tag, or circus, because you have to. Because you love it." She went on to explain that being an artist, particularly within an art community that does not receive much public funding or valorization, requires an intense commitment to one's craft, to such an extent that painting, dancing, or circus-ing is equivalent to breathing.

Ralph "Tatu Xmen" Perez recounted how when doing graffiti, particularly illegal work, one is taking one's life in their hands. Autumn, a circus artist in the audience later nodded, explaining that acrobats too risk their lives every day, for the love and the beauty of their craft. The XMEN crew, founded by TATU, who has been painting since 1979, is an island of misfit toys, a "Circus", that is a medley of ages and ethnicities. He further highlighted that graffiti has existed since the dawn of time and is tied a basic human need for expression.

David Carlyon explained how graffiti and circus share the paradox of the public and the private: both are public products but the doers behind the works are often "there...and then gone!" The phenomenon of there and then gone, he went on to explain, also perhaps underwrites some of the fear of both the circus and graffiti, because, as itinerant art forms, they seem strange, and historically, what is strange is often seen as dangerous. He emphasized how both practices threaten decorum: arms out of place, voices raised too high. Graffiti as visual noise, and circus as excessive and even mad movement, challenge the strictures of bourgeois respectability. In my framing speech I explained the rationale for this project, mentioned in the first post of this blog, as being about thinking about how graffiti as the visual analogue for breakdancing IS an aesthetic of movement, with a long history on the trains.

Finally, Carlos Dominguez Martinez/FEEGZ reminded us that even within subcultural histories there are layers of exclusion and forgetting. Playing a video of Phase 2, he pointed out that Washington Heights, which was the home of old school writers like Julio 204 and Taki 183, often get written out of histories of graffiti when Brooklyn and the Bronx become the focus. He further explained the relationship between hip hop and graffiti, noting that graffiti is the least commodified pillar of hip hop.

Marginality, movement, spectacle, and strangeness all emerged as key elements.

Thanks to the wonderful panelists, and our lively audience, for kicking off this project with such pomp and circumstance, and particularly NoMAA, for hosting us.