Graffiti Culture Research Articles

The writing on the wall: Identity, placemaking and territoriality in Karachi's graffiti culture

This article explores the spatiality of political graffiti and urban murals and the role they play in placemaking, territoriality and identity building amongst Karachi's migrant communities. From Independence in 1947 to the present day, the city has been the site of several waves of in-migration, both domestic and international, resulting in a migrant megacity. Through shared migration experiences and cultural heritage, political patronage and spatial clustering, communities have consolidated and reimagined ethnic identities into political ones. These ethno-political entities demarcate territories of dominance and spaces of tension using political graffiti. This tool for placemaking and territory marking is an urban declaration of power on the walls of the city. More recently, political graffiti has been deliberately replaced by civil society actors in the form of murals changing the provocative ethno-political sloganeering to a nationalistic counter narrative. With multiple actors – political and apolitical - sentiments and stories now vying for space through their occupation of the city's walls, these surfaces become spaces of declaration, dialogue and at times, erasure. Through a process of diachronic documentation, this article shows that the walls of the city are a palimpsest of political opinion and identity; each subsequent layer in dialogue with the layer that precedes it. The authors of each layer through a process of placemaking, construct, deconstruct and reconstruct narratives of identity, ownership and belonging.

Graffiti Culture As Playing Media for Youth In Batang Anai Subdistrict

This research discuss about graffiti become playing media for youth in Batang Anai subdistrict. The graffiti is human activity in a culture. The youth graffitiers in Batang Anai create the characters and font in playing graffiti and it as an playing media having certain functions from graffitiers. The purpose of this research is to describe the meaning behind characters and graffiti font as playing media for youth in Batang Anai. The research method in this research is qualitative. The technique of collecting data by doing observation, literature review, interview, and documentation. The writer use semiotics theory by Charles Pierce to analyze meaning and to analyze the function use theory by Robert K. Merton. Based on this research, the conclusion is the meaning characters and graffiti font the youth as graffitiers in Batang Anai such as emoticons, frog’ science, adopt the scorpions way of survival, the birthrate, and abbreviation the real name. The function of graffiti as playing media for youth in Batang Anai such as expression form, the freedom, creativity and social

PRESERVATION OF STREET ART IN PARIS. AN EXAMPLE FOR RIGA?

In many cities graffiti and street art is considered as vandalism and is often connected with crime. However, in some cities majority of the population does not agree with such a statement. They see street art and graffiti as decoration of the city. They think the artists deserve a safe space for expressing themselves. It is already a little step towards preserving the street art movement, as, of course, not all the citizens will share this opinion, since place of street art is still a very arguable question in many cities around the world. More and more organisations, associations and projects of different types are being created to promote and protect the urban art. Promotion of street art can be expressed in different ways, for example, panel discussions and workshops, exhibitions and festivals. Several street art and graffiti related spaces are being opened in Paris. Museums, warehouses, walls, schools – every kind of space could be used as a platform for the artists. This is also a nice way to show to the city council how important this culture is to the citizens of Paris. At the same time Riga cannot be yet proud of a thriving street art and graffiti culture. But what if Riga actually took Paris as an example? Could similar organisations in Latvia improve the society’s attitude towards urban cultures? Could the safe platform for street art be a solution for its popularization in Riga? The aim of this paper is to introduce organisations which promote and protect street art and graffiti in Paris and to evaluate if street art positions in Paris could actually be an example for Riga. The conclusion is that the bigger amount of such organisations is able to actually change the attitude of society towards the urban art and Riga can surely learn a lot from Paris – creating spaces for graffiti and street artists can not only make their positions better, but also it can have a positive impact for the city’s social life and attract a specific type of tourists to the capital.

