How 'street' is Channel 4's Street Summer? Jumanah Younis finds out.
As the reaction to recent events in the capital has shown, there seems to be some confusion about what exactly constitutes ‘urban culture’. In a time of endless (often unhelpful) categorisation, this seems to be one box that doesn’t quite fit where it should. In terms of visual art, the type of artistic process or output associated with the ‘urban’ label is rigid and has sat unchanged for some time. It includes things like graffiti and…well in fact, that’s about it.
A recent attempt to shed some light on the seemingly enigmatic ‘urban culture’ of our times is Channel 4’s ‘Street Summer’ festival. The program is made up of a series of television shows, events and competitions aimed at celebrating Britain’s vibrant street culture. A visit to the website raised a few initial concerns for me. Already wary of how this homogenous ‘urban culture’ might be defined by a large corporation; my fears were compounded by the ‘Street Tag’ application proudly advertised in one corner of the page. A murky relationship between consumer goods and illegal activity is often at the heart of imagined inner-city culture, and an iPhone application that allows you to ‘tag’ buildings on your phone was exactly the kind of banal approach I'd feared. The app shows a pseudo spray can on the screen of your iPhone which you can use to pretend to graffiti a wall “without fear of arrest” – run riot kids! (On second thoughts, don't.)
Continuing the non-street-based street art theme, the Street Summer art competition boasts drawings from young people …on paper. The winning piece is a digitally manufactured image that looks like the branding for a new Paperchase stationary collection. The young girl depicted stands against an ambiguous coloured background, presumably to help you imagine the work in its natural, ‘urban’ context. As the comments underneath suggest, even in the context of the programme as a whole, it doesn’t really bear thinkning about. Although, having said that, perhaps it was the most appropriate winner, considering the piece will be displayed on billboards across the country to help promote, er, Channel 4.
This one-dimensional attitude towards urban art thankfully doesn’t run through the whole festival. One of the programmes in the television line-up, ‘Graffiti Wars’, explores the dichotomy between the legality of ‘street art’ and the criminalisation of graffiti. The programme both exposes the contradictions in local governments' policies towards street and graffiti artists and allows graffiti artists to speak for themselves about why they choose to express their art on the street rather than in galleries. Centred on the long-standing feud between Banksy and King Robbo, the programme tries to establish where the fine line stands between art and vandalism, and who gets to decide.
In general, the way of getting the ‘urban’ category right, if you insist on using it, is to allow artists to speak on behalf of their own discipline. In this respect, young, British hip hop artist Akala contributes a lot of integrity to the Street Summer programme. He features in the promotional advert for the series and on the programme ‘Life in Rhyme’ (aired 14/08/11). The programme explores British MC culture and its contribution to British music. Designed as a sort of ‘dummies guide’ to rap, Akala explains the key features of rap and spoken word, and sets the phenomenon in the context of poetic and musical traditions from West Africa. The programme also tackles the more controversial elements of rap music, avoiding simple speculation and instead posing questions directly to artists whose musical content is often criticised by the media and politicians.
Akala also featured in the weekend festival Intelligent Movement: Celebration of Hip-Hop Culture at the Southbank Centre, sponsored by Channel 4 as part of Street Summer. The festival opened with Histories of Hip Hop, an hour-long talk with integrated performances which explored the cultural and musical background of hip hop music. The talk contained similar content to Life of Rhyme in terms of setting rap music in its socio-historical context, but went into greater detail than the television programme. Other events in the three-day festival included dance lessons, competitions and further talks and debate about hip hop culture.
Despite some shortcomings, ‘Street Summer’ has brought some elements of non-mainstream youth culture into the public consciousness in a positive, constructive way. In a time when ‘urban’ culture and the people who are purportedly a part of it are being labelled a social vice, this programme comes across as particularly pertinent.
Street Summer continues on Channel 4 until the end of August 2011.
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