Journal articles on the topic 'Graffiti writer'

In this paper were explored psychological themes underlying vandalistic graffiti by 162 Italian adolescents (154 boys, 8 girls; M age = 17.5 yr., SD = 2.3) who “felt hooked” on vandalistic graffiti and agreed to participate in an interview with a graffiti writer. Use of this interview could clarify the motivations which led these youths to write on walls, the meaning they give to that act, the emotions they feel as they write, and their perception of risks and excitement involved. Qualitative analysis of their responses suggested these adolescents present a marked excitatory–compulsive trait, report a sense of emptiness, boredom, loneliness, and a lack of internal points of reference, and adopt behaviors linked to a pressing need for immediate gratification.

Auseinandersetzungen mit dem Thema Graffiti in der Stadt lassen sich seit einigen Jahren gehäuft in unterschiedlichen Diskurssträngen der Kriminologie oder aber Kriminalprävention auffinden. Sie gelten weitestgehend als Symbole für Kriminalität und werden mit Furcht assoziiert. Gleichzeitig wird ihnen in künstlerischen Events verstärkt die Bedeutung einer neuen Kunstform im öffentlichen Raum angetragen. Der Artikel untersucht im Sinne einer Cultural Criminology die Praktiken und Diskurse, die illegalen Graffiti in der Stadt eine Bedeutung zuweisen, wie die Praxis der Writer, sich zwischen diesen Bedeutungsräumen zu verorten.

Lirismo callejero para paladares de asfalto: Neorrabioso entre las fierasDentro de la efervescencia del grafiti como medio de comunicación en la ciudad contemporánea, se han integrado una serie de propuestas que ahondan en el desarrollo de la poesía textual a pie de calle. A partir de lo que catalogamos como grafiti de leyenda o leyenda ingeniosa, abordamos lo que podría calificarse como un grafiti de autor y, en concreto, aquel que tiene por objeto crear una experiencia poética, conforme a un proyecto o una actividad perseverante. Como exponente central destacamos a Batania Neorrabioso, en cuyo caso particular se reflejan una serie de pautas y características que han distinguido la creatividad popular y el grafiti en el espacio urbano desde los años sesenta hasta hoy, además de mostrar el proceso de adaptación y caracterización del grafiti como medio de expresión extraoficial hasta el siglo XXI y el papel de la poesía como dinamizador social.Palabras clave: Batania, Neorrabioso, Street Art, Graffiti, grafiti de leyenda, grafiti de autor, poesía social, política de autor. Stray lyrism for asphalt palates: Neorrabioso among wild beastsWithin the effervescence of graffiti as a media in the contemporary city, a series of proposals had been integrated, that delve into the development of textual poetry on the street. From what we classify as inscription graffiti or clever graffiti, we address what might be described as auteur graffiti and, in particular, the one that aims at creating a poetic experience, in accordance with a project or a persisting activity. Batania Neorrabioso is an outstanding exponent of this kind of graffiti. His works reflect a set of guidelines and characteristics that have distinguished the popular creativity and urban space graffiti from the 60s until today, as well as showing the adaptation process and the way to characterize graffiti as an unofficial media until the 21st century and the role of poetry as social revitalizing.Key words: Batania, Neorrabioso, Street Art, Graffiti, inscription graffiti, auteur graffiti, social poetry, writer policy

Photographer and writer Stan Paul explores life, the city, highway, and street views between UCLA and the Inland Empire/Riverside from his unique viewpoint as a vanpool commuter primarily along California’s I-10 and Highway 60. His photographic chronicle of commuting, seeks to capture both the historic and contemporary aspects of the city through its architecture, signage, modes of transportation, and literary places. Daily attention to the sights, weather, seasons, change of light, construction, graffiti, juxtaposition of images, ephemera, and ironies of the city as seen from the highway are the focus of this long-term project.

This paper is entitled “A Descriptive Study of Graffiti Discourse Structure on Trucks”. This research discusses about language unity form on the trucks.The purpose of this research is to describe writing language unity on the truck which consists of words, phrases, clauses and sentences of writing on the trucks. The method used in this research was qualititative descriptive and the techniques used was observationtechnique. Here, the writer usedrecorded and written techniqueduring this research. In analyzing data, the writer usessubtitution method.. According to the analysis on the data, the writing on the truk is decrypted according to language unity in the form of words, phrases, clauses, and sentences. The words found are in the form of nouns, verbs, and adjectives. The phrases found arein the form of nominal subordinative phrases, nominal coordinative phrases, verb subordinative phrases, and adjectival subordinative phrases. The clauses found includes S-P, P-S, and S-P-The sentences which are found are declarative sentencesand affirmative sentences.

Resumo Este artigo é parte de uma etnografia realizada em Lisboa sobre arte urbana e graffiti. O texto evidencia as fluidas e porosas fronteiras que se desenham entre conexões e produções da arte urbana. Como caso exemplar, segui a trajetória da writer portuguesa Tamara Alves, que, além de “artista de rua”, se autoidentifica como designer gráfica, tatuadora, performer e DJ. Notei que, na medida em que é dado ao artista a palavra possível de cerzir o underground com outros domínios singulares de atuação, ele passa a operar no circuito entre um dentro e um fora do mercado, entre trabalho e prazer, tal qual sinaliza o pontilhismo das experimentações efetuadas por Tamara Alves. Concluo, de modo provisório, que as divisas entre o tempo de fruição da vida e o relativo ao do trabalho cada vez mais se estreitam no âmbito das profissões consideradas criativas, configurando novas agências e modulações entre trabalho e arte.

In the article, the author analyzes the communication between body and text in the latest novel published by the Israeli writer Amir Gutfreund, Agadat Bruno ve-Adela, in which the body and the text stand in its center, thus related to the texts of Schulz’s short stories from the Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass. The paper refers to the essayistic considerations of Daniela Hodrová who approaches the text as a fabric and a tissue, an open work with germinal places and an ability to attract other texts. The author gradually examines the context of a murder series committed in contemporary Israel, whose victims are linked with one another not only by the rare killing weapon originating from the time of the British Palestinian Mandate, but also by graffiti from The Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass and old secrets. The writing of text is defined as weaving and deep dreaming, while the behind-text, inter-text, and over-text are examined to weave the thread of the story into a meaningful pattern of fabric.

This article engages with the existential importance of subcultural memory for middle aged men. The social site is digital and consists of the first three Swedish graffiti podcasts where graffitied life courses are reflexively constructed through conversations. The empirical material gives unique insight into the construction of subcultural aging and self-identity and offers a critical reflection on theories of youth cultures. The results show that sharing memories of youth, crime and agency shapes the meaning of graffiti and subcultural cohesion. Retrospective narratives on personal development and increased reflexivity and self-control are constructed. Story telling has a long tradition in graffiti and social media has lately been incorporated within the subculture. As graffiti is a holistic practice, writers adopt many techniques to create graffiti personas, and podcasts, in addition to writing, have been established as a contemporary way to practice graffiti. The article illustrates how graffiti podcasting forms a mnemonic community where the meaning of graffiti is negotiated. Podcasts are memory sites in a struggle for individual and cultural recognition of what used to be labeled a deviant subculture.

I found the slogan used as the title of this paper one sunny and cold Sunday morning in winter, 1985, on a vertical steel bar in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge, above the East River, written with that ugly black ink that has replaced the bright colours of earlier years of graffiti in New York. Still, in contrast to the meaningless scribblings or markings of warrior names usually found in Manhattan these days, the message is nearly a joyful one: there is no point in expecting or demanding a “just society” from a state or other authorities — we will have to look after that ourselves and we can do it. By implication the writer also tells us what popular demands for “justice” really mean: an end to injustice. They are not “positive” demands, but in fact criticisms of some state of affairs or measures taken (or not taken) by the authorities: we know very well what is not just, even though we may not know what a “just” society should look like, and may even be sceptical whether we would like to live in one.

