10:
On top of an insane workload as of late I have been dealing with a crazy incident of Council Censorship – An event that has just snowballed beyond my expectations, becoming far more political than I would have ever thought possible. My phone has been ringing nonstop, twitter going crazy, lots of media interest – some great, most pretty misguided. So I decided it was time to write a post about the experience and my thoughts about this whole insane situation.
Firstly, the incidents as they happened:
Last Monday Component from Cut Collective turned up at my studio to tell me about the contractors painting out a mural site I have painted and maintained since 2001. I left my studio immediately and drove up to the wall to speak with the contractors, just to grasp how this had come to be. They were nice polite guys, both a little shocked that they were ordered to remove this mural and had actually thought it must be a mistake. I was told that it was due to a complaint from the owner as apparently the wall was illegally done. They said Tony Capton had made the call and it had maybe come from higher up. I was shocked to hear this, I new it was likely a mistake as although I wasn’t certain at the time whether the tenant I got permission from was the landlord or not – I was curious to investigate and find out conclusively.
I approached the KBA amongst other people in hope they could find answers quickly and learned that neither the tenant or landlord was that thrilled about the wall being painted grey – as well as neighbouring business owners and people in the community. In frustration I called upon Len Brown via twitter to give an explanation. After many other people joined in and demanded answers Len Brown replied and eventually made an apology. He informed me that his council officers would be making contact and sorting out a solution. I was happy with this outcome, it seemed like an unlikely victory and I was optimistic about working together with the council to put a new work up on the wall.
Barbara From the KBA was approached and ended up in a discussion with Council on my behalf about fixing the situation. Rob Shields, the council graffiti prevention officer somehow became involved and had prior to the meeting taken steps to contact the landlords – convincing them that he should ‘Project manage’ the creation of a replacement mural. Barbara could see no other alternative as far as dealing with them at this stage and opted to discontinue her involvement from there.
I was made aware of Rob’s involvement and voiced my disapproval. I have an interesting past with Rob Shields to say the least – to most that should be obvious considering who I am, what I do and who he is. I don’t care to delve into all the details at this stage other than to say that since I refused to be under his thumb about 9 years ago he has made it his mission to sabotage and interfere with a raft of positive projects I have worked on and also employed divide and conquer tactics to tarnish the reputations of myself and others in the graffiti scene. Needless to say – I don’t work with Rob Shields – Principally I have to consider it working with the enemy.
After John Brunton, the current tenant appeared in the Central leader voicing his disapproval of the mural’s removal, I approached him to have a discussion about proceeding with a new mural with no council involvement – a request he put to the landlords on my behalf.
I was phoned today, the 10th of March by John and told that the landlords were working with Rob Shields in selecting artists to paint a suitable mural which the council would pay for as an apology and if I wanted to be considered for the job I needed to submit concept sketches by next week. I was also told that there could be no ‘signatures’ or ‘names’ featured in the new work. Interesting request considering the work I specialise in and am known primarily for right?
So here’s the underlying problem with this whole scenario:
1. Firstly and most importantly – this is a council created problem. That is both initially and in the solution offered. Big pile of unnecessary drama made created by the council. There was no problem in the way it was before, in fact far from it.
2. The council removed this mural illegally.
3. I have painted and maintained this mural site for around a decade, since world renown, German artist Can Two’s first visit in 2001. A friend of mine worked at the bar, and she asked the previous owner who said yes. Whether she got permission from the landlords is not something I can confirm for certain but obviously there was no objection to the work we were ding as we painted murals there consistently for 10 years – often there for several days at a time.
4. The Murals have all been painted from the artists own pockets – never to a specific brief but to always to a high standard. On the odd occasion, the previous tenant gave me a small amount of money and almost always a tray of soft drinks for the troops while we worked on the wall.
5. The site has become iconic for having some of the best graffiti work around the K-Rd area and has been photographed, used as backdrops for film and TV and has over the years featured work from a host of amazing international and local artists.
6. Rob Shields is the graffiti prevention officer – he should not given the opportunity to dictate the content of the new work when he has an obvious prejudice against art of this style and also against the artists themselves.
7. No other artist should be considered in contention for the job painting the replacement mural. This is disrespectful and shows how little understanding of public art the council have. The work that was removed was painted mostly by me and not really with the financial support from nor objection of the landlords it seems strange to gift the landlords a new mural when the only people robbed of anything are myself and the other artists – the landlords have been indifferent to the issue all along so really they likely wouldn’t have made any noise about this hadn’t I and likeminded people in the community brought it to the attention of Len Brown.
8. The ‘no signatures’ angle is very typical of Rob Shields statements in media about stamping out ‘name-based fame’ in public art. It seems hard for me to fathom this decision has not been influenced by him.
9. Council funded murals deemed as ‘acceptable’ by Rob Shields are generally awful in my opinion. Take a look at the atrocious mural work near the New Market station and the putrid historic city-scape at the Boston road station for example. Neither of these paintings could be deemed as current, compelling or particularly well executed for that matter. One of my only dealings with Rob Shields on a mural project he had us paint people mowing lawns. I am not kidding.
