there's our catastrophe

luckyjunkie-deactivated20120901 asked: Hello there! I saw your reply on yarn bombing and wanted to ask you a few more questions. Sorry if you've received some already on this. Do you hate the act of yarn-bombing or do you just dislike the people who are typically behind it? If I decide to participate in yarn-bombing for the sake of public art (I am not rich, I am not white, but I am an art student...?), would you criticise me in the same fashion? Are yarn bombs not easily removable? That may be another reason why they're tolerated.

hi!  Thanks for your question. 

I dislike yarn-bombing unequivocally.  I don’t hate white middle-class art students unless they’re clueless and have boring ideas like yarn-bombing.  (I’m white with a liberal arts degree from a pretty elitist university, so I wouldn’t have a leg to stand on there, anyway.) I don’t mean to come off as overly hostile but I do really really hate yarn-bombing, aesthetically as well as politically, as if the two could be separated. 

there is definitely a complicated debate to be had re: what it means if you do something that’s coded “middle-class” or “white” but you’re not either/both of those things.  (“middle class” doesn’t necessarily mean “rich”, of course.)   Like that is a hard position to be in, a lot of the time.  I think it’s possible to shift who a genre or form is associated with, or to subvert its hegemonic associations.  Having said that, those associations exist to begin with.  I would question the ability of any yarn-bomber to subvert them, given that yarn-bombing typically has little inherent meaning beyond the act of putting yarn up in public, and therefore relies on those associations to create meaning; also that it’s anonymous and there’s no way of any viewer knowing the specific identity of the yarn-bomber. 

I don’t think yarnbombing is necessarily easier to remove than all stigmatised forms of public art but mostly I think that question is a distraction.  Like, stencil graf is, yes, more rigorously prosecuted than yarn-bombing but less prosecuted than traditional graf, and also is part of the international tourism campaign for my city, and there’s really no difference between them except the aesthetic and the class/race associations of that aesthetic. 

I have responded to a similar question in more depth here. 

Please also check my “yarn bombing”, “public art”, “public space”, and “gentrification” tags.

Also for reference: I don’t think clueless public art is, like, The Main Thing Causing Gentrification, it’s a pretty minor factor, more of a sign of a losing battle really, just a really annoying one that a lot of people on tumblr seem to care about. 

YARN BOMBING APOLOGISTS: NOT MY COMRADES, part v

youarenotyou:

also… “yarn bombing” was invented by a group of white people from houston who call themselves “knitta please” 

led by this woman:

OH MAN I totally forgot about “knitta please”, good call

but yes this is true and they are gross

plus look at her house

look at it

that is the house of an insipid gentrifier if ever I saw one

laceninja asked me why I hate yarn-bombing

and a couple of other people asked me to make my answer rebloggable, so:

In brief: Public art is essentially a reclamation of public space.  That means you need to think carefully about who you’re reclaiming it for and from, and why.

Interventions into public space that have a cute, indie aesthetic (like yarn-bombing, seed-bombing, paste-ups, and to a lesser extent stencil graffiti) are primarily carried out by white middle-class art student types.  They are tolerated, seen as tourist attractions, and often sponsored by government art bodies.  They’re also sure signs of gentrification. 

Compare the reaction to tagging and traditional graf.  They’re also forms of public art, but are criminalised, heavily policed, and widely perceived to bring down the tone and property values of an area.  I’d say this is because they are reclamations of public space primarily by people of colour and working class people.

Yarn-bombing is inane and serves literally no purpose other than to mark an area as the property of twee white kids.

while we’re doing shout outs

there are a lot of reasons to like upmountains.  she is kind, intelligent, beautiful, and intoxicatingly interested in the world.  but even so, I would be hard pressed not to put “firmly believes that knit graffiti should be literally set on fire” right at the top. 

vile-insect:

meredithgraves:

what do you do with a bag full of your own hair?

things i did with a bag of my own hair:

• split it into little groups of strands and sewed the top of some groups on to a patchwork sequin glittery colourful quilt i made
• tie locks of it onto those bar things that windows sometimes have
• made a trail of glitter down an alley way and at the end of the trail i put a pile of hair
• left some in a mail box
• some is still sitting on my book case
• nailed it to a wall that got a lot of sunlight to see if it fucked with the bleach that was in the hair
• sewed it onto a lot of different bits of material
• once i looked up a random address in america and sent some hair there with the return address listed as my neighbours house. had forgotten until now, never heard about that ever again so i guess they kept the hair or my neighbour is really confused.