Understanding social critique in graffiti art from a (non-)Western perspective: Chinese students comparing Banksy and Zato through photo-elicitation

Although obvious in Western Europe and the US, the controversy about graffiti is not as pronounced in mainland China. While the creative/destructive act of vandalising public spaces and even private property brings with it certain issues and notions attributed to culture jamming, protest action, and subversive aesthetics, this is not necessarily how graffiti thrived within the leftist context of China. Unfortunately, since graffiti practice in China is still an understudied area, many questions would soon be left unanswered as this street art form swiftly vanishes under the communist country’s rapid development in pursuit of globalisation. With the aim of demonstrating why graffiti culture in China functions quite differently from graffiti practices in the UK (and similar ‘Western’ cultures), we investigate how the art of graffiti is understood and defined by Chinese students who participated in our comparative study. The participants contrasted Banksy’s art with the works of Zato, who is quite popular in China’s contemporary graffiti scene. Through a blended method of visual ethnography, photo-elicitation, and focus group discussions conducted via video conferencing, we visualised the two graffitists against a backdrop of clashing social constructs and political contexts. Our findings provide valuable insights into persisting issues surrounding the differences between Western and Chinese graffiti practices. Graffiti art in the UK and in China may have proven comparable in terms of medium but incommensurable as to message. Due to Covid-19 lockdown restrictions, the images included in this article and cited throughout the study were all sourced online.

‘I want to learn to do that’: subcultural heritage, identity, and learning graffiti in Pamplona

ABSTRACT Graffiti culture has expanded rapidly since its inception in the 1970s, and is now an established practice. Graffiti is part of the visual culture of many societies, and constitutes the visible part that is hidden to the common pedestrian. As such, it is argued that graffiti has become part of many countries’ subcultural heritage. This article focuses on the processes of learning and identity construction of graffiti writers in Pamplona, in Spain, and considers the consequences of this for the concept of subcultural heritage. The data were collected via interviews and participant observations conducted over eight months. The findings suggest that graffiti writers’ identities are constituted via their artwork, which is influenced by emotions and praise that serves to fuel their ego. The findings also indicate that these writers tend to hide the fact that they have learned from others, claiming instead to have learned on their own. Hence, graffiti subcultural heritage is defined by ideas that writers themselves have about graffiti, and their learning of the previous heritage. The paper concludes that writers leaving their mark and receiving feedback from their community contribute to their subcultural heritage, and that these two aspects represent specific characteristics of this subculture.

Fengshui your graffiti: embodied spatial practices in the ‘city of gambling’

ABSTRACTTo date, the academic discussion of graffiti culture in Greater China borrows a set of theoretical assumptions or preoccupations based on Euro-American graffiti subculture practices, focusing on the artistic dimensions of graffiti. This article, based on an ethnography in Macau, tries to re-examine two forms of local graffiti culture – the one influenced by hip hop culture, the other by the Chinese writing tradition – and endeavours to analyse the logic of their different spatial strategies and embodied practices.

Who is occupying wall and street: graffiti and urban spatial politics in contemporary China

This paper examines three cases of graffiti production characterized by showing the connections between three key ideas (aura, carnival, and publicity) in the context of contemporary China. This paper attempts to construct a paradigm for this particular cultural phenomenon by analysing three cases situated in three different social levels. First, graffiti as artwork, as exhibited by the contemporary artist Zhang Dali, is discussed. Second, sponsorship of graffiti culture by the local government is studied. The last and most controversial topic of discussion is how graffiti's online circulation reflects civil society in China. This paper explores the complex intersection of street culture, public space, and media. In revolving around the questions of what defines graffiti producers and spectators, what can be said about graffiti-writing practices, and who has the ability to speak out, this discussion illustrates the extent to which graffiti can be understood as a means of public communication against the backdrop of, and amid the moments of crisis in, the construction of modern Chinese cities. This paper illustrates how the aesthetics and the politics of representational forms and their intermediality are mobilized in a variety of contested spaces, where producer and spectator change and exchange identities.

Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral: What is Graffiti?

Graffiti exists in a liminal zone undefined and unwonted by any particular cultural institution. Born on the streets, it exists on walls where it is subject to the weather and to the needs of and desires of the graffiti writers who explore those walls. It is the graffiti site, rather than the individual piece, that is central expressive locus of graffiti culture. Because the site is ever changing, subject to a dynamic controlled by multiple parties (graffiti writers, passers-by, municipal authorities, and the weather) we can think of the site as “home” to a tutelary “spirit,” known in Japan as a kami.

Public Surfaces Beyond the Great Wall: Communication and Graffiti Culture in China

Public Surfaces Beyond the Great Wall: Communication and Graffiti Culture in China

“To Us Writers, the Differences Are Obvious”

“To Us Writers, the Differences Are Obvious”

Becoming-City

Becoming-City