The Soviet canonisation of Abai, the nineteenth-century Kazakh poet and enlightener became a problematic theme for local intellectuals in the 2010s after the Occupy Abai movement in Moscow raised concerns over the heritage of Abai as a Sovietised canon and as an independent non-Soviet thinker. In 2012 oppositional leaders in Russia occupied Abai monument in Moscow and the leader of the opposition Alexey Navalny, called for his supporters to gather around the monument to unknown strange Kazakh guy using the Russian slang word – neponyatnii Kazakh. Local audience in Kazakhstan at first responded with offensive comments and questions to the Russian opposition movement – how come Abai, the Kazakh version of Russian poet and a visionary Alexander Pushkin, the symbol and canon of Soviet Kazakh literature and the symbol of post-Soviet Kazakhness and its culture could be unknown and strange? From the celebrated writer of the Soviet dekadas and Leninist prizes for Mukhtar Auezov's novel The Path of Abai ( Abai Zholy) Abai turned into neponyatnii – incomprehensible, strange (in words of Russian Alexey Navalny) and neponyatii – misunderstood poet. These discussions on popular online Russophone as well as Kazakhophone platforms and blogs opened up a debate on the legacy and problematic canonisation of Abai. Is Abai misunderstood in contemporary Kazakhstani society? From short essays when famous writer Gerold Belger speaks to Abai's monument in central Almaty to mobile phone applications featuring Abai's Qara Sozder, to the famous anonymous Abai graffiti in central Almaty and Occupy Abai movement responses in Kazakh internet sphere, I trace the mutations of Abai's canon. These discussions reveal the conflicting trends of young Kazakhs and Kazakhstanis who take their cultural criticisms online but continue using the “national” frameworks in their globalized discussions.

Purpose This paper aims to examine the development of graffiti in Hong Kong. Based on cultural criminological theories, the study looks at graffiti from the cultural verstehen perspective (Ritzer, 1996) – giving voice to graffiti writers, instead of focusing on how the police or the general public react to the graffiti issue. The research also examines the motives of those writers and whether they perceive graffiti as an act of vandalism or an expression of an art form. Design/methodology/approach Graffiti is still an underdeveloped research topic in Hong Kong, which is absent not only in the mainstream discourse, but also in mainstream arts. It merely catches the media’s attention when graffiti are associated with political struggles. Thus, this paper aims to bridge the gap between the existing literature reviews and the graffiti development in this cosmopolitan city. In particular, it gives voice to graffiti writers to let readers understand how this hidden group of people perceive the notion of graffiti within their own subcultural discourse – and, at the same time, how the public responds to those graffiti-writings. Findings The research project, to a certain extent, manifests similarities to the literature reviews at an international level, especially the graffiti studies in London and New York. There are similarities in the graffiti styles – tags, bombs and pieces – and also in terms of the meanings carried behind graffiti-writing in public spaces, which showcase power through occupying space and its association with commercialization. Nevertheless, graffiti in Hong Kong have certain unique features, particularly as regards the official response to graffiti and the linkage of graffiti with politics. As seen in the Umbrella Movement and the Ai wei-wei incident, the legal responses were rigid and efficient, showing that the government paid great attention to the messages delivered in these cases. When no complaints or reports are made to the police, graffiti work is left undisturbed. Only when strong political messages are carried will prompt action be taken. Originality/value Graffiti are an underdeveloped research topic in Hong Kong, which is absent not only in the mainstream discourse but also in the mainstream arts. This paper aims to bridge the gap between the existing literature reviews and the graffiti development in Hong Kong. It gives voice to graffiti writers to let readers understand how this hidden group of people perceives the notion of graffiti within their own subcultural discourse and how city dwellers respond to those graffiti-writings.

The present paper deals with a long inscription which was uncovered in the autumn of 2015 on the external wall of the southern apse of the 12th century Transfiguration Cathedral in Pereslavl-Zalessky. It contains an almost fully legible list of assassins of the Vladimir-Suzdal prince Andrey Yuryevich, who was murdered in Bogolyubovo on June 29th, 1174. The writer places a curse on the murderers and wishes eternal memory to the prince. The graffito probably dates from 1175–1176 when Andrey’s younger brother Vsevolod Yuryevich ruled in Pereyaslavl. It is the oldest inscription from the North-Eastern Rus’ to have a fairly precise dating. The discovery corroborates the general accuracy of the chronicles in respect to the murder and serves as a source for the study of Old Russian princely titles and other terms of social hierarchy. Andrey Yuryevich is called the grand prince and his murderers are collectively given the pejorative name of parobki (servants) despite the high social status of at least some of them. As the first example of anathematising state criminals in Rus’, the inscription has relevance for church history as well. Valuable new information is provided by the list of assassins. It includes the names of 11–13 individuals. The list indicates that the main conspirator, the boyar Kuchcko's son-in-law named Peter was the son of someone named Frol. That Frol may have been the founder of the Church of Saints Florus and Laurus in the Moscow Kremlin. The patronymic of the third of the murderers Yakim Kuckovičь is spelled with a c., which may be an indication of Kuchko's Novgorodian origin. The fourth on the list is Ofrem Moizich. The authors accept the Arabic origins of Ofrem’s patronymic suggested by V. S. Kuleshov. The latter traces it back to the name Muʕizz which could have belonged to a Muslim from Volga Bulgaria. The fifth conspirator Dobryna Mikitich is tentatively identified as the Rostov boyar Dobryna the Tall. He played a prominent role in the feud triggered by the assassination of Andrey Yuryevich and perished in the Battle of Yuryev Field on June 27th, 1176. The last person on the list bears the rare Slavic name Styrjata which elsewhere is attested only in the 12th century graffiti inscriptions from the Annunciation Church at Gorodische near Novgorod. From the standpoint of linguistics the inscription demonstrates an advanced stage of the yer-shift. In this respect it is similar to the Novgorod birchbark letter No. 724 which dates from the same period. The inscription was read with the help of a three-dimensional model created by the RSSDA Lab. (https://rssda.su/ep-rus).

Drawing on survey and focus group research completed in New Zealand in 2009 this article examines young peoples’ perspectives on graffiti and tagging. The results further demonstrate that graffiti writing is an activity invested with considerable cultural meaning by many of those engaged in it and that their understanding of graffiti is considerably at odds with prevailing political, media and policy discourse that sees it purely in terms of criminal damage and antisocial behaviour. While graffiti can be conceptualised as an alternative way of ‘reading’ urban space, the results of this study show that writers recognised that graffiti had damaging consequences and was inappropriate in some contexts. Graffiti was not simply nihilistic destructive behaviour but one in which perceptions of criminality were leavened by aesthetic judgements and the allure and excitement of potential local celebrity.

An A-B-A design was adopted to test the effectiveness of different types of contingency-nonspecific stimuli in the prevention of bathroom graffiti in a college setting. The three stimuli examined in this study have been frequently used to prevent bathroom graffiti in South Korea and they were: (a) “Please do not write, draw, or mark on these walls;” (b) a mirror; and (c) “Courteous people keep public places clean.” No graffiti was observed when the first and second stimuli were presented. In contrast, a notable increase in bathroom graffiti was observed when the third sign was presented. The results suggest that a contingency non-specific stimuli posting intervention can be effective in the prevention of bathroom graffiti only when appropriate stimuli are used. The practical implications, including cost-effectiveness, are discussed.

