Showing papers on "Graffiti published in 2018"

‘I’d Double Tap That!!’: street art, graffiti, and Instagram research:

Abstract: Recent scholarship into the uses of social media has opened up productive ways of thinking about the dynamic relationship between user-generated content and new forms of sociality and social practi...

From Wall 1.0 to Wall 2.0: Graffiti, Social Media, and Ideological Acts of Resistance and Recognition Among Palestinian Refugees:

Abstract: Writing as an ideological act of resistance and recognition among members of the socially disenfranchised has been engaged with in myriad contested political and cultural terrains. Historically, fo...

Place-Based Elicitation Interviewing Graffiti Writers at the Scene of the Crime

Abstract: Interviews conducted in situ—literally at “the scene of the crime”1—can elicit more nuanced data than interviews conducted in locations removed from where the activity in question occurred. This is...

Backjumps: writing, watching, erasing train graffiti

Abstract: This article deals with mobile semiotics. First and foremost, it discusses mobility as a semiotic device. The analysis engages with backjumps, a genre of train graffiti that draws inventively on various forms of movement. The term backjump refers to any fairly elaborate graffiti piece painted on trains in traffic, notably during the trains’ extended stops at terminal stations. The examples focus on the Stockholm metro, where a rigorous anti-graffiti policy has been firmly in place: graffiti is quickly cleaned off trains and a range of strategies is implemented to keep graffiti writing under wraps. By slyly inserting graffiti into the metro system, the mobility-driven backjump practice allows graffiti writers to temporarily subvert this semiotic regime. Furthermore, the forms of semiotic mobility at play are not limited to the movement of the trains. As the present study shows, mobile backjumps are entangled in other patterns of mobility, which jointly underwrite a number of interlinked semiotic pr...

Knitting Feminist Politics: Exploring a Yarn-Bombing Performance in a Postdisaster City:

Abstract: The aim of this article is to explore urban knitting as a worldwide social movement, rather than solely a kind of “inoffensive urban graffiti” made with knitted fabric. Building on the available literature and original research, the article argues that this movement weaves together elements from craftivism, domesticity, handicraft, art, and feminism. It then explores a specific urban knitting initiative, called “Mettiamoci una pezza” (“Let’s patch it”), carried out in L’Aquila, Italy, 3 years after the earthquake that devastated the city in 2009. To analyze the sociopolitical aspects of this initiative, a series of qualitative research studies was conducted over time, to which were added semistructured interviews with the initiative’s local organizers. The findings show that the initiative in L’Aquila clearly exhibits the five original features of the urban knitting movement that emerge from the literature as being characteristic of this movement.

Bomb alert: Graffiti writing and urban space in London

Abstract: Based on three years of ethnographic research undertaken in London amongst a loose network of what British Transport Police term ‘serious graffiti vandals’, this article considers how we might conceive theoretically of the interrelationships between graffiti writing, urban space and social control. The article proceeds in two parts. By way of introduction, the first half of the article delineates some of the major subcultural elements that comprise the day-to-day practice of graffiti writing as it exists in present-day London. The second half of the article engages the theoretical work of Henri Lefebvre. It is suggested that graffiti can be understood as simultaneously disrupting authoritative spatial orderings, whilst superimposing its own alternative social geography onto the city.

Knitting Activism, Knitting Gender, Knitting Race

Abstract: Graffiti knitting, the practice of knitting objects and installing them without permission in public, is part of a larger craftivist turn in contemporary activism. It builds on a feminist history of activist knitting and resonates today because of its synthesis of the material and the affective, and through these means crafting a more participatory politics. This approach has facilitated, however, blindness to the racial politics of a largely White feminist appropriation of graffiti. This works against craftivism’s political potential and mirrors larger concerns about participatory politics. As a scholar-activist, I critique graffiti knitting to point toward ways for it to evolve and become a more intersectional activist practice.

Painting the City : Performative Cosmopolitanism and the Politics of Space and Art

Abstract: Understanding everyday urban practices as performative, political, and potentially transformative, this dissertation aims to explore how graffiti- and street art use, subvert, and, via media, exten ...

