| Abstrakt: |
The article investigates the abduction and destruction of a sculpture from the touring public exhibition-concept Cow Parade as an avant-gardist art intervention, in order to write a chronological history of graffiti and street art in Stockholm. The "cow-napping" is thus both examined as an art work in itself but also used as a tool to examine the use of public urban space for visual and subcultural expressions, and to trace the idea of open graffiti walls as spaces for free speech and participatory citizenship. The conclusion is that the specific intervention of the "cow-napping" is at the same time mimicking and subverting the prevalent anti-graffiti policies by removing and destroying an art work from the street. The both legally and ethically problematic aspects of constructing an art work by destroying a fellow artists work is negotiated by hiding under an anonymous group name (Stockholm's Militant Graffiti Artists), which also frames the intervention as a collective and general deed. The action, together with the connotations of the name, activates the etymological root of the concept of the avant-garde, an advancing military formation clearing the ground and, from the specific context, could be read as a statement directed against the zero-tolerance policy on graffiti. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