As a form of literacy, graffiti has existed throughout the ages. Many researches on epigraphy show that many examples of graffiti were left intact from the period of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. However, the purpose of their appearance was merely disputed in the scientific community.The main aim of this research is to ascertain the motives of the habits of inscribing graffiti among Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealths citizens. This study is a qualitative research that seeks an in-depth understanding of the phenomena of writing graffiti. Basic material for the research was gathered from ego-documents that are focused on the personal lives and experiences of the writers. The research is based on a detailed contextual analysis of several cases (case study method).This article examines several cases and gives some light on how and why graffiti were made. However, for more ample and accurate results, more extensive research must be done.

Based on several years of near-nightly excursions into London’s disused, non-public, forgotten, subterranean and infrastructural spaces, this article considers the significance of discovering years - or even decades - old surviving traces of graffiti (‘ghosts’, in graffiti parlance) in situ. The article also draws on extensive ethnographic research into London’s graffiti subculture, as well as in-depth semi-structured interviews with several generations of graffiti writers. The article proceeds in four parts. The first part reflects on three sources of methodological inspiration: unauthorised urban exploration and documentation; more-or-less formal archaeological studies of graffiti; and ‘ghost ethnography’, an emergent methodological orientation which places an emphasis on absence and the interpretation of material and atmospheric traces. The second part of the article considers recent theoretical work associated with the ‘spectral turn’. Here, ghosts and haunting provide useful conceptual metaphors for thinking about lingering material and atmospheric traces of the past. The third part of the article offers some methodological caveats and reflections. The fourth and final part of the article seeks to connect theory and method, and asks what significance can be drawn from unauthorised encounters with graffiti ‘ghosts’.

Abstract This article examines the way that collective identity was discursively constructed during the anti-austerity protests of 28 and 29 June 2011 on the environs of the Greek Parliament. Drawing on the framework of critical discourse analysis, we study the interrelation between macro-level (dominant) values and views, and micro-level individual positions as expressed in graffiti slogans that appeared during the protests. The graffiti data comes from a personal archive which consists of 40 slogans, collected during June 2011. We conduct a systemic-functional analysis to scrutinize the transitivity structures of graffiti slogans, employing the notion of anti-language as central to the micro-level. We then draw on the notion of collective identity to frame the graffiti at the macro-level. Among our main findings is that the writers of graffiti slogans construct their collective identity on a two-fold oppositional axis: the first consists of the dominant institutions or “others,” which are negatively represented, while the second consists of a positively represented and inclusive in-group or “we.” The focus on graffiti has two manifest and interrelated goals: (a) to scrutinize the protesters’ semiotics in order to piece together their identity, thus avoiding subsequent hegemonic interpretations of the participants’ identity; and (b) to preserve the elaborate counter-reality constructed by these ephemeral messages against the official and “mainstream” discourses and their reality.

Based on the ethnographic insight gained from the fieldwork conducted between 2006 and 2012 on the island of O‘ahu, this article attempts to capture the aesthetic and symbolic expressions of decolonization in aerosol writing pieces by a crew primarily composed of Kanaka Maoli (“true human being,” indigenous people of Hawai‘i) writers. By focusing on the indigenous aesthetic practice of kaona (“hidden meaning”), the article analyzes the ways in which Hawaiian style graffiti unveils the contested issues of jurisdiction, sovereignty, property claims, and ecological integrity under the prolonged colonial and military occupation. It simultaneously illuminates the decolonial vision brought forth by Kānaka Maoli writers that seeks to transcend and transform the realities imposed by the colonial and occupational power. Through socio-historical contextualization, the article draws parallels between the time of Hawaiian Kingdom and the present, to unravel the integration of ancestral knowledge and contemporary expressions in Hawaiian style graffiti.

Although graffiti is a well-known phenomenon of street art, there is still no single point of view on this phenomenon (even if it is considered art at all). Both the essence and the manifestations of graffiti remain a matter of debate - there are dozens of different classifications, that they are based on different characteristics. However, the phenomenon has rarely attracted attention from the point of view of semiotics, though it is the semiotic reading of graffiti that makes it possible to understand its nature more deeply. Due to semiotics we could create an integrative classification, which would combine stylistics and subject matter into one system. The article made exactly such an attempt –providing of the semiotic classification of graffiti, based on Ch. Peirce’s classification of semiotic signs. Graffiti is a sign, because it has a material shell of the latter, a marked object and rules of interpretation. It functions within the subculture and signifies the individual's desire to escape from the deterministic nature of urban life (J. Baudrillard). It is a culture of the semiosphere, which continuously gives rise to new connotations and, accordingly, generates new receptions. An important component of graffiti interpretation is the cultural code; it is not read outside the field of conventionality, cultural context. Decoding of graffiti can occur in three ways. From our point of view, it is appropriate to use S. Hall’sclassification. He suggested a scheme for "decrypting" messages in the media, however, in our opinion, his scheme works for any communicative act (including graffiti). He distinguished dominant ("dominant-hegemonic"), oppositional ("oppositional") and negotiated ("negotiated") decoding. In the graffiti situation, oppositional decoding prevails among ordinary recipients (passers-by). U. Eco called this type aberrant, because it provides "decryption" of text with a different code than the one it was created for. Authors of graffiti themselves are often not fully aware of what they createalso. Modern writers use techniques of op-art, Dadaism, surrealism, etc., without being very oriented in all these directions. When graffiti combines different types of art (for example, the combination of painting with literature), it takes into account the features of inter-semiotic translation, which makes the decoding situation even more complicated. We offercreating a semioticclassificationofgraffiti, that might be based on Ch. Peirce’s classification of semiotic signs, whichdistinguishthesigns-copies, signs-indexes, signs-symbols. It could help the essence of graffiti and decode them.

Resumo Escrever, assumido genericamente no mundo do graffiti enquanto taggear, ou seja, enquanto gesto de intervenção de um suporte não estabelecido para aquilo, o muro, “o espaço tópico da escritura moderna” (Barthes, 2002), supõe uma operação contínua de expressão no espaço público, “um espaço sensível como um todo” (Didi-Huberman, 2017) que surge de um desejo, certo princípio de liberdade, subversão e reivindicação de soberania partilhado entre as/os writers. A voz e a presença das mulheres, uma categoria pensada desde uma “perspectiva ex-cêntrica” (Costa, 2002), não só é cada vez mais visível na prática do graffiti, mas supõe a existência de outra forma de escrita a partir de seus corpos e vivências, configurando outros protocolos de leitura nas cidades. Nesse sentido, propõe-se refletir sobre a autoria de graffiti realizado por mulheres, o processo de escrita e legibilidade da paisagem urbana e as visibilidades e invisibilidades em jogo na apropriação da cidade contemporânea a partir dessa prática artística.