Emplacing hate: Turbulent graffscapes and linguistic violence in post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina

Abstract: In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the 1992–1995 war is the foundation on which its citizens are building their future. Contested spaces marked by violence are (re)created by means of graffiti frequently conveying locally hegemonic (re)narrations of legitimacy and attestation. Following the lead of scholars like Wee (2016) , Stroud (2016) , Rubdy and Ben Said (2015) , this paper scrutinizes how the ongoing struggles of Bosnia-Herzegovina are constituted and sustained through/in the intersection of language and space. The first set of analysed graffiti is taken from an online database and the second is collected during fieldwork in areas where territorial status is especially fraught. I offer a three-part analysis of the key ways explicitly partisan and sometimes intimidating messages are realized through the subtle interplay of semiotic and spatial resources. Turbulent graffscapes ( Stroud, 2016 ) of Bosnia-Herzegovina are materializations of linguistic violence ( Tirrell, 2012 ), generating hateful places which sustain and potentially deepen social tensions between ethnic groups.

The phenomenal forms of political graffiti in Rome and Buenos Aires: a comparison based upon detailed descriptive analysis

Abstract: The paper provides a comparison of political graffiti in Rome and Buenos Aires. It examines ten photographs in each city and explores their properties through a detailed and intensive process of de...

The Greek Graffiti of Herculaneum

Abstract: This article offers an overview of ancient Greek handwritten wall inscriptions, or graffiti, in the city of Herculaneum and the first contextual analysis of these inscriptions. First, we address how much Greek is found, where it appears, and what was being written in Greek. We then offer a discussion of Greek alphabets and personal names inscribed in Greek, which together account for half of the graffiti in Greek at Herculaneum. Finally, we examine Greek graffiti in context and discuss two locations in Herculaneum where the graffiti have survived and are still visible in situ. By presenting where Greek graffiti appear, what they contain, and how they communicate and interact with other texts, we aim to provide a more comprehensive picture of the distribution and context of Greek in Herculaneum and to offer new insights into the culture of writing in Campania. Additional figures appear under this article's abstract on AJA Online.

A convection-diffusion model for gang territoriality

Abstract: We present an agent-based model to simulate gang territorial development motivated by graffiti marking on a two-dimensional discrete lattice. For simplicity, we assume that there are two rival gangs present, and they compete for territory. In this model, agents represent gang members and move according to a biased random walk, adding graffiti with some probability as they move and preferentially avoiding the other gang’s graffiti. All agent interactions are indirect, with the interactions occurring through the graffiti field. We show numerically that as parameters vary, a phase transition occurs between a well-mixed state and a well-segregated state. The numerical results show that system mass, decay rate and graffiti rate influence the critical parameter. From the discrete model, we derive a continuum system of convection–diffusion equations for territorial development. Using the continuum equations, we perform a linear stability analysis to determine the stability of the equilibrium solutions and we find that we can determine the precise location of the phase transition in parameter space as a function of the system mass and the graffiti creation and decay rates.

Geographies of Graffiti Abatement: Zero Tolerance in Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle

Abstract: In this article, we examine graffiti abatement policies and programs in three West Coast U.S. cities: Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle. Through this analysis, several similarities in the graffi...

Tagging in Algeria: graffiti as aesthetic claim and protest

Abstract: This paper examines some of the connections between street art, discourse, knowledge, power, and public space in Algiers. Graffiti writings are approached here as a tool of protest used by voiceles...

Graffiti slogans and the construction of collective identity: evidence from the anti-austerity protests in Greece

Abstract: Abstract This article examines the way that collective identity was discursively constructed during the anti-austerity protests of 28 and 29 June 2011 on the environs of the Greek Parliament. Drawing on the framework of critical discourse analysis, we study the interrelation between macro-level (dominant) values and views, and micro-level individual positions as expressed in graffiti slogans that appeared during the protests. The graffiti data comes from a personal archive which consists of 40 slogans, collected during June 2011. We conduct a systemic-functional analysis to scrutinize the transitivity structures of graffiti slogans, employing the notion of anti-language as central to the micro-level. We then draw on the notion of collective identity to frame the graffiti at the macro-level. Among our main findings is that the writers of graffiti slogans construct their collective identity on a two-fold oppositional axis: the first consists of the dominant institutions or “others,” which are negatively represented, while the second consists of a positively represented and inclusive in-group or “we.” The focus on graffiti has two manifest and interrelated goals: (a) to scrutinize the protesters’ semiotics in order to piece together their identity, thus avoiding subsequent hegemonic interpretations of the participants’ identity; and (b) to preserve the elaborate counter-reality constructed by these ephemeral messages against the official and “mainstream” discourses and their reality.

