Final Project: Typologies of Walking/Not

This project titled Visual Noise reclaims the power of music, specifically punk, rock, and alternative genres, as a channel for public resistance and visibility. By transforming lyrics from these music scenes into street-level visual interventions, I aim to bridge the private emotional experience of music with public spaces. Being inspired by Situationist strategies, this work uses the city as a canvas for détournement: the recontextualization of cultural material (in this case, song lyrics) to dethrone traditional and dominant ideologies. These hand-crafted posters, placed strategically across the urban environment, act as disruptions to the sanitized, commercial, and controlled aesthetics of everyday city life.

Each poster was designed with urgency, anger, and emotional rawness which are core aspects of punk ideology. Outside of St. Mary’s Hospital, I positioned the lyric “It’s PROFITS before lives... they are motivated by GREED” from Propagandhi to highlight the corporate mindset and profit motive that drives much of the healthcare industry. "They’ll Grind Your Bones to Make Their Stocks" from Anticitizen was placed at the Eller Business School at the University of Arizona, directly critiquing how higher education often funnels students into corporate systems that exploit rather than uplift. "FIGHT WAR NOT WARS" by Crass was installed outside an army recruitment center, transforming a militarized and patriotic space into a site of anti-war protest. Finally, The Clash’s “LET FURY HAVE THE HOUR ANGER CAN BE POWER” was installed in front of a mural-covered building celebrating cultural unity, emphasizing how anger, when channeled, can be a transformative force for solidarity and change.

Through this series, I sought to break down the boundary between art, activism, and everyday life. Inspired by McKenzie Wark’s The Beach Beneath the Street and our class discussions around the Situationist International, I understood these lyrics not just as poetic fleeting lyrics but instead as political tools. The act of putting them into the public eye with its raw, handmade, and confrontational elements makes that resistance not only audible, but visible. Art does not have to be confined to art specific places such as galleries, in fact, its power intensifies when it is part of our everyday environment.

Visually, the posters are intentionally chaotic with hand-drawn lettering, clashing colors, and symbols like barbed wire and safety pins all to evoke the DIY and anti-commercial aesthetics of punk, rock, and alternative music. Each piece is a rejection of the polished and passive visual culture that seems to be all consuming at the present time.

My project Visual Noise is not just about music; it’s about reclaiming space. It is about turning the walls that we walk past every day from blank spaces into speakers and showing that resistance can live not only in headphones, but in the streets.

Writing EXTRA (IN PLACE OF OFFICE HOURS)

In The Beach Beneath the Street, McKenzie Wark speaks about the radical ideas of the Situationist International, highlighting their challenge of everyday life under capitalism and their use of art as a political weapon. One idea that I was able to relate to my own creative practice is the Situationist strategy of détournement, the act of hijacking and rerouting cultural materials to change their meaning. Wark explains how the Situationists reimagined media, language, and urban space to show the ways in which capitalist society relates to passive consumption. Through détournement, the culture acts as a confrontation, having the familiar made strange, and everyday life is disrupted to provoke awareness. After going over this reading, to me, a strong sense of urgency and inspiration is shown. Especially in how détournement empowers artists to reject the role of a passive observer and instead become active participants in shaping the collective experience. It invites a rebellion through creativity by using tools of popular culture to confront control.

This idea from the text directly relates to my final project for this course, where I’m creating handmade posters using lyrics from punk, rock, and alternative music. Much like détournement, I repurpose existing cultural material (song lyrics with emotional and political weight) and place them into public spaces. Inspired by Wark’s thoughts on the Situationists, this project is not just about visual aesthetics but about intervention. The DIY and raw feeling to how the posters will look is to break through the visual neutrality of the space and to instead place presence, feeling, and tension. My intention is to challenge passiveness and instead push moments of reflection. This connects with my earlier project of impermanence which was titled Thorned and dealt with transformation through exposure to the world around. While Thorned explores this on an emotional and material level, the posters do this on a social and political level, using vulnerability and disruption as the tools.

Wark’s work helped me understand that art can be a tool not just for self-expression but for reclaiming autonomy in a system that often feels alienating. Like the Situationists, I want to engage with the world, not just simply represent it. I find a sense of beauty in the act of placing something raw, vulnerable, or loud into a public setting that usually represents quiet conformity. Additionally, for me, détournement is not just about reusing material, but is about reasserting presence. It’s about taking something that once meant one thing and making it speak to my experience and my desire for connection. That act of vulnerability becomes a form of power. After learning about Wark's' views, it has deepened my belief that creative expression can be an act of reclaiming space and self by making yourself shown and known.

