Industrialization, Technofuturism, and the Life in Between: The Cycles of Capitalism and Cultural Death as Read Through the Semiotics of Graffiti at Steelworkers Park

Steelworkers Park, a former Steel Mill site located in South Shore Chicago, embodies the cyclical nature of reindigenization, or the act of reinscribing a space with a new demography and history as though it were native or “destined”. The discursive neglect of Steelworkers Park as a site of communal gathering and cultural creation allows for the space to be continually reappropriated for new modalities of capitalist development by characterizing the space as empty and devoid of life. Ideals for what "living space" entails are further indexed by each the aesthetics of the incoming institution, evidenced by site renderings for PsiQuantum and its future quantum computing campus. The ore walls of Steelworkers, as emblems of the liminal space between industrial and technofuturist reign, offer counter-evidence to narratives of emptiness through graffiti. This marginalized art form operates here as painted indexes and icons of community presence and discourse which invite a culture of transgressive activity throughout the park. Semiotic and aesthetic analyses reveal how death is implicitly ascribed onto space for capitalist venture by state actors through visual and public narratives, and how aesthetic expressions of alterity yield coalitional potential as markers of community presence and agency over the site's narrativization.