<p>Com a indicação de Belo Horizonte como uma das sedes da Copa das Confederações de 2013 e Copa do Mundo de Futebol Masculino da FIFA, em 2014, a Prefeitura Municipal de Belo Horizonte intensificou a repressão aos pichadores da cidade, desenvolvendo conjuntamente com os seus parceiros, uma série de medidas restritivas à prática. O presente estudo avalia, a partir de uma perspectiva geográfica, os efeitos dessas políticas no hipercentro de Belo Horizonte. Trabalha-se com dados primários resultantes de uma ampla catalogação das pichações encontradas no hipercentro de Belo Horizonte em 2011 e 2015. Os resultados revelam uma intensa contenda entre poder público local e pichadores pelo território central, cujos resultados indicam uma ampliação no número de pichações. Por outro lado, em resposta à crescente repressão, os pichadores passaram a adotar suportes, posições nas edificações e materiais distintos, que privilegiaram formas mais céleres de pichação.</p><p><strong>Palavras-chave</strong>: pichação, geografia, paisagem, território, Belo Horizonte</p><p><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p>With the nomination of Belo Horizonte as one of the venues for the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup and the FIFA Men's World Cup in 2014, the Belo Horizonte City Hall intensified its crackdown on graffiti writers, developing jointly with its partners, a series of measures restricting the practice. The present study evaluates, from a geographic perspective, the effects of these measures in downtown Belo Horizonte. We work with primary data resulting from a large cataloging of all graffiti found downtown Belo Horizonte in 2011 and 2015. Results reveal an intense contention between local administrators and graffiti writers over the downtown territory, whose results indicate an increase in the number of tags. On the other hand, in response to the growing repression, writers changed their behavior adopting different supports, positions in the buildings and materials, which favored faster forms of tagging.</p><p><strong>Keywords</strong>: graffiti, geography, landscape, territory, Belo Horizonte </p>

Artistic activity which violates urban space is based on the aesthetics of vandalism; it underscores the emergence of the artist as a guerrilla fighter and a defacer, reminiscent of art practices developed during the historical and the post-war avant-garde. The intervention of three graffiti artists, who completely covered the southern annex facades of the National Technical University of Athens’ neoclassical building with large-scale black and white abstract patterns in March 2015, can be understood within the framework of trauma theory and destruction art, as explained by the art historian Kristine Stiles.The writers’ choice to intervene in the Athens Polytechnic in the Exarcheia district―both traditional enclaves of political protest―as well as the morphology of the pieces themselves arising from bottom up mutual interactions with no underpinning organising principle, need to be interpreted on the basis of the political model of emergent democracy. The objective of this correlation is to exemplify how the graffiti writers’ self-organizing behaviour during the production of the works can be viewed within the workings of political movements. This brand of politics, the self-organizing of local communities and collectives, may prove to be extremely apt in recognizing and improving troubled domains of community life, especially today when Greeks are facing a traumatic crisis.

Interviews conducted in situ—literally at “the scene of the crime”1—can elicit more nuanced data than interviews conducted in locations removed from where the activity in question occurred. This is particularly true when conducting research on and with members of spatially conscious, “deviant,” and vulnerable communities who may for the sake of social and existential survival defer to rehearsed narratives and formula stories about their actions and perspectives when interviewed in “safe” spaces. In this article, which is based on participant observation and structured, semi-structured, and unstructured interviews with 108 graffiti writers, I contend that place-based elicitation can provide researchers with greater exposure to extradiscursive expression, reflection, and affective narratives about transgressive and illicit subcultural activity. The method of place-based elicitation has implications for where and how ethnographers and other qualitative researchers conduct interviews and seek to extract nuanced data from respondents.

Während Darstellungen von lesenden und schreibenden Frauen in der römischen Antike nicht selten sind und auch in der Forschung schon mehrfach behandelt wurden, können sie nur sehr eingeschränkte Erkenntnisse über die effektive Fähigkeit zu lesen und zu schreiben liefern. Persönliche Gegenstände aus dem Fundmaterial wie Schreibgeräte oder beschriftete Gegenstände besitzen dagegen einen direkten Bezug zu ihren Besitzerinnen und erlauben so eine ganz andere Perspektive. Hinweise auf lesende und schreibende Frauen geben beispielsweise Grabbeigaben in Form von Schreibgerät, Liebesgeschenke, aber auch Brieffragmente, Graffiti oder Grabinschriften. Diese Quellen werden in Beispielen vorgestellt und sollen an die Vielfalt und die Problematiken der weiblichen Literalität heranführen. While representations of women who read and write are not rare in Roman antiquity and have been the subject of ample research, they deliver only restricted information about the effective ability to read and write. However, personal belongings as writing instruments or inscribed objects, coming from archeological material, provide a direct connection with their owners and therefore a completely different perspective. Funerary objects like writing instruments as well as love gifts, fragments of letters, graffiti or grave inscriptions can serve as indications in this regard. In this paper, examples of these sources are going to be presented in order to give an idea of the diversity and the difficulty of female literacy.

The purpose of this study was to describe and explain the process of stimulating the writing ability of children aged 4-5 years by drawing in BA 'Aisyiyah Yanggong Jenangan. Knowing the supporting factors and inhibitors of the implementation of stimulation when writing by drawing. This type of research is descriptive qualitative research, carried out in BA 'Aisyiyah Yanggong Jenangan. The subjects of this study were group A students, amounting to 10. Principals and group A teachers as informants. The object of this study is the implementation of stimulation of the ability to write children aged 4-5 years by drawing. Data collection methods used in this study are interviews, observation and documentation. To check the validity of the data using the method and source triangulation techniques. Data analysis techniques using the Miles and Huberman models, the steps taken are data collection, data reduction, data presentation and conclusion drawing. Stages of the implementation of stimulation of the ability to write children aged 4-5 years by drawing in BA 'Aisyiyah Yanggong Jenangan, as follows: The first stage of a child's groom is a random graffiti. The second stage of a child's picture resembles a letter. The third stage the child makes pictures and writes the initial letter. The fourth stage the child can write his own name and mimic writing words. Supporting factors in the implementation of stimulation of writing ability by drawing: the teacher masters the learner writing method by drawing so that it can develop children's writing skills, availability of media and complete equipment in the institution. Inhibiting factors in the implementation of stimulation of writing ability by drawing, including: Children lack concentration when learning, there are children who do not want to follow learning and prefer to play, parents are less facilitating of learning equipment.

Based on field research in Athens, Greece, this essay considers graffiti as a mode of political response to the material and symbolic violences of neoliberal governmentality. In 2010, the Greek state declared sovereign debt crisis and began to implement an aggressive austerity program in exchange for economic aid from a troika of international lenders. This resulted in the dismantling of public services, tax increases, salary and pension reductions, layoffs, and, generally, the impoverishment of the middle and lower classes. In this work I consider a crew of three young graffiti writers, both before and during the years of the crisis, as they came to realize a fear of becoming integrated into an economized social mainstream and responded by creating street art intended to bolster critical reasoning among Athenians. I argue that fear of abjection and the experience of being at the social margins served as a stimulus of critical agency, and that the crew’s intervention can be considered indirect activism: a mode of resistance whose critical agents attempt to bring about their ambitions and visions by activating other groups to undertake resistance of their own. I show how my interlocutors made political possibility by creating art that lessened the capacity of neoliberal governmentality to manufacture consent, thereby contributing to a thriving ecology of resistance action in Athens.

Born in Vermont in 1981, and raised in Rhode Island, then based in New York, the young post-minimalist composer Nico Muhly was, at the age of 20, commissioned by the Juilliard School to write Music in Transition for versatile pianist Bruce Brubaker. Later Brubaker and Muhly created a performance piece ‘involving electronic commentaries and “graffiti” overlaid on live performances of piano sonatas by Haydn’, to quote the Kings Place programme notes for Muhly's new piece Drones and Piano, which received its UK première on 19 May, with Brubaker at the keyboard. Again fragments of Haydn are used, ‘as well as lexia from John Adams’ Phrygian Gates, Janáček, … along with the eighth hymn by Thomas Tallis'.

