Political critique in Madrid's urban art scene: from the late '90s until now (original) (raw)
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Political critique in Madrid’s street art scene: from the late ‘90s until now
Communication & Society, 2021
The aim of this paper is to explore the political messages painted on Madrid’s walls by urban artists from the beginning of this artistic and political movement (the end of the 1990s) to the present day. We developed an extensive field-work that has helped us to create the first compilation of the key political messages of urban art in Madrid, based on an exploratory research approach complemented by the use of social media search. This descriptive and documentary approach was followed while keeping in mind that a wall is a public channel open to all and an outstanding method for expressing any political opinion with the greatest amount of visibility. Over the time span analyzed, the investigation discovered 15 urban artists with political content in their artistic production. The findings indicate that the political theme of these artists’ works focuses primarily on condemning the Spanish government for current issues such as corruption or the economic crisis, as well as past event...
Power of paint: Political street art confronts the authorities
In the context of Spain’s economic crisis, waves of protests have transformed the streets of Spanish cities into sites of place- austerity years, street art has become an important part of political participation. Based on artists’ interviews and on my visual ethnographic research in the Spanish cities of Madrid (2013–2016) and Valencia (2016), this paper seeks to illuminate how political street art forms a part of social expression toward the authorities. Street art is a media through which artists can question decision-makers and challenge policies made by statesmen. The examples of political street art highlight how creative contestations become barometers of dissatisfaction and how street art confronts institutional power. Ultimately, political street art is argued in Spicca and Perdue’s (2014) term as ‘spatial citizenship’ producing more polyphonic space. Keywords: Political Street Art, Protest, Political Participation, Visual Ethnography, Spain
SAUC Street Art & Urban Creativity, 2023
In the social mobilizations (2020-2022) during and after the COVID-19 lockdown in Colombia, the graffiti-projections produced, projected, and published by La nueva banda de la terraza played an essential role in visualizing, nurturing, and accompanying the social protests and the demands. As part of an unparalleled visual activism in Colombia, the graffitiprojections, which began in Medellín and soon expanded to other cities and beyond the country's borders, created an expanded para-cinema of protests, played an essential role in a complex web of actions and practices that made it possible, for the first time in the republican history of Colombia, to create a comprehensive, multivocal, and diverse social movement. The present analysis discusses how the graffiti-projections catalyzed engagement and dialogue and strengthened the democratization of the public sphere by developing an expanded para-cinema that involved textuality and social media, reenergized graffiti, street art, and communal Do-It-With-Others, and developed emancipatory strategies and networks. [En las movilizaciones sociales (2020-2022) en Colombia, durante y después del confinamiento por el COVID-19, las graffiti-proyecciones producidas, proyectadas y publicadas por La nueva banda de la terraza jugaron un papel esencial para visualizar, nutrir y acompañar la protesta y las demandas sociales. Como parte de un activismo visual sin igual en Colombia, las proyecciones que comenzaron en Medellín y pronto se expandieron a otras ciudades e incluso más allá de las fronteras del país, crearon un para-cine extendido de protestas, jugaron un papel esencial en una compleja red de acciones y prácticas que permitió, por primera vez en la historia republicana de Colombia, crear un movimiento social incluyente, multivocal y diverso. El presente análisis analiza cómo las proyecciones de graffiti catalizaron el compromiso y el diálogo y fortalecieron la democratización de la esfera pública mediante el desarrollo de un para-cine expandido que involucró la textualidad y las redes sociales, revitalizaron el graffiti, el arte callejero y el "Hazlo-con-otros" comunitario, y desarrolló estrategias y redes emancipadoras].
