The Occupation of Art and Gentrification

An article from "No Reservations
- Housing, Space and Class Struggle"; News From Everywhere
and Campaign For Real Life, London, 1989.

===========================

THE OCCUPATION

OF ART AND GENTRIFICATION

INTRODUCTION

Initially we intended
to write an article analysing the role of art in transforming a run-down
working class area, Lower Manhattan, New York City, for the benefit
of capital. In the course of our research and discussion we realised
that what was happening in Lower Manhattan wasn't an isolated incident,
but part of an increasingly significant capital accumulation process
with art as a major protagonist, and involving a widespread transformation
of urban space. We believe there is a general global tendency of culture
to act as an element in the regeneration of the inner cities, adapting
itself in different ways to different places. There seem to be two strategies
at work: a) Art as state-manipulated gentrifier as in the Lower East
Side, and b) Art as a fresh base for accumulation in areas ravaged by
the decline of industry. (In the latter case the UK is closely following
the US experiment in Pittsburgh and Chicago and applying them over here.)
We hope to summarise b) in the conclusion while the part of the article
devoted to Lower Manhattan concentrates on a). Because we believe that
art is an integral aspect of the development of capitalist social relations
we found it necessary to include some general observations on the role
of art in capitalist society by way of an introduction.

"In art, the world of the artist
is set before one's eyes as an Object, a world which the artist has
brought forth from the full power of his own inwardness, a world which
will satisfy every real need and longing." - Max Stirner[1]

MALIGNANT CULTURES

Culture sells the
promise of advancement by appealing to a 'classless creativity' which
everybody supposedly possesses and needs to express. The US TV program
'Fame' promotes this myth: the coming together of kids from 'both sides
of the tracks' - ethnic slums and white suburbia alike - an allegedly
harmonious unity where everybody is 'equal', each individual succeeding
or failing according to their own artistic talent. Both teamwork (bit-parts,
chorus lines) and individual advancement (starring roles) are promoted,
the bourgeois theatrical forms reflecting the dominant organisation
and values of bourgeois society. Art and culture are now more democratised
than ever; the worse the present crisis gets and the fewer job opportunities
there are for a greater number of people, the more necessary it becomes
to soak up at least a small fraction of this into cultural careers or
into the service sector[2] and to contain the rest with illusions of
escape. In facing up to the proletariat's increasing refusal of steady,
legal full-time work, capital is employing a mixed strategy including
on the one hand forced labour schemes, and on the other the allure of
personal success in the cultural field which can be presented and internalised
as not being alienated labour, but as an act of self-fulfilment, whereas
in reality culture means the production of capital's most sophisticated
means of control and submission of both consumer and producer. Just
as our concrete relationships are mediated by objects as commodities,
so our emotions are mediated by culture, by their hollow representations.
It's worth mentioning two of the most lucrative art/music movements,
punk and rap/graffiti art, which in their heydays both stimulated flagging
profits in the music biz, initially emerged from the ranks of black
and white dispossessed youth (although in the case of punk there was
always a disproportionate art-school influence).

Artists can
often get away with appearing to be 'outside' class relations; they
and their products are seen as an expression of 'everyman' or the human
essence. This gives them a unique facility to worm their way into poor
neighbourhoods as the cultural vanguard of a social fragmentation created
by gentrification.

THE THIN END OF THE RED WEDGE

In any capitalist
society, art merely embodies the ideology appropriate to the given level
of production. The Constructivists are a good illustration of this They
emerged in Russia as an avante-guard art movement at the end of the
Civil War in 1921, immediately aligning themselves closely with Bolshevik
ideology and put their various talents in the service of the state and
its changing economic needs. They began by promoting the benefits of
the New Economic Policy, Lenin's strategy to reinvigorate the economy
by a partial return to free enterprise. By 1923, when the success of
private industry was seriously threatening the state's profits from
the sale of their own commodities, Mayakovsky, a poet, and Alexander
Rodchenko, a Constructivist photographer, combined to form an 'advertisement
constructor' team to promote state goods. So for the next two years
Constructivists dedicated themselves to not only promoting Bolshevik
economic policy as a progressive force in the formation of a new social
order, but also acted as an advertising agency with the state as their
major client.

