The Role of Negative Curation in Vandalism As Social Protest

This paper’s methodological response to the theme of vandalism as social protest draws on the navigable repeat photography data available through Google Street View (GSV) – as a corrective to the authorised archives of graffiti hosted by the Google Art and Culture initiative, “Google Street Art” (GSA). Unlike GSA, GSV was not designed to isolate individual works of art endorsed by cultural representatives, but rather exists to assist users in their practical navigation through urban space. As such, GSV is an accidental (and uncurated) archive of vandalism and urban creativity.

GSV has been collecting annual images of city streets since 2008. Regular updates to available street views allow users to navigate streets that appear close to their current physical appearance – as the most recent images display by default. However, the previous years’ street views remain available via a timeslider. This feature allows viewers to effectively travel back in time in order to navigate through familiar streets as they experience visual, spatial, social and economic changes.

As a case study, this paper focuses on a 16-year series of street views depicting the Lord Napier hotel in East London (2008 - 2024). This hotel was derelict for most of this period, and featured a high turnover of uncommissioned street art, graffiti and billposting until it was re-opened in 2022. This study demonstrates, in microcosm, the gentrification of this area – and local resistance to this process - via the ‘vandalism’ visible on the walls. GSV data shows the prescient words of artist Edwin – “FROM SHITHOUSE TO PENTHOUSE” in the foreground as we watch a high-rise apartment block grow in slow motion in the background. The paper also draws on a series of virtual ‘go along’ interviews using GSV with some of the artists who worked on the walls between 2008–2024.