<p>This article studies the mediatization of criminal and deviant subcultures by analyzing the media-related practices of graffiti writers and skaters in Ghent, Belgium. The ethnographic analysis shows how these subcultures orient themselves toward media and how media become an essential part of and change their everyday practices. Three consequences of this mediatization are highlighted: First, by emphasizing their artistic and performative skills through the mediation of their practices, these subcultures start losing their rebellious and oppositional image. Second, as such, it can be observed that they increasingly become part of mainstream culture. Third, our analysis demonstrates how the mediatization of subcultural groups and their practices goes hand in hand with their commercialization and commodification, as they engage in recording and disseminating their work not only for artistic reasons but also as a means of acquiring sponsorship deals and job opportunities.</p>

Creole is the maternal language of the majority population of Guadeloupe, but French is the language of education, commerce, government and most written communication. Although the vast majority of Guadeloupians are bilingual and educated exclusively in French, Creole is also found in written form in the public domain in advertising, the public service sector, tourism, graffiti and political posters, among others. This article explores the various domains of written Creole usage with an additional focus upon the purposes and/or motives behind its use. It is argued that Creole is used variously to add local colour, to solidify connections with the creolophone community, to reinforce pride in one’s heritage and identity, and to exclude certain parties from political and social discourse.

ENGLISH is a juggernaut whose sweep across the globe is marked not only by the ever-swelling ranks of those who speak it as a second language, but also by its intrusion into other languages and cultures. While far from omnipresent, English is seen and heard in enough contexts in non-English-speaking countries that social scientists must carefully explore its role alongside indigenous languages. This study, which focused on the city of Rome, examines one dimension of English as an invader – its presence on street signs, on store fronts, in shop windows, outside commercial and public buildings, in billboards and other street advertisements, and in graffiti. It takes a more expansive and comprehensive approach than previous studies in examining the use of English in a foreign locale, in order to get a better sense of how widespread it is on the streets of a non-English-speaking country and in what contexts it appears.

The strong association between prison writing and writing on walls, whether by graffiti or carving, is as true of Tudor and Stuart England as of other times and places. Yet even if prison-writers associated themselves with the idea of writing on a wall, they need not have done so in reality. This article considers the topos in the writings and afterlife of the Catholic priest, poet and martyr John Ingram, and asks whether it is to be taken at face value.Ingram’s verse, composed in Latin and mostly epigrammatic, survives in two contemporary manuscripts. The notion that the author carved his verses with a blunt knife on the walls of the Tower of London while awaiting death derives from a previous editorial interpretation of a prefatory sentence within the more authoritative manuscript of the two, traditionally held to be autograph. However, though several Tudor and Stuart inscriptions survive to this day on the walls of the Tower of London, no portions of Ingram’s verse are among them, nor any inscriptions of similar length and complexity. Ingram might instead have written his verse down in the usual way, using wall-carving as a metaphor for the difficulty of writing verse when undergoing incarceration and torture.1


 
 