During this period
many of these artists also became involved in designing commodities,
through 'production art', including such gems as plates printed with
the slogan 'he who does not work does not exist'.

"Our gravitation towards the
principle of 'construction' is a natural manifestation of contemporary
consciousness which derives from industry." - Alexander Rodchenko

"Art must not be concentrated
in dead shrines called museums. It must be spread everywhere - on the
street, in the trams, factories, workshops and in the workers' homes."
- Vladimir Mayakovsky [3]

When the state consolidated
sufficient domination over the market, around 1928, and the NEP was
abolished by Stalin who went on to enforce the collectivisation of agriculture
and the Five Year Plans which set ever higher production targets, the
Constructivists were replaced by the Socialist Realists.

The Socialist Realists
essentially continued the Constructivist project in terms of style and
approach, but with different tasks and priorities, reflecting a changed
economic reality, i.e. since the state no longer had to compete in the
market with private industry, the Socialist Realists could concentrate
on selling the benefits of Stalinist accumulation, for example by aestheticising
tractors which symbolised the industrialisation of agriculture (and
the dispossession of all classes of peasants). In the climate of extreme
austerity and with the abolition of 'consumer choice' in the post-NEP
period, Socialist Realism preoccupied itself with marketing the ideology
of production while actual production was enforced at gun-point.

Western artists have
traditionally sneered at Constructivism and Socialist Realism for being
crude and utilitarian, NOT ART, when in fact they demonstrate the essence
of the function of art, but too blatantly for western tastes; not only
on the economic level but also on the social level - in 'one-class'
Russia, the Constructivists were the voice of the proletariat'. In the
West artists either claim to be the voice of a specific class or the
voice of the people in general. In both cases their role as specialists
depends on the general suppression of creativity throughout society;
however the bourgeoisie can only reproduce themselves by maintaining
generalised alienation through such means as art, whereas the proletariat
can only combat its own alienation.

In the West today
art continues to perform the same function at a different level of production
and within a different economic framework. Most people over here who
receive artistic training (apart from the privileged minority who can
survive as 'pure talents untainted by commercialism' - as they see it)
end up either in some form of commodity design or marketing, thus promoting
the ideology of consumption or designing YTS ads or sophisticated police
recruitment ads promoting the ideology of production, work and the state.

As an element of this
society, art is a force against revolutionary transformation, in that
it perpetuates the divisions in social activity and individual/collective
consciousness. In both pre- and post-capitalist societies, culture will
be so diffused into every aspect of daily life that it would become
unrecognisable as a separate category. In some African tribal languages
there are no specific words for specific cultural activities, i.e. the
same word is used to describe both music and life itself.

"Appreciating is the sole diversion
of the 'cultivated'; passive and incompetent, lacking imagination and
wit, they must try to make do with that; unable to create their own
diversions, to create a little world of their own, to affect in the
smallest way their environments, they must accept what's given; unable
to create or relate, they spectate. Absorbing 'culture' is a desperate,
frantic attempt to groove in an ungroovy world, to escape the horror
of a sterile, mindless existence. 'Culture' provides a sop to the egos
of the incompetent, a means of rationalising passive spectating; They
can pride themselves on the ability to appreciate the 'finer' things,
to see a jewel where there is only a turd (they want to be admired for
admiring). Lacking faith in their ability to change anything, resigned
to the status quo, they have to see beauty in turds because, so far
as they can see, turds are all they'll ever have."
- Valerie Solonas' "SCUM Manifesto" was written in 1967 and
published in 1968, the year she shot and wounded Andy Warhol.

