Purchase of a car does not confer ownership of the road on the purchaser. It does however appear to have encouraged an outbreak of street-art in the byways of Jeddah. It is often hard to believe, given the behavior of some of our wheeled brethren who meander amiably across the tarmac as the mood takes them, that they do not own the road. When mobile, other road users are tolerated and even share their road to some extent.
When they park after a jolly afternoon beating the bounds of their territory and their families have had their fill of exposure to the lottery of survival on the Kingdom’s roads, their bonhomie takes a decidedly artistic turn.
Their territorial imperative manifests itself in the production of quite non-legal “no parking” notices hanging from gateposts or fences outside their homes.
The artwork ranges from a style best described as “minimalist crude” through “expressionist” to “proto-realistic” — the boundaries of each genre apparently determined by whether the artist has used biro, thick felt tipped pen or spray cans.
Some “proto realistic” pieces can be really quite attractive. They sport bright white backgrounds with fetching red barred circles with the thoughtfully provided explanatory motif “No Barking,” just in case the driver of a car happens to speak Canine.
Some, possibly to demonstrate their intimacy with the world of modern art, focus on “installations,” much to the current delight of the cognoscenti at the Tate Modern.
Sadly, or perhaps thankfully, Tracey Emins they are not; no cast-off underwear here. They incline more toward bijou concrete and plastic bucket sculptures decorated with vertical pieces of angle iron strung with colored tape. Several of them might form one street-installation, barricading a piece of road immediately outside one of the brethren’s residence or blocking off a length of highway outside an apartment building.
Commendable though this burgeoning interest in street art may be, it is entropic and will eventually decline into disorder and end in chaos. The greater the profusion of examples, the less space there is for barking; or even parking which is far more important.
If the number of examples of the “no parking” school of participant street art increase, as its vigorous growth in the smarter parts of Jeddah seems to indicate, by definition the number of parking spaces for normal, artistically challenged citizens’ cars decreases.
Will these unfortunates be consigned to driving for the rest of eternity on the ring roads and expressways of outer Jeddah? Will the nomadic style of life finally return to Saudi Arabia as GMC Suburbans, packed with the paraphernalia of a nomadic life wander the roads, stopping at modern oases to refresh the horsepower?
Worse yet, as this kind of social collapse is a double edged sword.
What of the street artists and their installations? Their lives will be empty of admirers — for they will have nowhere to park and are consigned to orbiting in the outer darkness, far from Jeddah. The artists will be reduced to mutual admiration and backslapping with no more opportunity to write snappy little insults to stick to the windscreens of people who once had the temerity to park on public roads.
Pause and reflect on the emptiness of the lives of these distraught artistic souls, unable to let tires down, run keys along the side of parked cars and with no one to shout obscenities at. We should help these souls now. It will be tough for sure, but it is for their own good. Their street installations and artistic endeavors should be removed, strictly in the interests of saving the artists from the aching emptiness of not having an audience for their efforts.
