On Cultural Commons and Commoning in Aboriginal Street Art Murals: The Case of 7th Generation Image Makers

Abstract

Centred on the results of an original case study of 7^th Generation Image Makers, a Toronto-based Aboriginal street arts organization, this article contends that street art acts as a complex arrangement of urban cultural commons – represented through both knowledge and neighbourhood commons – where expressions of cultural production create space for resistance to the increased privatization of public space. This argument is based on Foucault’s biopolitics which understands resistance as both alternative to, and independent of, the exercise of hegemonic power. The resistance of biopolitical labour is seen as a rupture rather than a collapse of capital such that alternative spaces are created. Commons, then, must be understood as both space and activity rather than a resource, a conception that Peter Linebaugh refers to as commoning.