10. The last mural was painted over three 12-16 hour days. It was painted during the middle of winter and into the night – sometimes even the early hours of the morning. Around 80 spray cans were used and it was exhaustive and time consuming as we broke a lot of new ground with this painting. For that reason this work was also of sentimental value, although we would have liked to have done an update this year to keep it fresh.
11. The council and Landlords both neglect to understand the merit of my work and the reason this site was well respected was primarily because of it’s integrity. The fact that it was done without any influence outside of what myself and friends wanted to paint was why it was so good. The idea of ‘historical themed murals’ may seem like a way to please a broader group of people but realistically most locals are discerning enough to see through that. This is also not reflective of the people of K-Rd, maybe a conservative neighbourhood. K-Rd is edgy and our local area – we are well known characters and frequent the local cafes and shops. Everyone knows us around there.
12. The idea of the council rewarding other artists for painting a mural they deem as ‘acceptable’ when the only people wronged as far as I can see are the artists and the community is despicable. Especially when I have offered to paint the new mural for free without their involvement. The landlords could remain indifferent, the tenants can be happy with a new work on the side of their premises, I can continue having a platform to do cutting edge pieces with no council influence and the local community can remain happy – problem solved.
There’s a lot more I want to say about this. I’m shocked, pretty mad, disappointed and feel more disillusioned with bureaucracy than ever before. What can I do? It’s been depressing enough seeing the whole city systematically painted grey in preparation for the Rugby World Cup – but it extending to this level is sad. I think the vision for this city is something that extends beyond a right of bureaucrats and politicians – it’s a right we all share. I thank everyone that has been vocal and supportive through this and hope it can be the catalyst of for change and inspiration for us all to make noise when we feel local government lose sight of what’s right for the areas of the city we inhabit.
02:
It’s the start of November and we are now officially one Auckland – the Supercity is now in effect. Taking the train or walking around the city and seeing the mis-coloured patches of buff where the writers names used to be certainly feels like a funeral for me – plenty of iconic spots have been cleaned and the city is feeling somewhat a mere shadow of it’s vibrant past already.
The other morning I woke up and went to my front door to check the mail only to discover that the either and Auckland City Council contractor or local good Samaritan had done me the ‘service’ of removing the tags from my front doorway. Now, I felt (very) mildly upset about having a couple of tags in my doorway but I actually felt completely pissed off about them being removed.
Stepping outside I immediately noticed what a shocking job this person had done. The paint had been applied so thickly with a well-used roller that it was textured, meaning I would have to sand it back. It didn’t cover the tag properly, it was shining through and they had dripped paint all over the tiles on the ground. It was the wrong tone of white, the wrong type of paint… The list goes on.
It needs to be said – what Auckland City Council’s Zero-Tolerance policy has become is something less about ‘Getting On With Keeping Our Streets Tidy’ and more about the eradication of ‘Name Based Fame’ (as Rob Shields has referred to it in the media). The determination to remove graffiti comes at the cost of doing that ‘tidily’. It is not uncommon to see badly painted rectangles in a mismatched paint colour for example or even bigger walls buffed with an airless sprayer, perhaps with little regard for the amount of overspray on other nearby surfaces. In my opinion, most graffiti removal does little to improve the environment aesthetically – it only obscures the tags and often it fails to do that successfully.
None the less, this graffiti removal service plays a major role in the council’s Zero Tolerance work flow – The contractors painting out graffiti are the eyes of the council, each equipped with a digital camera so they can document the tags they paint out. Those photos are sorted into the graffiti data base according to the distinguishable names – the collective hours attributed to the removal of each unique name is tallied and from that, the supposed total cost of that individuals damages is ascertained. If said individual is ever caught or identified by the police/council they may be sued for the supposed amount owing in civil costs, like the current case that has been getting a bit of media exposure lately. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10664273
They falsely state that this is the first such incident of the council pursuing civil damages from those that have been caught doing graffiti. They have been doing this actively since 2002.
All of the ‘Groundhog Day’ type media around ‘Auckland’s Graffiti Problem’ and the ‘Millions’ spent on its removal got me wondering how bad is it really? Now I may be completely insane having spent all this time pondering and even going to the extent of trying to do some maths to work out what the actual costs may be. I’m obviously not privy to the actual facts and figures other than what is published on the Internet, so this is speculative at best. What I have sought to do though is offer an alternative outlook on this issue.
Considering one litre of paint covers 15 square metres of surface area – then in theory one ten-litre bucket covers 150 square metres. To be fair, some tags will need two coats to be removed properly, so let’s say that from each ten-litre bucket you get 75 square metres coverage. A ten-litre bucket generally costs between $90.00 – $140.00 retail – for the sake of being balanced in this discussion, let’s say an average of $115.00. So let’s say the average tag is roughly 50cm x 20cm, that means there is around 10 tags to every square metre (of course this varies but this is just an average). $115.00 divided by 75 is $1.53 – divide that by 10 and you have 15.3 cents per tag – that’s with two coats!
According to the article since July 2008 graffiti has been removed from 146,000 sites around Auckland that’s roughly 73,000 tags per year. 73,000 multiplied by 0.153 equals $11,169.00.