 Introduction It appears that graffiti has begun to clean up its act. Escalating numbers of mature graffiti writers feel the removal of their graffiti has robbed them of a history, and are turning to legal projects in an effort to restore it. Phibs has declared the graffiti underground “limited” and Kano claims its illegal aspect no longer inspires him (Hamilton, 73). A sign of the times was the exhibition Sake of Name: Australian Graffiti Now which opened at the Wharf 2 Theatre in January 2001. The exhibition was commissioned by the Sydney Theatre Company and comprised twenty-two pieces painted by graffiti writers from around Australia. Keen to present a respectable image, writers rejected the original title of Bomb the Wharf, as they felt it focused on the negative aspects of the culture (Andrews, 2). Premier Bob Carr opened the exhibition with the declaration that there is a difference between “graffiti art” and “graffiti vandalism”. The Premier’s stance struck a discordant note with Tony Stevens, a twenty-three-year veteran graffiti cleaner. Described by the Sydney Morning Herald as an “urban art critic by default,” Stevens could see no distinction between graffiti art and vandalism (Leys, 1). Furthermore, he expressed his disappointment that the pieces had “no sense of individuality … it could be graffiti from any American city” (Stevens, 1). As far as Stevens could see, Australian graffiti expressed nothing of its Australian context; it simply mimicked that of America. Sydney Theatre Company director Benedict Andrews responded with a venomous attack on Stevens. Andrews accused the cleaner of being blinded by prejudice (1), and felt that years of cleaning texta tags from railway corridors could not have possibly qualified Stevens as an art critic (3). “The artists in this exhibition are not misfits,” Andrews wrote (2). “They are serious artists in dialogue with their culture and the landscapes in which they live” (2). He went on to hail the strength and diversity of the Australian graffiti scene: “it is a vital and agile international culture and in Australia has evolved in specific ways” (1). The altercation between Stevens and Andrews pointed to one of the debates concerning Australian graffiti: whether it is unique or simply imitative of the American form. Hinged on the assessment of graffiti as vandalism is the view that graffiti is dirty, a disease. Proponents of this view consider graffiti to be an undifferentiated global phenomenon. Others conceive of graffiti as art, and as such argue that it is expressive of local experiences. Graffiti writers maintain that graffiti is expressive of local experiences and they describe it in terms of regional styles and aesthetics. This article maps the transformation of hip hop graffiti as it has been disseminated throughout the world. It registers the distinctiveness of graffiti in Australia and argues that graffiti is not a globally homogenous form, but one which develops in a locally specific manner. Writing and Replicating: Hip Hop Graffiti and Cultural Imperialism Contemporary graffiti subcultures are strongly identified with large American cities. Originating in the black neighbourhood cultures of Philadelphia and New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s, hip hop graffiti emerged as part of a larger, homegrown, alternative youth culture (“Urban Graffiti”, 77). Before the end of the 1970s, the aesthetic codes and stylised images of hip hop graffiti began to disseminate to major cities across America and throughout the globe. Its transmission was facilitated by: the production and export of films such as Style Wars (Silver and Chalfant, 1983) and Wild Style (Ahearn, 1983); the covers of rap albums; graffiti magazines; art dealers; and style manuals such as Subway Art (Cooper and Chalfant) and Spraycan Art (Chalfant and Prigroff). Graffiti migrated to Australian shores during the early 1980s, gaining influence through the appearance of these seminal works, which are credited by many as having inspired them to pick up a can of spraypaint. During its larval stages, the subcultural codes of graffiti invented by American writers were reiterated in an Australian context. Australian graffiti writers poached the vocabulary and rhetoric invented by their American counterparts. Writers spoke of “getting up”, “getting fame” and their “crew”, classifying their work as “tags”, “pieces”, or “throw ups”. They utilised the same bubble letters, and later, the incomprehensible “wildstyle” originally devised by American writers. It was not long, however, before Australian writers were making their own innovations and developing a unique style. Despite this, there is still widespread conviction in the view that Australian graffiti is a replica of an American cultural form. This view is supported at a theoretical level by the concept of cultural imperialism. It is generally understood, at a basic level, to be the diffusion of a foreign culture at the expense of a local culture. The concept has been usefully clarified by John Tomlinson. Since there are various orders of power involved in allegations of cultural imperialism, Tomlinson attempts to resist some implicit “master narrative” of the term, accounting for cultural imperialism in a multidimensional fashion (20). He outlines five possible versions, which inflect cultural imperialism to mean cultural domination; a discourse of nationality; media imperialism; global capital; and modernity (19-28). The idea that Australian graffiti replicates American graffiti draws particularly on the first two versions—that of cultural imperialism as cultural domination, and the discourse of nationality. Both these approaches focus on the processes involved in cultural imperialism—“the invasion of an indigenous culture by a foreign one” (Tomlinson, 23). Many people I spoke to about graffiti saw it as evidence of foreign, particularly American, domination and influence over Australian culture. They expressed concern that the appearance of graffiti would signal an influx of “American” problems: gang activity, escalating violence and social disorder. Cultural imperialism as a discourse of nationality hinges on the concepts of “belonging” and “indigenous culture”. In a conference organised by the Graffiti Program of the Government of Western Australia, Senator Ian Campbell argued that graffiti had no place in Australia. He felt that, “there should be little need for social comment through the vandalism of other’s property. Perhaps in nations where … freedoms are not recognised … but not in Australia” (6). Tomlinson argues that the conceptions of cultural imperialism as both cultural domination and as a discourse of nationality are popular because of their highly ambiguous (and thus accommodating) nature (19, 23). However, both notions are problematic. Tomlinson immediately dismisses the notion of cultural imperialism as cultural domination, arguing that one should aim for specificity. “Imperialism” and “domination” are rather general notions, and as such both have sufficient conceptual breadth and ambiguity to accommodate most uses to which they might be put (19). Cultural imperialism as a discourse of nationality is similarly problematic, relying on the precise definitions of a series of terms—such as belonging, and indigenous culture—which have multiple inflections (24). Cultural imperialism has often been tracked as a process of homogenisation. Conceiving of cultural imperialism as homogenisation is particularly pertinent to the argument for the global homogeneity of graffiti. Cultural homogenisation makes “everywhere seem more or less the same,” assuming a global uniformity which is inherently Western, and in extreme cases, American (6). The implications of “Americanisation” are relevant to the attitudes of Australian graffiti writers. On the Blitzkrieg Bulletin Board—an internet board for Australian graffiti writers—I found evidence of a range of responses to “Americanisation” in Australian graffiti. One of the writers had posted: “you shouldn’t even be doing graff if you are a toy little kid, buying export paint and painting legal walls during the day … f*** all y’all niggaz!” s3 replied, “I do know that modern graffiti originated in America but … token are you American? Why do you want to talk like an American gangsta rapper?” The global currency of graffiti is one in which local originality and distinctiveness are highly prized. It is a source of shame for a writer to “bite”. Many of the writers I spoke to became irate when I suggested that Australian styles “bit” those of America. It seems inconsistent that Australian graffiti writers would reproduce American graffiti, if they do not even tolerate Australian writers using the word “nigga”. Like the argument that Australian graffiti replicates that of America, the concept of cultural imperialism is problematic. By the 1970s the concept was beginning to come apart at the seams, its “artificial coherence” exposed when subjected to a range of applications (Tomlinson, 8). Although the idea of cultural imperialism has been discredited and somewhat abandoned at the level of theory, the concept nonetheless continues to guide attitudes towards graffiti. Jeff Ferrell has argued that the interplay of cultural resources involved in worldwide graffiti directly locates it inside issues of cultural imperialism (“Review of Moscow Graffiti”, paragraph 5). Stylistic and subcultural consistencies are mobilised to substantiate assertions of the operation of cultural imperialism in the global form of graffiti. This serves to render it globally homogeneous. While many graffiti writers would concede that graffiti maintains certain global elements, few would agree that this is indicative of a global homogeneity of form. As part of the hip hop component of their website, Triple J conducted an investigation into graffiti. It found that “the graffiti aesthetic developed in New York has been modified with individual characteristics … and has transformed into a unique Australian style” (“Old Skool”, paragraph 6). Veteran writers Umph, Exit, Phibs and Dmote agree. Perth writer Zenith claims, “we came up with styles from the US back in the day and it has grown into something quite unique” (personal communication). Exit declares, “every city has its own particular style. Graffiti from Australia can easily be distinguished by graffiti artists. Australia has its own particular style” (1). Umph agrees: “to us writers, the differences are obvious” (2). Although some continue to perceive Australian graffiti as replicating that of America, it appears that this is no longer the case. Evidence has emerged that Australian graffiti has evolved into a unique and localised form, which no longer imitates that of America. “Going Over” Cultural Imperialism: Hip Hop Graffiti and Processes of Globalisation The argument that graffiti has developed local inflections has lately garnered increasing support due to new theories of global cultural interaction and exchange. The modern era has been characterised by the increasing circulation of goods, capital, knowledge, information, people, images, ideologies, technologies and practices across national borders and territorial boundaries (Appadurai, 230; Scholte, 10). Academic discussion of these developments has converged in recent years around the concept of “globalisation”. While cultural imperialism describes these movements as the diffusion of a foreign culture at the expense of a local one, globalisation interprets these profound changes as evidence of “a global ecumene of persistent cultural interaction and exchange” (Hannerz, 107). In such a view, the globe is not characterised by domination and homogenisation (as with cultural imperialism), but more in terms of exchange and heterogeneity. Recent studies acknowledge that globalisation is complex and multidimensional (Giddens, 30; Kalb, 1), even a process of paradoxes (Findlay, 30). Globalisation is frequently described in terms of contradictory processes—universalisation vs. particularisation, homogenisation