The graffiti within: the reactivation and politicisation of Sydney’s subterranean

Abstract

Socio-spatial politics characterise the city and the subcultures that reside within her. This paper is centred on the visual tensions and dialogues embedded in the graffiti which shape and transform the public waterways, drains, tunnels and decommissioned coastal fortifications that cut through Sydney’s built environment. It constructs a revealing portraiture of graffiti’s multimodal engagement to further insights into the politicisation of place in these liminal realms. Nuancing Lefebvre’s (1974) counter spaces of otherness, and Swyngedouw’s (2006) networked phantasmagoria of waterways and sewers, I argue here that graffiti’s transgression intervenes and diverts the socio-political directive of these utilitarian substructures, as well as the symbolic power of the State. Drawing on specific instances, this paper provides evidence of defiant and differentiated forms of visual expression that involve a separation from mainstream norms to reveal alternative narratives which redefines Sydney’s subterranean cavities as a place for pilgrimage, passage, performance and play.