That must mean that the annual figures are mostly attributed to labour costs of the graffiti removal? I don’t know what the average city contractor or graffiti removal person gets paid although I have been told it’s around $16.00 per hour. According to a survey of wage rates published in December 2009 it was found that the average hourly wage in NZ is around $25.39 – so lets just use that figure. Now, I’ve watched a city contractor pull up and paint out a tag – it took less than 5 minutes. 5minutes is one 12th of an hour, $25.39 divided by 12 equals $2.11.
If you take that $2.11 and multiply it 73,000 times you get $154,030.00. Take that and add the $11,169.00 from before and you get $165,199.00.
When applying this amount to the current case reported in the news article above, that is $2.26 multiplied 551 times, we end up with an amount of $1246.00 – a far cry from the $33,000.00 the 21 year old has been sued in civil damages. In fact based on my (highly speculative) calculations they are billing this guy for one fifth of the annual total.
Of course this is only one scenario – there are plenty of variables, for instance the use of Graffiti Guard products, which allow paint to be removed with a high-pressure water blaster etc.
Regardless though, would it be fair to say that the raw expense of graffiti removal is not costing ratepayers millions per year but rather the industry and administration around graffiti removal is? Think about it.
- The rental, manning and administration of the 0800 stop tags number.
- Supplying of digital cameras for contractors.
- The cost of set up and maintaining the council database, including the man-hours expended in identifying particular tags and sorting thousands of photos into the appropriate folders
- The salaries of any council staff employed specifically to deal with this issue.
- The hiring of various Private Investigation firms to trail and assist in identifying taggers of interest – most likely a major contributing cost.
- The design and production of ‘educational’ pamphlets and propaganda plus the cost of distribution of those items into schools and other facilities that deal with youth.
- The hiring of ‘Graffiti Education’ officers who work in schools and educational facilities discouraging young people from engaging in graffiti.
Here’s my personal take: Graffiti to me is a huge industry – one that ironically benefits a lot of people other than the graffiti writers themselves. Graffiti is also an incredible leveraging tool in local and national level politics – used to appease voters, because being ‘seen’ removing graffiti is a powerful way to project the impression that things are being done. Anti-graffiti Legislation (Tagging and Graffiti Vandalism Bill) has some implications for everyone as more discretionary powers for Police and council were bolstered in 2008 allowing them to profile and prosecute graffiti writers in ways that go against some basic rights. Those caught doing graffiti are often given punishment that is considered ‘making an example’ of them so to deter others from doing similar things. Often this punishment can be disproportionate to the actual level of criminality or maliciousness of the act itself. This is purely due to the emotive nature of the issue and how it is considered by the public, reported on by the media and leveraged by the politicians. Again, graffiti is an industry – one that creates livelihood for a number of people and drives a certain sector of our economy. The war on graffiti isn’t necessarily what it is promoted to be by the council and media because perhaps a city without graffiti isn’t actually in the financial interests of certain parties.
On the issue of graffiti I feel that Auckland lacks a certain maturity in its vision of what constitutes a great city. I’ve been lucky enough to visit some of what I would consider the greatest cities of the world, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Berlin, Hamburg, Melbourne… Many more cities I haven’t visited yet but in general there are 3 features that make these places truly vibrant in my eyes. They are very multicultural, have a great public transport system and visually they reflect the people that live there – this includes the extent of the graffiti. I realise my world view differs greatly from a vast number of people here in Auckland though. While searching the internet for graffiti related news I stumbled over this remark made on www.bettertransport.org.nz that actually made my stomach churn – it was in a thread dedicated to the subject of graffiti on trains:
Nick R wrote:I really get pissed off by the subhuman degenerates that don’t let people off the train first before barging on themselves. It is obviously due to poor breeding, inferior race, low class, bad upbringing, a lack of a family estabilshed during the marriage of a man and a woman and having godless heathen lesbians in parliament. It’s because we are too soft on crime. The number one problem with the transport system in Auckland is the actions of these criminals.
These hoodlums don’t deserve to be part of society, the openly flaunt societies rules. What losers. They deserve far worse punishment than they currently get. The problem is with these idiots that they never recieved any discipline so they think they can do whatever they like and get away with it. Perhaps its time too bring back burying people up to their necks in an anthill and covering their face in honey? I think most of us have had an absolute gutsful of the non-door-waiters in Auckland and we`re sick of wet bus tickets being handed out to offenders who even if the fines were large wouldn`t or couldn`t pay. Personally I think taking off the leg used to step into the train out of turn would be quite an effective way to “remove” the future threat of repeat offending! Then we can clamp a tracking device round the remaining leg just in case.
If these views are a reflection of what the ‘average kiwi’ thinks then count me out of that group of people. This is almost an entirely different issue but that comment speaks volumes to me about why I fail to identify with the value systems I’m expected to adhere to. The supposed ‘good path’ in life is usually preached at me by people that think like that – whereas every gratifying and positive experience I’ve had, has been gained by meeting people that think fairly similarly to myself about the world. Why is that? I think that’s another blog post.
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