BACKGROUND TO THE PRESENT HOUSING
SITUATION IN NEW YORK CITY

There are now about 100,000 people homeless
in New York City while at the same time over 80,000 city owned apartments
have remained empty in recent years. Over 90,000 people have been evicted
and SWAT[4] teams have been used to remove people. Two women, Elisabeth
Magnum and Eleanor Bumpurs, have been killed by cops during evictions.
While there is a 15 year-long waiting list of nearly 175,000 people
for public housing the city is progressively selling off their housing
stock. Also, over half a million apartments in NYC have been abandoned
since 1970, the result of an aggressive disinvestments, criminal cut-off
of services and arson. Pig Mayor Koch of New York has said in the press
that homeless people living on the street should not be given spare
change because they will only "spend it on drink and drugs".
Those living in the streets, parks and shanty towns are subjected to
regular brutality and harassment by the city police force. The Koch
administration has also attempted to clear the streets of vagrants by
having them committed to mental institutions. In 1986 the US government
declared hundreds of military bases ready to be filled with the homeless.
Not surprisingly most of the homeless have rejected this 'offer'. As
the "Our Land" magazine put it - "Can we remain silent
while the homeless are driven out of public places and parks, and Amerika's
new concentration camps are readied? How soon will these camps contain
Aids-victims, pot smokers, draft resisters and 'communists'?"

An academic survey
carried out in the early 1980s concluded that "There is very
substantial abandonment in New York City, displacing (directly, indirectly
or through chain effects) between 77,500 and 150,000 persons a year."
The figures for displacement through gentrification are given as "between
25,000 and 100,000 persons a year in the current period."[5]

"HOLBEIN AND THE BUM"

The gentrification
of Lower Manhattan in New York is an example of the effects of
the de-industrialisation of the inner-cities which is taking place world
wide, with the decline of blue-collar work and the rise of white-collar
work (of course doing white-collar work doesn't necessarily mean you
are not a proletarian): "This shift from blue-collar to white-collar
industries makes the economy of the city, according to the New York
Times, even more incompatible with its labour force. In 1929 59% of
the labour force was blue-collar; in 1957 the percentage slipped to
47%. By1980 less than one third of the total workforce in the United
States consisted of blue-collar workers." [6] The class occupation
and use of previously industrial space has been progressively transformed.
One of the spearheads of this process has been the art movement - both
individual artists and gallery owners. Artists initially moved into
the area attracted by cheap rents for large spaces ideal for art production;
i.e. warehouses, lofts and light manufacturing space.

The process began with Fluxus and more
recently has been extended into the Lower East Side by a ragbag of other
radical art tendencies. The Fluxus art movement developed from the late
1950s onwards, gradually centering itself in SoHo (south of Houston
Street) Village, an area immediately west of the Lower East Side, during
the next 10 years. A central feature of their activity, initially financed
by a rich NY business family who were also art patrons, was using loft
space to realise their self-indulgent fantasies about art environments.
The following excerpts illustrate how 'radical art' expects itself to
be regarded purely on the level of its ideology and abstract intentions
which mask its real social and material function: " 'A new life.
Ruhm's Wien built of the letters in the German name for Vienna - Hollein's
aircraft carrier as a city for 30,000 inhabitants - Oldenburg's alteration
of the Thames - My super highway as a cathedral environment - are all
utopias containing more breadth and visualisation of present day thought
than the repressive architecture of bureaucracy and luxury that imposes
restrictions on people.

Everything is forbidden.

Don't Touch!

No Spitting! No Smoking!

No Thinking!

No Living!

Our projects - our environments are
meant to free men - only the realisation of utopias will make man happy
and release him from his frustrations! Use your imagination! Join in...Share
the power! Share property!'

'PURGE the world of bourgeois sickness,
'intellectual', professional and commercialised culture...

