ECAH

In this paper, we critically review the literature on graffiti and street art with a view to bridging the divide between the stark extremities of public graffiti discourse. We make the case for moving beyond singular responses to the challenges posed by graffiti – into the complex terrain between visions of a city free from graffiti and one where public art has free rein. To this end, we have chosen a series of interrogations of common dialectical positions in talk of graffiti: is it art or crime; is it public or private expression; is it necessarily ephemeral, or does it seek permanence; is it a purely cultural practice, or is it economic? Our list is by no means exhaustive, but it does go some way to uncovering the complexity of graffiti's dynamic and contested geographies.

Cited as an elusive metropolis, the city of Johannesburg largely resists the imagination. Following on from Lucy Gasser’s (2014) reading of Ivan Vladislavić’s Portrait with Keys this article considers how graffiti and street art offer ways of “mapping” the city. Focusing on Nuttall and Mbembe’s distinction between surface and depth I argue, through a particular focus on the Westdene Graffiti Project, how street art captures some of the tensions in current South Africa and provides new ways of understanding Johannesburg by meeting a map’s six key functions: getting to know, re-forming boundaries, making exist, reproducing reality, inscribing meaning and establishing patterns of control. The result is a city written from below.

Journal of Applied Youth Studies, 2018

The City of Melbourne is recognised as a vibrant cultural and intellectual metropolis that is home to a thriving graffiti and street art scene. However, municipal authorities draw a clear distinction between graffiti and street art that results in tensions related to the cultural worth of each art form. Despite domestic and international visitors' obvious interest in graffiti, Melbourne has taken a solid stance focused on the eradication of graffiti via its graffiti removal program, and by working to prevent graffiti via anti-graffiti education programs and the cultivation of what it terms 'high quality street art'. The contradiction at play here has the potential to negatively impact the development of young street artists about whom little is known. Based on qualitative interviews with active Melbourne graffiti writers gathered as part of a larger PhD study, this article presents the lived experiences of graffiti writers, arguing that Melbourne takes a myopic policy position on urban art that justifies the promotion of a valued art practice in 'street art', while simultaneously criminalising and devaluing graffiti writing.

Public Art Dialogue, 2018

Journal of Urban Design, 2012

Debates over definitions of urban graffiti as either 'street art' or 'vandalism' tend to focus on either contributions to the field of artistic practice or violations of a legal code. This paper explores the place of graffiti as an urban spatial practice-why is graffiti where it is and what is its role in the constructions and experiences of place? Through interviews and mapping in inner-city Melbourne we explore the ways that potential for different types of graffiti is mediated by the micro-morphology of the city and becomes embodied into the urban habitus and field of symbolic capital. From a framework of Deleuzian assemblage theory graffiti negotiates ambiguous territories between public/private, visible/invisible, street/laneway and art/advertising. Graffiti is produced from intersecting and often conflicting desires to create or protect urban character and place identity. We conclude that desires to write and to erase graffiti are productive urban forces, while desires to promote or protect it are problematic.

Visual Communication Quarterly, 2019

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.

Routledge eBooks, 2016

City, 2010