vs. differentiation, integration vs. fragmentation. Another of these dialectical tendencies is that of localisation. Kloos defines localisation as representing “the rise of localised, culturally defined identities … localisation stresses sociocultural specificity, in a limited space” (281). While localisation initially appears to stand in opposition to globalisation, the concepts are actually involved in a dialectical process (Giddens, 64). The relationship between localisation and globalisation has been formulated as follows: “Processes of globalisation trigger identity movements leading to the creation of localised, cultural-specific, identities” (Kloos, 282). The development of localisation is particularly pertinent to this study of graffiti. The concept allows for local diversity and has led to the understanding that global cultural phenomena are involved in a process of exchange. Work around globalisation lends credence to the argument that, as graffiti has disseminated throughout the globe, it has mutated to the specific locale within which it exists. Graffiti has always been locally specific: from the early stages which witnessed writers such as Julio 204, Fran 207 and Joe 136 (the numbers referred to their street), to the more recent practice of suffixing tag names with the name of a writers’ crew and their area code. The tendency to include area codes has been largely abandoned in Australia as the law has responded to graffiti with increasing vigilance, but evolutions in graffiti have pointed towards the development of regionally specific styles which writers have come to recognise. Thus, graffiti cannot be thought of as a globally homogenous form, nor can it be said that Australian graffiti replicates that of America. As hip hop has circulated throughout the globe it has appeared to adopt local inflections, having adapted into something quite locally distinctive. In a sense hip hop has been “translated” to particular circumstances. It is now appropriate to consider Australian hip hop and graffiti as a translation of a global cultural phenomenon. A useful reference in this regard is Yuri Lotman, who designates dialogue as the elementary mechanism of translation (143). He suggests that participants involved in a dialogue alternate between a position of “transmission” and “reception” (144). Hence cultural developments are cyclical, and relationships between units—which may range from genres to national cultures—pass through periods of “transmission” and “reception” (144). Lotman proposes that the relationship between structures follows a pattern: at first, a structure will appear in decline, static, unoriginal. He records these “intermissions” as “pauses in dialogue”, during which the structure absorbs influences from the outside (144). When saturation reaches a certain limit, the structure begins producing its own texts as its “passive state changes to a state of alertness” (145). This is a useful way of comprehending Australian hip hop culture. It appears that the Australian hip hop scene has left behind its period of “reception” and is now witnessing one of “transmission” in which it is producing uniquely Australian flavours and styles. Of the contemporary graffiti I have observed, it appears that Australian writing is truly distinctive. Australian writers may have initially poached the subcultural codes developed by their American counterparts, however Australia has evolved to be truly unique where it counts—in graffiti styles. Distinctive graffiti styles can be witnessed, not only between different continents, but also within geographic locations. American graffiti registers a variety of locally specific forms. New York remains devoted to the letter, while graffiti on the west coast of America is renowned for its gang writing. American lettering styles tend to develop existing styles. New York wildstyle is easily recognised, and differs from letters in the Bay Area and San Francisco, which feature arrows inside the letters. While American graffiti is by and large concerned with letters, Australia has gained some repute for its exploration of characters. Like American writers, Australians employ characters poached from popular culture, but for the most part Australian writers employ characters and figures that they have invented themselves, often poaching elements from a wide variety of sources and utilising a wide variety of styles. Marine imagery, not usually employed in American graffiti, recurs in Australian pieces. Kikinit in the Park, a youth festival held in Fremantle in March 2001, featured a live urban art display by Bugszy Snaps, who combined oceanic and graffiti iconography, fusing sea creatures with spraypaint cans. Phibs also “uses images from the sea a lot” (Hamilton, 73), having grown up at the beach. In spite of this focus on the development of characters and images, Australia has not neglected the letter. While initially Australian graffiti artists imitated the styles developed in America, Australian lettering has evolved into something exceptional. Some writers have continued to employ bubble letters and wildstyle, and Australia has kept up with modifications in wildstyle that has seen it move towards 3D. Australia has cultivated this form of traditional wildstyle, elevating it to new heights. Sometimes it is combined with other styles; other times it appears as controlled wildstyle—set around a framework of some sort. In other instances, Australia has charted new territory with the letter, developing styles that are completely individual. Australian writing also blends a variety of lettering and graphic styles, combining letters and figures in new and exciting ways. Australian graffiti often fuses letters with images. This is relatively rare in American graffiti, which tends to focus on lettering and, on the whole, utilises characters to less effect than Australian graffiti. Conclusion Graffiti is not a globally homogeneous form, but one which has developed in locally specific and distinctive ways. As hip hop graffiti has circulated throughout the globe it has been translated between various sites and developed local inflections. In order to visualise graffiti in this manner, it is necessary to recognise theories of cultural imperialism as guiding the widespread belief that graffiti is a globally homogeneous form. I have refuted this view and the worth of cultural imperialism in directing attitudes towards graffiti, as there is a valid foundation for considering the local distinctiveness of Australian graffiti. By engaging critically with literature around globalisation, I have established a theoretical base for the argument that graffiti is locally specific. Envisaging the global form of hip hop graffiti as translated between various sites and having developed in locally specific ways has exposed the study of graffiti outside of the United States. Current writings on cultural studies and graffiti are dominated by the American academy, taking the United States as its centre. In rectifying this imbalance, I stress the need to recognise the distinctiveness of other cultures and geographic locations, even if they appear to be similar. While writers across Australia argue that their locations produce original styles, few have been willing to expound on how their scene is “fresh”. One writer I spoke with was an exception. Zenith explained that: “the way we are original is that our style has developed for so long, fermented if you will, because of Perth being so damned isolated” (personal communication). He went on to say: “I also happen to feel that we’re losing the originality every second of every day, for a number of reasons … with web sites, videos, magazines, and all this type of graffito affiliated stuff” (personal communication). Hip hop graffiti culture is one in which communication and exchange is of central concern. The circulation of this “graffito affiliated stuff”—websites, graffiti magazines, videos, books—as well as the fact that aerosol artists frequently travel to other cities and countries to write, demonstrates that this is a culture which, although largely identified with America, is also global in reach. This global interaction and exchange is increasingly characterised by a complex relationship which involves imitation and adaptation. Glossary Bite To copy another graffiti writer’s style Crew Organised group of graffiti writers Getting up Successful graffiti endeavour; to graffiti Going over To graffiti over another’s graffiti Piece The most sophisticated kind of graffiti, which includes characters, words and phrases Tag A stylised version of a signature; the most basic form of graffiti Throw up Two-dimensional version of a tag Wildstyle Style of graffiti characterised by interlocking letters and arrows Writer Graffiti artist; one who does graffiti References Andrews, Benedict. “If a Cleaner Can Review Graffiti Art, Then …” Sydney Morning Herald 15 Jan. 2001. 15 August 2001 http://www.smh.com.au/news/0101/15/features/features8.html>. Appadurai, Arjun. “Globalization and the Research Imagination.” International Social Science Journal 51.2 (1999): 229-38. Campbell, Ian. “The National Perspective.” Dealing with Graffiti. Ed. Graffiti Program, Government of Western Australia: Perth, 1997: 6-7. Chalfant, Henry, and James Prigroff. Spraycan Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 1987. Cooper, Martha, and Henry Chalfant. Subway Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 1984. “Exit”. n.d. [1998]. 18 Jul. 2001 http://loud.net.au/projects/digit/garry/exit.htm>. Ferrell, Jeff. “Review of Moscow Graffiti: Language and Subculture.” Social Justice 20.3-4 (1993): 188 (15). ———. “Urban Graffiti: Crime, Control, and Resistance.” Youth and Society 27 (1995-6): 73-87. Findlay, Mark. The Globalization of Crime: Understanding Transitional Relationships in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. Giddens, Anthony. Runaway World: How Globalization Is Reshaping our Lives. New York: Routledge, 2000. Hamilton, Kate. “Can in Hand.” Rolling Stone 590 (2001): 72-5. Hannerz, Ulf. “Scenarios for Peripheral Cultures.” Culture, Globalization and the World-System: Contemporary Conditions for the Representation of Identity. Ed. Anthony D. King. Houndmills: Macmillan, 1991. 107-28. Kalb, Don. “Localizing Flows: Power, Paths, Institutions, and Networks.” The Ends of Globalization: Bringing Society Back In. Ed. Don Kalb. Boston: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2000. 1-29. Kloos, Peter. “The Dialectics of Globalization and Localization.” The Ends of Globalization: Bringing Society Back In. Ed. Don Kalb. Boston: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000. 281-97. Leys, Nick. “Graffiti Removalist Gives Art Installation a Spray.” Sydney Morning Herald 9 January 2001. 9 Jan. 2001. http://www.smh.com.au/news/0101/09/national/national15.html>. Lotman, Yuri. The Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1990. “Old Skool.” Triple J. 2001. 18 Jul. 2001 http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/arts/graff/oldskool/default.htm>. s3. “Name & Email Supplied.” Online posting. 9 May 2004. Blitzkrieg Bulletin Board. 20 July 2001 http://network54.com/Forum>. Scholte, Jan Aarte. “Globalisation: Prospects For a Paradigm Shift.” Politics and Globalisation: Knowledge, Ethics and Agency. Ed. Martin Shaw. London: Routledge, 1999. 9-22. Stevens, Tony. “It’s Vandalism, It’s Illegal and It Causes Anguish and Frustration.” Sydney Morning Herald 5 Feb. 2001. 4 Mar. 2001 http://www.smh.com.au/news/0102/05/features/features10.html>. Style Wars. Dir. Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant. 1983. DVD. Passion River, 2005. Token. “F*** You Little Kids!” Online posting. 5 May 2000. Blitzkrieg Bulletin Board. 20 Jul. 2001 http://network54.com/Forum>. Tomlinson, John. Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction. London: Pinter Publishers, 1991. Umph. n.d. [1998]. 18 Jul. 2001. http://loud.net.au/projects/digit/garry/umph.htm>. Wild Style. Dir. Charlie Ahearn. 1983. DVD. Rhino Theatrical, 2002. 
 
