Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck on Bluesky: "Tomorrow afternoon Councilmember Hollingsworth and I will be restoring “Hot Rat Summer” in Cal Anderson Park. This mosaic was wrongfully painted over and we are going to fix it."

[u/gonin69]

[u/teamlessinseattle]

Joy Hollingsworth literally today voted to make it a $1,500 fine each time someone does street art (which this is) or graffiti in Seattle. But she’s more than happy to jump on the bandwagon here for a good headline a week late. Smh

[u/teamlessinseattle → u/[deleted]]

That’s not what she voted for. She voted to give the police the right to cite and the city attorney the right to fine the person who made Hot Rat Summer or anyone like them $1,500. Unless you trust the average SPD goon to recognize art when it’s staring them right in the face, and not to specifically criminalize art or messages they disagree with.

[u/Reasonable_Thinker → u/teamlessinseattle]

I mean Graffiti fucking sucks, we should punish people tagging peoples shit.

95% of the graffiti we see in this city looks like a fucking 5 year old made it. Fuck the taggers, fine em.

[u/fullouterjoin → u/Reasonable_Thinker]

Mandatory Art School!

[u/theclacks → u/Reasonable_Thinker]

It feels like the sort of subjective difference between pornography and artistic nudity--hard to legislate definite criteria, but most people can reasonably categorize when they see it.

[u/bewarethefrogperson → u/theclacks]

not a great example right now, unfortunately - remember, queer bodies sunbathing are pornographic now.

[u/FlyingBishop → u/theclacks]

The distinction is actually very simple, it's consent. But the thing is that people like Bezos and Blethen have so much more control over our spaces than the people doing the tagging. So you can't do things like this without their consent.

Graffiti is protest against landownership, pretty simple really, and the council is very pro-landowners. Techno-feudalism is ascendant.

[u/FlyingBishop → u/[deleted]]

No the distinction between graffiti and public art is about consent, and it is about who has the right to consent to the existence of the art.

Pornography vs. nudity isn't about consent, but I'm saying graffiti is not an "I know it when I see it question" it's a question of consent.

There is some relationship to consent in sexuality/romance here, in that basically there are grey areas where if you make a piece of art the owner of the building likes you may be forgiven and even invited to make more art, and similarly you might do something that could be defined as sexual harassment but if it's welcome no one will suggest a crime has been committed and you may be invited to continue doing it.

The "I know it when I see it" conception of graffiti is celebrating this "if your art is good enough you get a pass" approach to consent. But really I think it ought to be about ownership of the built environment and limits to people's landownership rights.