(...) PROMOTE A REVOLUTIONARY FLOOD
AND TIDE IN ART,

(...) FUSE the cadres of cultural,
social and political revolutionaries into the united front and action.'"
[7]

Despite these fantasies of a liberating
reconstruction of space in the service of the masses, we should point
out that Maciunas, one of the leading Fluxists, was a real estate speculator,
whose initial activities in this field were financed by rich art patrons.
[8]

More recently, in
the Lower East Side itself, specifically residential space was made
available by working class people moving out of the area because of
landlords' neglect of property, evictions carried out often by means
of intimidation (i.e. firebombing people out of their homes) and the
police turning a blind eye to such activities as well as drug Mafia
operations and high levels of street crime. The artists were pioneers
of gentrification in this new frontier for the middle class, by creating
an art scene and community, combining the use of their space for living,
producing, performing and exhibiting. These artistic events and the
cultural ambience attracted middle class art consumers which in turn
created a market for other cultural needs - yuppie bars, restaurants
etc. It was inevitable that the galleries would take their place in
this new scene, packaging in their catalogues the bohemian thrills of
the area: "The Lower East Side enters the space of the ICA catalogue
in three forms: mythologised in the texts as an exciting bohemian environment,
objectified in a map delimiting its boundaries, and aestheticised in
a full-page photograph of a Lower East Side 'street scene'. All three
are familiar strategies for the domination and possession of others.
The photograph, alone, is a blatant example of the aestheticisation
of poverty and suffering that has become a staple of visual imagery.
At the lower edge of the photograph a bum sits in a doorway surrounded
by his shopping bags, a liquor bottle and remnants of a meal. He is
apparently oblivious of the photographer, unaware of the composition
in which he is forced to play a major role. Abundant graffiti covers
the wall behind him, while at the left the wall is pasted over with
layers of posters, the topmost of which is an advertisement for the
Pierpoint Morgan Library's Holbein exhibition. The poster features a
large reproduction of a Holbein portrait of a figure facing in the direction
of the bum in the doorway. High art mingles with the 'subculture' of
graffiti and the 'lowlife' represented by the bum in a photograph which
is given a title, like an art work: First Street and Second Avenue (Holbein
and the Bum). While its street subject has long been popular among art
photographers, this photograph is inserted into the pages of a museum
catalogue for the purpose of advertising the pleasures and unique ambience
of this particular art scene. Only an art world steeped in the protective
and transformative values of aestheticism and the blindness to suffering
that such an ideology sanctions could tolerate, let alone applaud such
an event. For this picture functions as a tourist shot, introducing
the viewer to the local colour of an exotic and dangerous locale. Holbein
and the Bum is intended not to call attention to the plight of the homeless
but to fit comfortably into the pages of an art catalogue unveiling
to art lovers the special pleasures of the East Village as a spectacle
for the slumming delectation of those collectors who cruise the area
in limousines." [9]

Incidentally, a lot of the original pioneer
artists who didn't make it have been priced out by the success of a
project that they helped initiate and may move on to begin the process
elsewhere to the cost of their unfortunate new neighbours.

The state subsidised
housing for artists in the Lower East Side as it became aware of the
attraction of an art environment in creating the conditions for international
investment. One example of this is AHOP; "The alignment of art
world interests with those of the city government and the real estate
industry became explicit to many residents on the Lower East Side during
the ultimately successful battle which community groups waged to defeat
Mayor Koch's Artist Home Ownership Program (AHOP). In August 1981, the
city issued a Request for Proposals for the development of AHOP. The
requests solicited 'creative proposals to develop co-operative or condominium
loft-type units for artists through rehabilitation of properties owned
by the city.' The cost of AHOP, around 7 million dollars, was to be
partly financed by the Participation Loan Scheme Programme, which consists
of 25 million dollars of federal funds designated for low/moderate income
people to help them secure mortgages at the low market rates. The city's
eagerness to allocate 3 million dollars of public money for the housing
needs of white middle-class artists was seen as a clear indication of
the city's attitude to the housing needs of the poor. Despite the fact
that the art community lobbied hard to have AHOP implemented, it was
defeated in February 1983. Considerable pressure brought to bear by
various community groups forced many supporters in the art world and
members of the Board of Estimate to change their mind."
[10]

Although in this case such a blatantly
manipulated strategy failed, gentrification continues by other means.
It is no coincidence that the Lower East Side is just down the road
from one of the world's biggest finance centres. It is obviously preferable
for capital to have a 'safe' gentrified area next to its financial heartland
than a potentially explosive population for whom the banks are obvious
targets for revenge.

