I find myself in what the Wellington City Council optimistically refers to as the “Cuba Quarter”. It is, in fact, two separate zones of ambience or atmosphere. Upper Cuba Street and its surrounding alleys and nooks has a down at heel feel to it, with shabby shopfronts and rundown businesses quietly ignoring the clamouring of nearby consumption. Here there are many signs of resistance to consumerism, which the business of capitalism ignores as being too insignificant to matter.

Perhaps Adorno would have approved of the spontaneous art that decorates doorways here, certainly it cannot be  assimilated by either the State or the art market. No doubt, however, the artist is “all the more subservient to his adversary -- the absolute power of capitalism” (1998). He is almost undoubtedly housed in one of the city housing projects nearby. It is doubtful that this art would have managed to satisfy Adorno’s high art requirements in any case.

Here, too may be found objects to delight Benjamin in his search for lost, neglected objects of consumer culture that, although no longer fashionable, the social historian could recover some of the disappointed hopes for social transformation that the dominant capitalist ideology has decided it should be forgotten. Faded and cracked tiles speak of another, more optimistic age in this area, long since neglected.

Amidst the affluence of the city, and mass consumption, the ambience of this part of the city is decidedly poor, reminding me of  Guy DeBord’s assertion in the Society of the Spectacle, that the “spectacle” hides a fundamentally unchanged class structure. “The institutionalisation of the social division of labour, the formation of classes, had given rise to a first sacred contemplation, the mythical order with which every power shrouds itself from the beginning”. (1983, fragrant 25).

Here nature, in the form of weeds, is allowed to make its bid to reclaim the cheap concrete blocks that underlay the flimsy buildings. Absentee landlords and an indifferent city council do not interfere with their ambitions here.

The graffiti here is political, engaging in  a spot of detournement, in an attempt to provoke reflection on the nature of consumer society. Certainly the people who live here are largely excluded from the benefits of a  late capitalist society.

There are businesses in the upper reaches of the street, but they lack  the  polish of a more postmodern age of consumption, their signs cluttered with information, and not a designer’s hand to be seen. They make an attempt to communicate with words as opposed to images and symbols which we are more familiar with after 20 years of postmodern design.

Here in a backwater of consumption it is possible to find what Jameson referred to as authentic cultural production. “The only authentic cultural production today has seemed to be that which can draw on the collective experience of marginal pockets of social life in the world system (...) and this production is possible only to the degree to which these forms of collective life or collective solidarity have not yet been fully penetrated by the market and the commodity system” (1991, p.23). Certainly there are pockets of resistance to the commodity system here, and the street art and music of the inhabitants  could therefore, in Jameson’s terms be considered to be authentic.

As I wander down this enclave of  resistance, it strikes me how few pedestrians there are. Perhaps the  lure of the nearby consumption districts is too great. My wanderings are bought to a sudden and unexpected halt by a massive road that carves its way through this place, and cars flash by on their way to the motorway. Their occupants separated from human interaction by the technology that they use to transport themselves. The gleaming cars  seem incongruous juxtaposed upon the shabby buildings, but then, so does the multi-laned highway that supports them like some Haussmann  Boulevard.

Having negotiated the “macadam” somewhat more safely than Baudelaire’s  poet (having no halo to lose), I find Cuba Street almost unchanged on the other side, continuing after the brief inconvenience of the highway. There are the beginnings of a more consumption  oriented ambience. The first signs of global capitalism are defaced, and only half-heartedly repaired by the parent company, in this marginal (for them) area.

The city council is unconvinced by the faltering attempts at  commercialisation. One can tell, because the drain covers remain decidedly utilitarian in this age of aestheticisation of the mundane (more on this later).

Raising my eyes from the  roadway, I am lured into a second-hand music shop by faded record covers of the bands of my youth. The theory of  commodity  fetishism is clearly illustrated here, where not only has the “labour” of the artist been commodified once, but many times. I purchase a copy of talking heads “Stop Making Sense”. This was a film of a live performance, which was made into a  record and then “digitally remastered”  onto a CD, sold, resold to the shop, and then sold to me.

When I return to the street I find that it is gradually transforming into a consumption oriented place. The first shops are heavily protected with their shiny consumer objects behind stern warnings from security guards, and global capitalist signifiers are juxtaposed onto walls of peeling paint. But I sense that my wanderings were about to take me to a new  ambience.