Final Project: Proposal

 1. Abstract:

• This project reimagines song lyrics from punk, rock, and alternative music as street interventions and temporary installations. I will design and put up a handful of posters featuring defiant and emotionally charged lyrics that confront conformity, consumerism, and passive living, representing the spirit of punk and the history of Situationist art tactics. These posters will appear in everyday public spaces and targeted spaces that relate to the lyrics, altering the polished surface of the city with messy lettering, bold colors, and rebellious symbolism. Music is often a private experience through headphones, but this work makes it public and visual, transforming the lyrics to bring attention and reflection. What does it mean to show resistance in a public space through the use of art?

2. Artist Statement/Background Information:

• This project was inspired by my deep and constant interest in music as both a personal refuge and a tool for resistance. Punk, rock, and alternative music represents more than a sound, they embody a certain philosophy of nonconformity, individualism, emotional rawness, and rejection of commercial norms. To me, these ideas seemed interesting as I already take inspiration in these aspects in the art that I currently make.

The inspiration for this work began with our Walk 4 assignment, where I showcased being “cocooned” through the use of sound, first immersing myself in music that I enjoyed. That moment highlighted how music creates internal visuals even in public space. I wanted to turn that thought process into a physical and visual form that can interact and relate to the environment around. I also thought back to our first project, when I placed and formed sharp clay spikes onto natural rocks to create a tension between guarding yourself and eventually embracing the things around and breaking down barriers. That piece, like this one, was also about inserting something unusual and confrontational into a familiar space.

This project will use posters designed in the visual nature of punk and rock with messy lettering, bold color, and leaning into the hand-made imperfections along with chosen lyrics that relate to resistance and emotional truth. It is heavily inspired by the public interventions and artworks that challenge capitalist aesthetics that were shown and discussed in Module 3's readings and films. By bringing the emotional power of music into a public space, it acts as not just a tribute to music but also as a statement about voice and visibility.

3. 3 drawings / images / video links of previous works that relate to this project:

4. Detailed proposal – Content/Subject Matter:

• For my final project, I will create a series of hand-made posters that borrow visual aspects from punk, rock, and alternative music scenes to form and create a public art intervention. These posters will feature emotionally charged and politically resonant lyrics from artists within these genres, such as lyrics that target the themes of alienation, individuality, nonconformity, and resistance to societal expectations. The posters will be installed in various public spaces, some directly relating to the chosen lyrics and others simply in public spaces where others would be able to see it, acting as a disruption to the typically commercial like or neutral landscape of the city. My goal is to demonstrate a sense of urgency, emotion, and resistance into the everyday visual environment.

The visual aesthetic of these pieces will show a rawer feeling through the use of the DIY aspect of punk: messy, expressive hand lettering, torn edges, textures, high-contrast, and drawing of symbolic elements like safety pins, chains, or barbed wire. Color choices will lean into clashing and bold colors like black, red, and bright/neon colors to emphasize the visibility and emotional intensity. Each poster will be unique to show and represent the hand-made, personal, and non-commercial feeling of this project.

This project is also inspired by our course reading by McKenzie Wark titled The Beach Beneath the Street, especially the discussion of art as a political act and the Situationist rejection of passive spectating. I’m interested in using art as a way to disrupt capitalist life and to bring awareness to the environment around me. Wark also discusses detournement which is the repurposing of already existing cultural material. My posters apply this by reusing and repurposing lyrics and putting them into public view as a confrontational visual message.

This proposal has also been heavily influenced and pushed through our class discussions and resources on public art as a catalyst and form of dialogue and feeling. Music itself is similar to public art in the sense that it can go past personal defenses and reach people on a deep level. By mixing music with visual language, this project is hypothetically used for people who pass by to pay attention while on their daily commute and reflect on the environment around. This is a project about making the resistance that is heard through music into something that is visible and tangible. Transforming the invisible “cocoon” of music into a public and physical form of rebellion.

5. 3 drawings / sketches / images / video accompanying proposal:

• The attached images are demonstrating my process for coming up with, creating, and locating where I will place these posters.

6. Timeline and materials/equipment:

• For this project, I believe that it will take 2-3 days to complete. This includes designing and making the posters, traveling to the locations, taking photos, editing, and creating a final artist statement. Materials that I will need and use for this project: poster board or thick paper, acrylic paint, paintbrushes, mounting putty or tape, pencil, easer. (estimated cost: $30-40)