Faculty Advisor

Protasi, Sara

Area of Study

Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Publication Date

Summer 2021

Abstract

Street art is a blossoming field of aesthetics, but aestheticians have yet to elucidate a theory of the relationship between street art and film. Film and street art seem intuitively antithetical. Street art is a static art form that interacts with the physical space it inhabits, while film moves and requires projection onto a surface. These intuitions, however prevalent in society, neglect the burgeoning styles of avant-garde film and street art that subvert tropes of both artforms. I assert that film-as-street-art, or cinematic street art, is feasible practice, both philosophically and practically. I discuss the extant ontologies of street art and endorse Bacharach’s theory of aconsensuality, which emphasizes the importance of avoiding seeking permission when creating street art. Subsequently, I discuss two ontologies of film: Walton’s transparency thesis and Carroll’s ontology of film, and argue in favor of Carroll. Utilizing the frameworks of Bacharach and Carroll, my research dissects two examples of potential examples of cinematic street art, the practice of video painting and the short film MUTO, which I argue cannot be defined as cinematic street art. Second, I suggest types of cinematic street art and provide a theory for cinematic street art as a practice. The distinct practice of cinematic street art requires that an artwork be placed aconsensually, make the street essential to the function of the artwork, and retain the qualities of a film that Carroll lays out.

Award

Chism Research Award

Publisher

University of Puget Sound

Share

COinS