Three years in, Mayor Mike Duggan’s war on graffiti has yielded more than 50 arrests and $1.2 million in fines
With street art, “The grassroots — the authentic activity — gets sort of co-opted and tamed, and dressed up for mainstream consumption,” says Carducci from CCS.
And it becomes palatable for city government too. Recently, Detroit officials announced they would join the street art wave by investing $50,000 to commission local artists to paint murals throughout the city. The effort, however, is not intended to brighten up Detroit amid the dull buff, it is meant as a crime deterrent: Muralists will be relegated to the spots where the writers won’t quit.
And in this way, an art form that is an outgrowth of traditional graffiti has been turned into a weapon to fight it.
“If you were a situationist, you would say this is the recuperation of Detroit. If you were a real hipster, you would say Detroit is over,” says Carducci. “[Because] the thing that made Detroit interesting was the fact that there was so much freedom because there was no infrastructure, it was all DIY. For years it was all about what you could get done on your own.
“But it’s good to have the trash picked up, its good to have your lights on, it’s good to have the police come when you call them instead of waiting three hours. And so, maybe we gotta lose some of the authenticity to have peace of mind. I guess that’s the price we pay.” {read}