Social Space of Los Angeles River Graffiti at the Meeting of Styles: L.A. (2007)

The Los Angeles River is a historical and prominent site for graffiti since the WPA channelized it for flood control purposes and encased its riverbanks in concrete during the 1930s. In September 2007 the Los Angeles hip-hop graffiti community organized a live graffiti mural painting event called Meeting of Styles: L.A. to exhibit the works of graffiti artists and to draw public attention to the neglected river. The event took place in the flood channel where the Arroyo Seco converges with the L.A. River. Local reporters and residents were invited to observe mural painting, while local youths took independent action to write on unpermitted areas of the channel. A few weeks after completion, municipal authorities demanded the removal of all murals and nearby tags. Officials refuted the organizer's original permits and argued that the works threatened the welfare and safety of local residents. The Meeting of Styles: LA event and controversy is a case study of graffiti's (re)production in the L.A. River, drawing out beliefs about the river's appearance and purpose.;Drawing from Henri Lefebvre's theory of social space, I approach hip-hop graffiti as a contingent social process to focus on the relations between the constituents involved and to emancipate the notion of graffiti from strictly legal or art institutional definitions. Sources include a firsthand account of the live event, interviews, photographs, black book autographs, newspaper articles, videos, blog entries, and government transcripts which provide diverse perspectives of the varied forms of graffiti in the river. The thesis argues that the Meeting of Styles: L.A. event and controversy not only contextualized entrenched beliefs about graffiti and the L.A. River but it also proposed graffiti's agentive potential to expand the experiences and functions of the marginalized river. Socially, the event discerned a fuller range of constituents in graffiti's production. Spatially, it assembled a number of contradictions and agreements about graffiti practices and forms at a particular site. Politically, it revealed the Arroyo Seco to be a permeable space of power with varying methods and expressions of legitimacy.