This article sets out to show how a sociological research project on the production of street art in Lisbon was built, from the construction of an object of research to the development of a methodological approach that enabled the collection of a diverse set of expressive data. The notion of 'route' serves not only as a valuable instrument of research in the first stages of an investigation in urban sociology, but also as a powerful visual depiction of the development of a specific methodology and the set of techniques adopted. The diverse set of interrogations about the object that stem from these incursions, as well as the specific urban context at hand, allowed the researcher to conceptualize street art as a component of contemporary urban space and as a visual means to reveal social dynamics between the several actors involved in its production, and the city itself. Therefore, in this paper it is briefly shown how this object is theoretically framed, namely in what concerns the street artists and the way they build an artistic path and attribute meaning to the act of intervening artistically in the streets of the city, and how this connects with the worlds of contemporary art and the several contexts of production of street art; the contexts in which street art is currently created in Lisbon, from individual initiatives to the actions of associations or collectives, and the municipality; and the way in which the city, through its institutional powers, can instrumentalize street art as a way of creating 'images of the city', and how this can be explored in terms of tourism and the marketing of cities, and the conflict or opportunities that these processes reveal for the actors involved.
The following pages include a brief summary of each one of the sections contained in the present dissertation. First, a succinct introduction comprising the motivations and expectations that justify the current study is presented. The aim of this introduction –which consists of an overview of the analyzed field and the main hypothesis and research goals that substantiate the study– is to highlight the importance of the historical and social background of the present work. Secondly, the academic approaches on which the critical apparatus of this research rests are briefly reviewed and commented, exposing the theoretical support underlying the perspective of the analysis here proposed: to consider graffiti and urban art from the point of view of dialectics, poetics, and rhetoric. Thirdly, the methodology designed for achieving the research goals is described and justified. Fourthly, the results obtained for each dimension (dialectic, poetic, and rhetorical) of the analyzed art via the use of the chosen methodology. Lastly, the conclusions and potential applications of this study are presented.
2016
This article sets out to show how a sociological research project on the production of street art in Lisbon was built, from the construction of an object of research to the development of a methodological approach that enabled the collection of a diverse set of expressive data. The notion of ‘route’ serves not only as a valuable instrument of research in the first stages of an investigation in urban sociology, but also as a powerful visual depiction of the development of a specific methodology and the set of techniques adopted. The diverse set of interrogations about the object that stem from these incursions, as well as the specific urban context at hand, allowed the researcher to conceptualize street art as a component of contemporary urban space and as a visual means to reveal social dynamics between the several actors involved in its production, and the city itself. Therefore, in this paper it is briefly shown how this object is theoretically framed, namely in what concerns the ...
Madrid-Palimpsest. The City as an Experimental Politic-art laboratory.
Since the Spanish financial crisis, begun in 2007, along with the so-called Spanish Revolution (Madrid, May 15, 2011), there has been an emerging will and need for direct citizen intervention and participation in the public sphere. Thus Madrid has witnessed a proliferation of a wide range of mixed visual graphic phenomena from subversive anti-aesthetic scribbles to street art interventions. This has given birth to a sort of local conversation between city practitioners (De Certau), street artists and authorities, and has visually materialized into an urban palimpsest of layers (writing, erasing, re-writing). In short, the city has become a politic-art laboratory that comprises either marginal spontaneous intervention or more sophisticated (legal or illegal) manifestations that question the concept of commodification, the public and ultimately the social role of art. Some urban interventions help to illustrate popular response to politics with the politic-art.