Graffiti Grrlz: Performing Feminism in the Hip Hop Diaspora

Abstract: Since the dawn of Hip Hop graffiti writing in the late ‘60s, graffiti writers have inscribed their tag names on cityscapes across the globe to claim public space and mark their presence. In the absence of knowing the writer’s identity, the onlooker’s imagination defaults to the gendered, classed, and racialized conventions framing a public act that requires bodily strength and a willingness to take legal, social, and physical risks. Graffiti subculture is thus imagined as a “boys club” and consequently the graffiti grrlz fade from the social imagination. Utilizing a queer feminist perspective, this book is a transnational ethnography that tells an alternative story about Hip Hop graffiti subculture from the vantage point of over 100 women who write graffiti in 23 countries. Grounded in 15 years of research, each chapter examines a different site and process of transformation. Under the radar of feminist movement, they’ve remodeled Hip Hop masculinity, created an affective digital network, challenged androcentric graffiti history and reshaped subcultural memory, sustained all-grrl community, and strategically deployed femininity to transform their subcultural precarity. By performing feminism across the diaspora, graffiti grrlz have elevated their subcultural status and resisted hetero/sexist patriarchal oppression.

Recontextualisation and reappropriation of social and political discourses in toilet graffiti at the University of the Western Cape

Abstract: Applying notions of interdiscursivity, commodification of discourse (Fairclough 1993) and semiotic remediation (Bolter and Grusin 2000), this paper analyses toilet graffiti in men’s and women’s toilets at the University of the Western Cape in order to capture how the toilet walls become platforms where texts associated with other genres and discourses are appropriated, remediated, and transformed for expanded production and consumption of meaning. In turn, it explores the ideological and identity manifestations of the inscriptions in the transformed and remediated semiotic material, and the dialogicality and the trajectory of the texts across space and time. Thereafter, a discussion is presented of the implications of the expanded meaning potentials resulting from blended and recontextualized discourses from other genres and cultural contexts.

Representing Subcultural Identity: A Photoessay of Spanish Graffiti and Street Art

Abstract: Graffiti is a universal and ubiquitous feature of the modern urban experience. It is both signifier and material object of a creative street culture. This chapter, using the author’s own photographs, explores and analyses the ways in which graffiti writers and street artists represent themselves and their identities, the methods and practices they use, and the meanings and values associated with their sense of belonging to a subcultural community of shared interests and experiences. These are both individual and collective responses to and engagement with the urban as a lived experience and practice that reflects a commitment to know, colonise, decorate and adorn the public arena of city’s streets, places and spaces with an alternative urban aesthetic.

Aesthetic ruptures: viewing graffiti as the emplaced vernacular

Abstract: This essay theorizes the notion of the emplaced vernacular, a type of vernacular expression that is mobilized by the production of aesthetics in particular places. I argue that 1970s graffiti in New York City emerged as an aesthetic rupture in response to the spatial exigencies of postwar urban renewal projects. Analysis of The New York Times coverage of graffiti writers “Kilroy was Here” from WWII and “Taki 183” from the 1970s demonstrates how the force of this emplaced vernacular was disciplined within dominant spatial ideologies, producing an aesthetic that continues to enable and constrain contemporary efforts of vernacular subjectification.

Linguistic landscapes as pornoheterotopias: (De)regulating gender and sexuality in the public toilet

Abstract: Drawing on multimodal analysis of graffiti in male public restrooms at the Faculdade de Letras of the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, this paper investigates how notions of place and gendered/sexualized subjects are discursively (re)constructed in interactions with the materiality and historicity of the public realm. The analysis focuses on the indexicalities of public signage and the ways they (in)form understandings of and access to certain spaces. By investigating the fragmented history of entextualizations of these toilet graffiti as well as the indexicalities of their lexical, graphic, and co(n)textual aspects, we argue that places can be queered since they are semiotically constructed and discursively performed. The paper illustrates how static assumptions about place, gender, and sexuality can be disrupted and ressignified which highlights the pornoheterotopic character of these public restrooms in which semiotic processes that (de)regulate gender and sexual dissidence are emplaced.