"GENTRIFICATION IS CLASS WAR:
FIGHT BACK!"

Tompkins Square Park
in the Lower East Side (or East Village, as the settlers now call it)
is surrounded by burnt out derelict houses, a few remaining tenants
and yuppies in condominiums. It had been home to hundreds of homeless
people (and was used for open-air gigs) up until a police decision to
impose a 1am curfew, some time in July 88.

This was apparently
because of neighbourhood association complaints about noise - which
means it was most likely an attempt to appease yuppies and real estate
speculators, concerned at the presence of 'undesirables' on their doorstep.
In the weeks leading up to the riot on the 6th/7th the police began
periodically clearing the park at 1am. A small rally held on the 30th
July to protest the curfew was broken up by the police who arrested
4 people and injured several others. This led to the calling of a rally
on the 6th August. By 11pm on the 6th a hundred cops, some of them on
horseback, were waiting inside the park for the demonstrators. Soon
after, several hundred people turned up behind a banner that read
"Gentrification is Class War: Fight Back!".
They came into the park, marched around for a while and then most of
them went back out on to the street. By 12.30 the park was closed. Shortly
afterwards the police were pelted with bottles and they brought in reinforcements,
including a helicopter. The cops then charged the crowd, sparking off
a riot that lasted several hours. 31 people and 13 cops were injured.
9 people were arrested on charges of riot, disorderly conduct etc. Because
of widespread anger at the savagery of the police attacks on the crowd
Mayor Koch was forced to lift the curfew on August 7th. The next day
800 people met in a church near the park to discuss what had happened.
People in the meeting expressed hostility not only towards the police
but also to others who co-operated with them - for example, the Guardian
Angels.

On 9th August 600
people marched to the 9th precinct police station where the cops refused
to talk with them. On August 13th a day of protest took place during
which 13 people were arrested. William Brevard, a local black labourer,
comments on the events: "There are deeper problems to this situation.
Some people complain about the homeless but what does it show that there
are homeless people who have to come here at all? What happened here
is a side of America that's not being shown. This isn't a race thing
- forget about race. You see black and white among the homeless here.
This is about the people who don't have anything - against those with
money." [11]

THE REVOLUTION WILL BE TELEVISED

There were no TV news
cameras present while the riot was going on. We're not sure whether
this was because the cops stopped them getting into the area or whether
they just voluntarily complied with a police request to stay away. But
at least one person did manage to record the event on film.

Paul Garrin is a young
fashion photographer and video artist who lives on the Lower East Side,
very near to where the riot occurred. On seeing the riot begin, he went
and got his video camera and found a ledge above the street from which
to film the riot. He managed to film the riot for a few minutes before
a group of cops (some with their identifying numbers covered) who were
beating somebody up, spotted him filming them at work. They then turned
on him, beating him and smashing the camera, although the film was not
damaged.

The next day (and
for days afterwards) his video-film of the riot was being shown on all
the main TV news programs and Garrin was interviewed on TV news and
chat shows. After this he received several phone threats from anonymous
cops on the NY police force, which he recorded and also publicised in
the media.

Garrin said that he
climbed onto the ledge where he filmed from "to avoid confrontation".
From the beginning of his involvement in the riot he wanted his role
to be that of an observer and recorder, through his camera lens, but
not that of a participator in the 'drama'. He was probably immediately
thinking of the possibilities of capitalising on the images he was recording,
whether as saleable news footage or as material to be incorporated into
some of his arty videos. He has since profited financially by fulfilling
both these possibilities. His career in photography and video art has
surely taught him that every time he picks up a camera what he records
has the possibility of becoming a saleable commodity.