Streets of Revolution: Analysing Representations of the Carnation Revolution in Street Art
Challenging Memories and Rebuilding Identities: Literary and Artistic Voices that undo the Lusophone Atlantic, 2019
During the 1960s, and up to 1974, graffiti in Portugal was an illegal practice used to protest against the Estado Novo. In the late years of the regime, the activist and member of the outlawed MRPP [Movimento Reorganizativo do Partido do Proletariado/Re-Organized Movement of the Party of the Proletariat], António Alves, painted slogans against the Colonial War, calling for the government to order the return of Portuguese soldiers from the African colonies. Graffiti was not exclusive to Portugal in those days. Slogans graffitied on Paris walls, such as 'Etesvous des consommateurs ou des participants?' and 'La beauté est dans la rue', were part of the heritage of May 68. 'La Revolución no la para nadie' and 'Venceremos Unidos' were slogans in murals painted by the Ramona Parra and Elmo Catalán Brigades during the political upheavals in Chile (1970-1973). In the aftermath of the Portuguese Carnation Revolution, between 1974 and 1975, murals were also used to ignite the enthusiasm of the Portuguese people, and encourage them to support the Portuguese revolution and revolutionary process known as the PREC [Ongoing Revolutionary Process]. 1 Mainly painted on the sides of dilapidated buildings and in areas where the flow of human crowds was more intense, murals highlighted the importance of collective action (Câmara 2015, 218). Figures of workers-peasants, dock workers and factory workers-were key elements in the process of establishing a revolutionary identity. Certain colors, like red, and symbols, such as the hammer and sickle, revealed a mural's political affiliation. Walls were broadly used as effective means of communication across the Portuguese political spectrum, ranging from the left-wingers of the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) and the MRPP, to the right-wingers of the Social Democratic Center. Despite the appropriation of public space to exercise a freedom of expression that had been stifled during the Estado Novo, murals were less a target of creative elites than a means used by political structures. In other words, they were politically oriented and rarely used to encourage 6 Streets of Revolution Analyzing Representations of the Carnation Revolution in Street Art Margarida Rendeiro Carnation Revolution in Street Art 99 manifestations of popular art. Artists and political structures intervened separately. 2 After the collapse of the PREC, mural painting was gradually abandoned as democratic normalization replaced revolutionary expectations. It only emerged again during the 1990s, together with the practice of graffiti and stencil, to protest against official education policies and changes in the labor code, and to support the voluntary termination of pregnancy. 3 Although the 1970s' revolutionary murals were washed off, their memory was preserved by the April 25 Documentary Center in the Coimbra University, the Mário Soares Foundation and the Lisbon Municipal Photographic Archive. These art manifestations were different from the street art phenomenon that has thrived in Portugal since 2005. Tags, throw-ups and halls of fames are centered on individual art performance and risk-taking. Street writers see themselves as heroes (Campos 2010, 206-207). This self-image is grounded on expectations of an activity that involves overcoming extraordinary difficulties, such as climbing tall buildings and avoiding being arrested. Heroism in street art is associated with risk, bravery and transgression (Featherstone 2001, 17; MacDonald 2001, 101; Rosewarne 2014, 5). Most writers work in crews and sign their work with a tag, their artistic signature; ultimately, they expect to be recognized for their creative style. Growing popularity of street art and its effect on the gentrification of urban centers showed that it was only a matter of time before legislation regulating graffiti art was approved in Portugal. According to the decree-law 61/2013 of August 23, it is a criminal offense when done in public places and on public property, such as monuments and public transportation. The penalty for this offense varies between €100 and €25,000. Article 3 establishes that artists must apply for authorization to paint graffiti and empowers city councils to provide free walls for artists and decide whether a certain place is suitable for street art (Procuradoria Geral da República 2013). From the time this law was passed to 2014, the Lisbon city council licensed 148 Portuguese and foreign artists to produce 155 pieces of artwork on walls, blind building gables, bottle banks and garbage trucks. In 2008 the GAU [Galeria de Arte Urbana/ Urban Art Gallery] was created and fell under the responsibility of the Department of Cultural Heritage of the Lisbon city council. The GAU's primary goal was to intervene in Lisbon and preserve the artistic and cultural heritage of the Bairro Alto neighborhood by using a bottom-up approach, involving the local community in the process, whilst raising their awareness to street art. As in any other global city, street art has also become a tourist attraction in Lisbon. 4 Following the financial crisis of 2008-2010 and its dramatic impact on southern European countries, the Portuguese government called on the EU for a bailout in 2011. This resulted in the implementation of