More Thoughts on Street and Skin: Interface for Resistance/Permanence
Abstract
Stemming from a long-standing interest in graffiti, street art, location-based media, and public modes of visual communication, and the relationship of individuals to their larger social fabrics, the writer finds a nuanced moment in London’s imagined community being represented on two urban surfaces: the street and the body. At the heart of this paper is a meditation on East London. Magnetic, dynamic, and densely populated with creative minds, East London will have left an indelible stain on the writer’s psyche not only by way of cultural inculcation, but for another, more subtle contribution to the formation of her own selfhood. This paper looks at visual resistance in urban space, the politics of the body, public expressions of self-reassertion, and the notion of “permanence” in a late capitalist society.
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Urban spaces are never neutral. They carry layers of cultural meaning, defined by the interplay between history and collective memory. The Berlin Wall and the Tacheles Kunsthaus serve as case studies in the struggle to define public space—between erasure and preservation, privatization and resistance. The Wall’s destruction symbolized liberation, but its partial preservation as a Denkmal (memorial) also imposed an enduring burden of memory. By contrast, the Tacheles—a former artists’ squat and countercultural hub—became a casualty of gentrification and privatization, with its closure marking the loss of one of Berlin’s last bastions of unregulated creative freedom.
These histories of contested space inform my meditation on East London, where gentrification and cultural resistance continue to clash in public art practices. This paper situates street art and tattooing as parallel forms of resistance—the former reclaiming the urban surface, the latter the human body—against the homogenizing forces of late capitalism.
Charles Baudelaire’s conception of the flâneur—a detached yet perceptive observer—remains a potent framework for understanding modern urban life. For Walter Benjamin, the flâneur navigates a city saturated with symbols and images, exploring the interplay between the individual and an increasingly commodified public sphere. In contemporary East London, street art transforms this passive spectatorial stance into active reclamation. Artists like Stik, ROA, and Shepard Fairey disrupt the monotony of corporate branding with works that demand both attention and reflection.
East London’s streets, with their palimpsest of tags, murals, and posters, embody what Benjamin described as the “collision of spaces.” The urban surface becomes a contested site where competing narratives—of art, commerce, and community—play out. In this collision, street art stakes a claim to public visibility, countering the privatization of urban life.
Street art’s value lies in its ephemerality and illegality. Unlike institutionalized public art, it resists commodification, offering fleeting but potent critiques of social and political issues. Works like Banksy’s *Slave Labour*, depicting a child sewing Union Jack bunting, expose the hypocrisies of consumer culture, while Stik’s minimalist figures convey profound vulnerability and solidarity. These interventions challenge the corporatization of public space by foregrounding marginalized voices.
Tattooing, like street art, operates as an interface between the individual and society. Anthropologist Enid Schildkrout describes the tattooed body as a site where boundaries—between self and other, past and present, inclusion and exclusion—are negotiated. Tattoos, much like graffiti, defy impermanence by inscribing identity onto a mutable surface.
In East London, the tattoo revival mirrors the resurgence of street art. Studios such as Sang Bleu fuse traditional techniques with avant-garde designs, pushing tattooing beyond subcultural aesthetics into the realm of high art. This parallels the evolution of graffiti into street art: both forms, once dismissed as vandalism or deviance, now command critical and commercial respect.
Tattoos and street art disrupt the capitalist obsession with transience by asserting permanence on impermanent surfaces. Yet their resistance to erasure also complicates their commodification. A tattooed body or a graffitied wall resists full assimilation into consumer culture, embodying what sociologist Dick Hebdige describes as “subcultural style”—a visible refusal to conform.
East London’s transformation following the 2012 Olympics parallels the gentrification of Berlin’s Mitte district. In both cities, the influx of wealth has sanitized once-vibrant creative spaces, replacing them with consumer-oriented landscapes. Yet street art persists as a form of resistance, reclaiming walls and alleyways as platforms for dissent.
Redchurch Street, once a hub of working-class industry, now epitomizes East London’s gentrification. Luxury boutiques and upscale eateries dominate the street, but its walls remain a living gallery. Works by artists like ROA’s animal murals and Ben Eine’s typographic interventions challenge the visual dominance of commercial signage, creating a dialogue between art and urban development.
Street art and tattooing reveal the ways individuals and communities navigate, resist, and reclaim spaces in a fragmented world. In East London, these practices challenge the commodification of identity and place, offering alternative visions of belonging and expression. As cities continue to grapple with the pressures of gentrification and privatization, the aesthetics of resistance remind us of the power of creative defiance to shape not only urban landscapes but also the stories we tell about ourselves.
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References
Baudelaire, Charles. *The Painter of Modern Life*.
Benjamin, Walter. *The Arcades Project*.
Chomsky, Noam. *Media Control*.
Hebdige, Dick. *Subculture: The Meaning of Style*.
Schildkrout, Enid. “Inscribing the Body.”
Vestergaard, Torben. “Language and Advertising.”
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Author’s Note: This is a pared down version of a longer essay from a few years ago on grasping at identity and urban mediums.