Graffiti in medieval and early modern religious spaces: illicit or accepted practice?: The case of the sacro monte at Varallo

Abstract: Graffiti in medieval and early modern religious spaces: illicit or accepted practice? The case of the sacro monte at Varallo Leaving one’s personal mark at a site of cult is an age-old practice attested in several religions, including Christianity from its earliest phases onwards. This article asks to what degree scratching graffiti into church walls was accepted behaviour in Western Europe during the medieval and early modern period. It seeks to complicate the view that disapproval of graffiti is a predominantly modern sentiment, by examining examples of both acceptance and resistance to graffiti at sacred sites. The attempts of Counter-Reformation bishop Carlo Bascape (1550-1615) to root out what he perceived as impious vandalism at the sacro monte of Varallo in Northern Italy, combined with an analysis of the graffiti on the glass panes of the Ecce Homo chapel postdating Bascape’s ban, together serve to suggest new directions for the study of the pre-modern significance of, and particularly resistance to, graffiti.

Smoke gets in your eyes: Re-reading gender in the "Nostalgia film"

Abstract: Upon its release, American Graffiti (George Lucas, 1973) was much admired by critics and audiences alike. Yet, in subsequent years, the film became known for its supposed “flattening of history,” and celebration of patriarchal values. This article demonstrates that such a judgement owes much to Fredric Jameson’s historically contingent work on postmodernism, which argues that American Graffiti constitutes the paradigmatic nostalgia film. In contrast, using close textual analysis, I demonstrate that American Graffiti provides a more complex construction of the past, and of gender, than has hitherto been acknowledged. Far from blindly idealising the early 1960s, the film interrogates the processes through which the period and its gender relations come to be idealised. This article has consequences not only for our understanding of Lucas’ seminal film, but also for the American New Wave, and the “nostalgia” text.

Мурали та графіті в сучасній Україні: особливості та відмінності

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to define the specific nature of graffiti and murals and to study the characteristic features of the adaptation and development of these areas of urban art in the urban culture of Ukraine of the 21st century.Research methodology. Scientific provisions of the research are based on a set of general scientific methods of knowledge (analytical, source study, historical) and cultural approaches: typological and evolutionary methods, as well as the method of system analysis of synthesis. Results. The specific nature of the adaptation and trends of the development of graffiti and murals in the urban culture of Ukraine of the 21st century is explored. It was revealed that at the present stage, the centres of urban art are Kyiv, Lutsk, Lviv, Odessa and Kharkiv, which is explained by the corresponding level of the dynamics of urban space development. It is emphasized that graffiti gradually loses its relevance, and the practices of urban art, which previously favoured classical graffiti, are implemented in the field of mural art. The main characteristic features of the mural, which correspond to the functional purpose in the area of residential areas of modern cities of Ukraine, as well as the themes to which the artists sought to attract the attention of the public were determined.Novelty. An attempt is made at identifying the concept of «graffiti» and «murals» in the context of the specific features of modern homeland socio-cultural space; their features and differences as separate areas of independent practice of contemporary art are determined.The practical significance. The material in this article may be used in developing lectures by specialists in cultural studies.Keywords: graffiti, mural, street art, modern urban culture, homeland socio-cultural space.

Street Art, Graffiti and the Moral Right of Integrity: Can Artists Oppose the Destruction and Removal of their Works?

Abstract: The relatively recent boom of street art and graffiti in many cities around the world animates and brings attention to the debate around their conservation. Can artists within these communities use the legal tools offered by moral rights laws to preserve their art? This note addresses this issue and, in particular, expands on whether street artists and graffiti writers can rely on moral rights regimes to prevent the destruction or removal of their works. It does so by looking at recent cases, especially in the US, where artists have started lawsuits aimed at preserving their street pieces or anyhow objecting to their erasure. The note also partially draws on semi-structured interviews I have conducted with several street artists and graffiti writers, whom I asked questions about whether they nurture interest in taking legal action for the above purposes.

Colours along the Danube Canal - Case Study on the Graffiti Scene in Vienna

Abstract: Graffiti and street art have become a prominent feature in the creative city model of todays contemporary urban reality. One possible reason for that is the implementation of legal walls, which has allowed artists to use surfaces in the public space without having to fear any judicial consequences. Moving this illegal practice on to legal walls has widened the spectrum of acceptance from the media as well as the public. However increasingly are legal walls threatened through re-development projects and vanish from the cityscapes. Based on interviews with stakeholders in an area in Vienna where such walls were implemented, this study will draw conclusions on the effects of such legal walls for urban revitalisation and for the enterprises that locate along such walls.