Lessons from 5Pointz: Toward Legal Protection of Collaborative, Evolving Heritage

5Pointz in Long Island City, New York, was a Gesamtkunstwerk (a synthesized “total artwork”) composed of multiple graffiti artworks, the ritualistic performance of their composition, interaction, and evolution, and the architectural space where they were curated, created, and experienced. As such, it unified and anchored an imagined community consisting of graffiti writers, participants in hip-hop culture, and visitors to the site. The site was demolished in November 2014 after failed attempts to protect it through two disparate legislative frameworks: heritage and copyright laws of the United States. Based on the case of 5Pointz, this paper begins to identify significant parallel shortcomings in preservation and copyright policies, especially their inability to protect place-making cultural practices such as graffiti.