While his film is
a useful piece of evidence for those fighting legal cases against the
cops, and for exposing police lies, its use to him is as a means to
self promotion, profit from viewing royalties, and career advancement
through greater media exposure. If he had been cleverer he could have
avoided becoming a target for police threats by either sending his film
to the media anonymously or insisting his name was not revealed. But
obviously he could not afford to miss this opportunity to self-publicise
and further his media reputation.

In one interview Garrin
claimed he was against the personality cult being built around him by
the media, because it distracted from the real issues of police violence
and homelessness, yet his own actions in regard to the media effectively
encouraged this.

Part of Garrin's art
activities is working as 'technical whizkid' for video artist Nam June
Paik, an ex-member of the Fluxus art movement which helped begin the
gentrification of Lower Manhattan. During October-December '88 there
was an exhibition of Paik's video arts at the Hayward Gallery in London.
Also on display were some of Garrin's own videos. One of these contained
footage of riots around the world, including Tompkins Square Park. Another
one was a collection of TV coverage of the riot, including Garrin's
film and him being interviewed on several TV programmes. Within a few
months of it happening the riot has been packaged and aestheticised
as an art commodity by the same artists whose activities and presence
helped create the gentrification process that the rioters were fighting
against.

CONCLUSION

1

The traditional manufacturing
base of the inner cities is in progressive decline for several reasons:
the movement of heavy industrial production to 'Third World' countries
with cheaper labour costs, the increasing automation of certain sectors
of the labour process and the need to centralise financial administration
and dealing in parts of the inner city.

At the same time as this, there is a
parallel process of administrative sectors (at least those that aren't
dependent on split-second business decisions) being farmed to towns
and suburbia which in turn creates new potential for valorising the
space they have vacated in the inner cities.

2

This shift in the
accumulation process has meant an increasingly incorporation of cultural
consumption as one of its major features. In Pittsburgh, the previous
US steel capital, state and private investors have initiated a large-scale
cultural redevelopment project: the state realises its profits from
an amusement tax levied on theatre tickets and parking ticket revenues,
while in the private sector for every dollar spent directly on cultural
consumption, 3.4 dollars is spent at other retail outlets - shops, hotels,
restaurants etc. British capital has been closely following experiments
such as this and initiated something similar in Bradford - with a proposed
£100 million development of the city centre, a possible Northern base
for the National Theatre and the V&A 's Indian art collection. A
preservation order has been slapped on remaining Victorian wool warehouses,
one of which is being turned into a £350,000 art gallery and workshop
complex. Parallel developments are taking place in Liverpool and Glasgow,
amongst others.

3

It's not only in the
inner cities that this process is at work, but in any ex-industrial
areas which not only have buildings and space that can be re-valorised,
but also a high proportion of unemployed proletarians who can be drafted
into the service sector for low wages.

In Hemsworth, a mining village whose
pit was closed after the miners' strike, an inland beach was created
with thousands of tons of sand being dumped round the shores of a local
lake. This 'seaside resort' 40 miles from the coast has generated a
tourist industry in place of the colliery.

4

In this article we've
concentrated on Lower Manhattan as an example of how the State and big
business has used avant-garde art to reclaim territory that had become
unprofitable.

As we can see in the New York AHOP programme
the role of artists hasn't been organic/spontaneous but they have been
utilised by an alliance of State, real estate and big business elites
to act as the thin end of a wedge that will destabilise and ultimately
displace working-class communities. For instance, in Manhattan, the
cultural element has the effect of enhancing the value of surrounding
financial areas, not only by removing the threat of a large, dispossessed,
angry 'undesirable' population with nothing to lose, but also provides
the amenities for the refined cultural tastes of the financial elite.

5

In London neither
of the strategies outlined in this article seem to have been deployed,
with the possible exception of Notting Hill [12]. Here it seems to be
more a case of pioneer yuppies bringing in their cultural baggage with
them, including retail outlets for middle-class tastes which in turn
creates an attractive environment for other yuppies to move into. This
process is encouraged by estate agents manipulating the market.

