Arte urbano y políticas en la ciudad contemporánea. el caso de Madrid

Abstract

The ambiguous and contradictory dimension is consubstantial to any public policy since public action must attend diverse interests that are not easy to conjugate. The public policies we will discuss in this paper have a common feature in many contemporary cities: contradictions do not arise by trying to combine the interests of different social actors, but by subjecting the urban model to urban entrepreneurialism, international competition and gaining a position in the global market. This model necessarily means that public spaces are shaped to favour economic growth and the production of value, leaving aside their role as spaces for social reproduction. Culture, in this context, would play a key role as a catalyser for attracting capital flows and shaping a new social order. Regarding street art there is a double dynamic we have called "schizoid": on the one hand, it's based on coercion, that is, on prohibition, persecution and punishment, but on the other hand, it's also channelled and promoted through the implementation of top-down processes. This way, artists have replicated the contradictory dynamics of public management as their activity has moved from resistance and confrontation to collaboration with the institutions. Furthermore, in recent years we have seen projects of democratic innovation which have challenged this dynamic, leading to alternatives based on collaboration between groups of street artists and public institutions. This thesis addresses the case of Madrid, and it is composed by three case studies that illustrate the different models of street art management. Firstly, we address the coercive model in Graffiti, Street Art and Culture in the Era of Global City. The Ana Botella Crew Case. Secondly, the top-down management model will be explained in ¿Ciudades creativas? Murales y regeneración en Paisaje Tetuán. Finally, the bottom-up management model is addressed in Arte urbano y modelos alternativos de gobernanza en la ciudad neoliberal. El caso Tabacalera. By studying these three cases we will see how this contradictory model, both in public management and in artists activities, is more complex than it may seem, even if it is consistent with the principle of economic growth in the public space. This is because top-down projects have created an impulse for new bottom-up processes that can result in future alternatives of mural management in our cities and, by extension, an alternative to the neoliberal model. On the other hand, we also see this complexity in the artist's activity, by establishing a continuum between the apparent contradiction of their autonomous and illegal activity and their curated and official action. This demonstrates that the action taking place in the margins of the art system can reveal the forces that operate at its core, and that the relationship between them is more fluid and dynamic than it might seem.

Date of Award	20 Sept 2017
Original language	Spanish
Supervisor	Margarita Leon Ramon Borja (Director)