Street art/art in the street – semiotics, politics, economy

Abstract

ABSTRACT The last decades have seen the ideological transformations of graffiti and street art once constructed as criminal acts and associated with urban decay to being acceptable and profitable forms of commercial art. The spaces and places where these art forms are found have long transcended streets to art galleries and corporate advertising billboards and campaigns making them “the most visible forms of global urban culture and urban transgression” (Ferrell 2016, xxx; Bofkin 2014). This special issue on street art/art in the street explores street art's proliferation and complexity in different contexts as it relates to the political economy and neoliberal capitalism raising questions of social class, urban growth, cultural production, and consumerism. The themes investigated include notions of legality and illegality, regimes of visibility and invisibility, semiotic situated acts and art, ephemerality, permanence and mediatization, the political economy of place as well as the changing symbolic and economic value of street art tapping into issues of subcultural status and social class identities. This collection of papers draws on a range of theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches providing readers with interdisciplinary insights into the complex and changing nature of street art to account (and better understand) this social semiotic phenomena.