6

In a period of low
economic growth art is one of the few expanding industries. Art and
property share as commodities share a characteristic which is of great
importance in the present climate of recession: they can both be constantly
revalorised. Where property has a specific use value (i.e. as dwelling
space) art does not; art has become a pure embodiment of capital, along
with its social and ideological function: "Now where the merger
of art and business is most complete a nauseating contradiction arises
between a businesslike need to proclaim creativity (in reality its opposite)
as distinct from the cynical amassing of money. Capitalists exploit
others but rarely conceive of themselves as just plain robbers...In
the mid-80's the figure of the auctioneer is the one that compels attention
in the two foremost capitals of art: London and New York. The paradoxical
combination of sniffy pedantry and a keen eye for price slots in with
the trend for global equitization and soaring real estate values in
the major financial centres. With banks beginning to set up art advisory
services, art has become an investment as never before, attracting money
in search of quick gains and appreciating assets." [13] The ideology
of art defines itself as a purely creative activity furthest removed
from the dirty dealings of the market place but in reality art embodies
the crazy logic of capitalism in its clearest form - the total domination
of exchange value over use value.

7

The only radical function
for art we know of is the one proposed by Bakunin in the Dresden insurrection
of 1849 when he advocated, without success, taking the paintings out
of the museums and putting them on the barricades at the entrance of
the city to see if this would have stopped the firing of the oncoming
soldiers.

Published 1989.

------------------------------888888888888888888888888-------------------------------------

Footnotes

1) "Art and Religion" by Max
Stirner - The Young Hegelians - An Anthology; edited by Lawrence S.
Stepelvich, Cambridge University Press, 1983.

2) i.e. the people who are employed in
servicing cultural consumers; also a lot of people with artistic aspirations
can be found in occupations such as bar staff, waiters/waitresses etc.

3) Both quotes from "Soviet Commercial
Design of the Twenties" - edited by M. Anikst

4) The first SWAT team (Special Weapons
And Tactics) was formed in 1966/7 in Los Angeles and took part in such
forays as the full-scale assault on the Black Panther headquarters in
1969, and in 1974, the fierce attack on the Symbionese Liberation Army.
SWAT also collaborated in the bombing of the MOVE house in Philadelphia
in '85 - killing 6 adults, 5 kids and destroying an entire block of
houses.

5) "Abandonment, gentrification
and displacement: the linkages in New York City" by Peter Marcuse
- in Gentrification of the City, edited by N. Smith and P. Williams.

6) "The Fine Art of Gentrification"
by R, Deutsche and C. G. Ryan in "The Portable Lower East Side".

7) In the book which these quotations
are taken from, "The Assault on Culture" by S. Home, the author
contradicts his own title by perpetuating the illusion that the intentions
that the artist declares through his/her self-expression are more relevant
than the objective social effects of their activity.

8) For reasons of space this article
does not deal with other early related attempts to encourage an arts
presence, such as the state's subsidised artists' housing schemes of
the 1970's and changes in local state zoning regulations so as to promote
residential/artistic rather than industrial use of property. There were
also the efforts of the West Village middle-class homeowners and the
SoHo Artists' Tenants Association who used their political/cultural
connections to further their own interests. (For details see "Loft
Living" by Sharon Zukin, particularly chapter 5.)

9) "The Fine Art of Gentrification",
op. cit.

10) "The Fine Art of Gentrification",
op.cit.

11) "The Militant" 26/8/88
(an American Trot paper).

12) The pamphlet "Once Upon A Time
There Was A Place Called Nothing Hill Gate... By Paddington Bear"
(BM Blob, London, 1988; now available on the revolt against an age of
plenty site; revoltagainstplenty.com) deals in some detail with (amongst
other things) the role of art in the gentrification of Notting Hill.

13) Introduction to "Pravda 3"

- BM Blob, London, 1980s (also available on the revolt against an age
of plenty site).

Top of Page