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
Recommended Citation
Canada-Johnson, Logan B., "Public Access Screenings: An Ontological Inquiry into Cinematic Street Art" (2021). Summer Research. 398.
https://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/summer_research/398
Rights
Publisher
University of Puget Sound