A territoriology of graffiti writing (original) (raw)

At the Wall: Graffiti Writers, Urban Territoriality, and the Public Domain

Space and Culture, 2010

The article is based on an ethnographic observation of a crew of graffiti writers in the northeast of Italy. Extending some considerations emerging from the case study, the article advances a reflection on the territorial dimension of graffiti writing in urban environments and the relationship between walls, social relationships and the public domain. This task entails understanding walls as artefacts that are subject to both strategic and tactical uses, as well as the relationship between walls and the public domain as a territorial configuration. In particular, graffiti writing is observed as an interstitial practice that creates its own specific way of using walls: it is a "longitudinal" rather than a "perpendicular" style, which transform the wall into a fragment of a "prolongable" series, a part of a continuing conversation.

Creativity and territory: the construction of centers and peripheries from graffiti and street art

Street art & Urban Creativity Scientific Journal, 2016

This article aims to analyze the meaning of the dynamics of artwork production that graffiti and street art artists currently do from its conception of territorial centers and peripheries. The city is seen as a place of conflict and the territory as the local space where it manifests itself. For graffiti writers and street art artists the city stands symbolically as the largest street of all, as a large canvas production. These are visions that respond to processes that the members of graffiti and street art respect and legitimate. The city is the great goal to win (its places, its physiognomy, but also its symbolic spaces), it is a space of resistance and construction of citizenship, a place of belonging to be marked and delineated as a symbolic space of territorial appropriation. The present document takes the PhD research developed by the author under the PhD in Cultural Management and Heritage at the University of Barcelona. It seeks to approach the creative processes of analysis, legitimacy and valorization in graffiti and street art and, as a case of analysis, the researcher has chosen the cities of Barcelona (Catalunya) and Montevideo (Uruguay). It was established, as empirical domain of analysis, discourses from 44 graffiti writers and street art artists of the mentioned cities, taking into account some relevant dimensions of their practices: valorization, legitimacy, recognition, prestige, professionalization and technical specialization, among others.

Just Writing Your Name? An Analysis of the spatial behaviour of graffiti writers in Amsterdam

The phenomenon of graffiti has received much attention from many sub-disciplines in social science. Scholars often engage with a small fragment of graffiti writing using ideas popular in their own-subdiscipline. This practice has given birth to a rich, but fragmented literature. This paper tries to connect the fragments by focusing on the spatial behaviour of practitioners of graffiti (i.e. (graffiti) writers) in Amsterdam. Interviews with them provide a basis for demonstrating that graffiti is part of a global phenomenon associated with recurrent social features such as the achievement of fame. Moreover, the triggers for graffiti writers to produce graffiti on a certain surface seem to be interconnected with 1) geographical factors such as the visibility of a location and 2) a certain regulatory regime which characteristics writers can observe on a surface. The complex mixture of such factors on a certain place influences the behaviour of individual graffiti writers, it creates a specific sense of place. Nevertheless, there seem to be groups of graffiti writers whose actions are rather similar. In order to understand their spatial behaviour better this paper argues to use a typology with the dimensions “degree of illegality of the graffiti produced” and “connection to graffiti subculture”. Consequently, four types of writers are distinguished: amateurs, outsiders, bombers, and artists, making it possible to research graffiti in a much less fragmented way.

The Spatial Know-How of Graffiti

My research interest lies in understand the spatial behaviour of graffiti writers (van Loon, 2014). Although graffiti writers have unique perspectives on urban landscapes that determine where and what type of graffiti they produce, they also have collective or shared senses of place – i.e., a spatial know-how that structures their production (Castree, 2003). As Table 1 illustrates, it is possible to distinguish four types of writers based on their connection to the graffiti subculture and degree of illegality of their deeds. Arguably, this typology is applicable to most Western cities. This contribution focuses on the two types who stay close to the ‘rules of the game’ the graffiti subculture, namely, Artists and Bombers. Which spatial know-how do they produce? How is it shared, and which type of collective spatial action does it elicit? The spatial knowhow of hip hop graffiti has been created in a very specific period in an unique urban context, i.e., New York in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and has spread with the rest of American popular culture.

Graffiti as Career and Ideology

American Journal of Sociology, 1988

Graffiti writing on public property is illegal in New York City. Still, graffiti writers appropriate public space in an effort to win fame for themselves. This study, based on interviews with graffiti writers, ana-lyzes how they create their artifacts and careers through social interac-tions ...

Graffiti as Career and ideologyi

1988

This paper identifies the organizational and ideological sources for the creation and structural evolution of New York City graffiti art. The stages and types of graffiti careers are traced through inter- views with 25 graffiti writers and their gallery and gang patrons. The ethnographic analysis serves to build a framework for joining the usually separate sociological literatures on subcultures, deviant