［essay］Introduction: Street Gardens and Things Drawn on Walls / Tatsunori Imamura

I am investigating examples of graffiti as well as flora planted (arbitrarily) in public space.

The graffiti sites are mapped here.

These examples of graffiti are polymorphous, including personal statements, territorial tags, marks left by someone to say they were there, pranks, and something more extreme. There are graffiti sites that reveal relationships with the community and the people who live there, or implicit rules.

One of the interesting things about graffiti is that by mapping the sites, we can see the places where people are particularly active in an area.

The flora (arbitrarily) planted in public space is manifold, ranging from guerrilla gardens to street gardens and plants that grew from seeds dropped by guerrilla gardeners. Of course, some were not planted per se, but just started growing on their own.

What makes this interesting is the way in which we distinguish between the public and private. Sometimes things are done openly on the streets, or they might take a more modest approach, where the people involved seem to be doing just as much as they think they can get away with. The responses and opinions of residents vary. I am intrigued by how these situations are frequently tolerated because the flowers are pretty.

Relating as this does to the line between public and private, I would like to introduce examples through photos.

All are interesting in terms of how they unfold fully cognizant of that public-private boundary. The overseas examples are bolder in terms of what they are doing, and we can detect intriguing approaches to and relationships with the lines that divide up the land.

https://gyazo.com/b7061cbaca4134c3e5670af8d94aac73

https://gyazo.com/8da21c9b912193c11858a47626744e4f

https://gyazo.com/1eea3903f12b87cd4f3b2b25b25c0ce4