IN-PERSON Barcelona. Section B

Abstract

A quarter century after the signing of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that signaled the official ending of The Troubles, the sectarian violence from the late 1960s that ripped through Northern Ireland, European Union money was leveraged to encourage “good relations” and heal political rifts. However, given the British government’s reluctance in establishing an adequate peace-and-reconciliation process, Northern Ireland remains mired in what Paul Gilroy defines as “post-colonial melancholia,” where colonial history and imperialist structures are ignored or recast in a benevolent light as they continue to shape the present. As a result, public art, particularly in Belfast, is often charged with the impossible mission of “healing” communities and over-coming sectarian divides. Using multiple interviews and conversations we had with street artists, festival organizers, and Council members, we explore street art in Belfast in negotiating sectarianism, historical trauma, and neoliberal demands for tourism. We investigate how street art festivals like Hit the North along with the council-funded public art projects attempt to counter the more sectarian murals found in working-class neighborhoods. However, what arises are two parallel tourist economies. In the working-class districts, there is Troubles tourism that luxuriates in sectarianism and often sensationalizes violence. Tours are led by people who once belonged to Republican or Loyalist paramilitaries or affiliate with a sectarian perspective. In the middle-class districts, street art tourism is led by artists in gentrifying areas that highlight abstract artworks untethered to the city’s troubled history, projecting Belfast as an emerging cosmopolitan European city.