 
 
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ABSTRACT In this paper the author introduces graffiti in Rio de Janeiro as a method for creative activism, drawing on scholarly work and her experience since 2015 as a graffiti writer. Combining these elements, the author demystifies graffiti and untangles the multiple prejudices attached to this peripheral artistic culture. Locating graffiti within its roots in Hip Hop culture and drawing upon the memories and experiences of seven graffiti artists she introduces theories of memory and knowledge production to analyze the role of graffiti in constructing and deconstructing the city and its culture. The artists in this paper recount stories of how gender, race, and class have structured Brazilian graffiti and the reactions that it provokes, constructing a storyline stretching from the 1990s until today, a registry of knowledges about the culture of the city which have been constructed through an art which is always and already a form of activism from the periphery.

Graffiti remains a particularly resilient aspect of the contemporary urban landscape and as a pillar of Hip-Hop culture enjoys an enduring popularity as a subject of academic inquiry.1 As the practice of graffiti is so historically broad it is within the context of Hip-Hop culture that I will limit my observations. In this tradition, graffiti is often rationalised as either a rebellious attempt at territorial reclamation by an alienated subculture or reduced to a practice of elaborate attention seeking. This type of account is offered in titles such as Nelson George's Hip-Hop America (George 1998, 14-15) and David Toop's Rap Attack series (Toop 2000, 11-14). Whilst I am in accord with their respective analyses of graffiti's role as a territorial practice, these discussions concentrate on graffiti's social significance and neglect the immanent logistical processes that precede artistic practice. A Deleuze-Guattarian approach would emphasise the process over the final product, as they believe, '[w]riting has nothing to do with signifying. It has to do with surveying, mapping, even realms that are yet to come' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 4-5).2 This undermines the self-contained approach to graffiti as artistic signification and offers a more encompassing approach to investigating the graffiti writers' desire to physically connect with the architecture of the city. It was William Upski Wimsatt's 'underground bestseller' Bomb the Suburbs that inspired my Deleuze-Guattarian perspective on the processes behind graffiti. After reading the testimonies of the author and his peers about the niceties of underground graffiti writing, I was struck by the profound affective relations to technology they described. Many discussions of graffiti, academic or otherwise, relegate the artists' exploration of the urban environment and its technologies to be of secondary importance to the production of the artwork itself. Wimsatt's affectionate account of a city discovered via graffiti writing appeared to have resonance with the Deleuze-Guattarian concept of 'becoming'. For Deleuze (both alone and in conjunction with Felix Guattari), the concept of 'becoming' was a complex redefinition, or perhaps destruction, of the traditional dichotomy between 'subject' and 'object'. Baring in mind that this concept was developed across the breadth of his work, here I offer a concise, and perhaps more readily accessible definition of 'becoming' from Claire Colebrook's Gilles Deleuze: 'The human becomes more than itself - by becoming-hybrid with what is not itself. This creates 'lines of flight'; from life itself we imagine all the becomings of life, using the human power of imagination to overcome the human' (Colebrook 2001, 129). Using 'becoming' as a conceptual approach provides a rather more productive consideration of the graffiti writers' endeavours rather than simply reducing their status to simple archetypes such as 'criminal', 'rebel' or even 'visual artist'. In this way we could look at their ongoing and active engagement with the city's architecture as an ongoing 'becoming' with urban technologies. This is manifest in the graffiti writers' willingness to break the law and even risk physical danger in order to find new ways of moving about the city. Bomb the Suburbs outlines the trials and tribulations of Chicago based, 'old school' graffiti artist Wimsatt who writes about his first-hand observations on the decaying urban environment within major US cities. Bomb the Suburbs is both a handbook of Hip-Hop culture, as well as an astute piece of social analysis. Wimsatt's approach is self-consciously provocative, and shining through all the revolutionary rhetoric is essentially a love affair with the city and its technologies. 'As a writer, there is nothing I love better, nowhere in the city I love more, than the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority). Whether it's climbing on the tracks, playing in the tunnels, or just chillin' in between cars, I think of the CTA as my personal jungle gym. The fact is, we graffiti writers have a very close relationship with the train lines. Yet it is our goal to fuck them up' (Wimsatt 1994, 143). Such an extraordinary physical relationship with the city's technology obviously surpasses the general public's more mundane interactions. The amount of dedication required by the graffiti writers to scale buildings, trains and bridges, obviously goes beyond a mere desire of exposure for their art. Hence I regard the writers as having perhaps the strongest affective bond with the city of any resident, as their pioneering of unorthodox navigational feats requires a level of commitment that far exceeds the rest of the population. Thus the artistry justifies the means of the exploratory process and the graffiti merely serves as a premise to interact with the city's architecture. Wimsatt's enthusiastic account of the CTA infers the desire to realise new interactions that surpass the rather more average ambition of getting on and off at the right stops. An inordinate amount of attention to potential vehicles of exposure, such as the city's rail system becomes a requirement of any self-respecting graffiti writer. Hence they acquire an intricate knowledge of the logistical processes that keep the city's transportation system ticking over. Detailed knowledge of platforms, schedules, right up to employee shift changes are necessary and each of these aspects in turn open out into a variety of assemblages that offer insight into the inner workings of the city. Unfortunately for these urban explorers, their unorthodox interactions with the city architecture are invariably considered 'illegal', and reminiscent of the Foucauldian assertion, the transgression of law only adds to affective investment. This transgression of 'the law', also offers potential for new becomings, and the graffiti writers, in turn, acquire a 'virtual' nature as 'becoming-criminal' or 'becoming-hero', even perhaps perpetuating the struggle for an alternative 'becoming-law'. Hence the dour reflection at the end of Wimsatt's quote which highlights his exasperation over the underlying political tensions that conspire toward his beloved rail system's destruction. It is perhaps the barriers, both physical and legal that are placed between the writers and their beloved lines, which fosters the type of emotional displacement that incites such revenge. To prove that the law can't contain their desire, the writers ironically destroy the city's property so that the technology will forever bear the mark of their challenge. Wimsatt doesn't advocate this destruction, but rather he is trying to implore other writers to see the error of their ways, 'If we love trains, then bombing the CTA is biting the hand that feeds us' (Wimsatt 1994, 143). His idealistic alternative is to 'bomb the suburbs' (for the uninitiated the bombing they refer to is of the acrylic as opposed to the explosive kind) to symbolically deflect attention from the rail yards and into the homes of the indifferent. 'Bomb The Suburbs means let's celebrate the city. Let's celebrate the ghetto and the few people who aren't running away from it. Let's stop fucking up the city. Let's stop fucking up the ghetto. Let's start defending it and making it work for us' (11). Emphasising the division between the urban and suburban way of life, Wimsatt beckons graffiti writers to 'bomb the suburbs' in what I perceive, as an unorthodox means of inclusion. This call to violate suburban property is purely a scare tactic, an avenue that Wimsatt admits he is not keen to explore (143). This contempt for the suburbs is directed at what is perceived as its residents' collective escape from an inclusive dialogue. The graffiti artists are frustrated over the suburban residents' economic control of their inner city space and they have no accessible political vehicle to voice this complaint. In the minds of the graffiti writers, the suburban population is ungrateful, as the technology such as the CTA is taken for granted, or not even used at all. Wimsatt hates the insular culture of the car owning commuters that symbolise the suburban condition. They are deemed to pollute the city and will subsequently be the first to retreat from any adversity as their collective goal has been to acquire the means to take an out of sight, out of mind approach to urban life. Thus, Wimsatt blames the suburban population for the continuing malaise suffered by inner city residents. Their collective exodus to the suburbs has negatively impacted on city funding and continues to erode the quality of life of its inhabitants. Wimsatt's admonition of the suburban condition begins in the introduction on the front cover of the book stating, 'The suburbs is more than just an unfortunate geographical location, it is an unfortunate state-of-mind. It's the American state-of-mind, founded on fear, conformity, shallowness of character, and dullness of imagination.' Yet Wimsatt would have difficulty convincing his posse of writers to 'bomb the suburbs' for a solely political purpose as the attributes of the city that make it so accessible conversely makes the suburbs logistically difficult to conquer. By his own admission the pleasure of graffiti writing lies in the thrill of exploring the city's architecture as this process in its entirety forms an affective assemblage. For Deleuze and Guattari these 'affects are becomings' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 256), perhaps simply understood as the affective intensities that influence our movement through the world, and this is how the graffiti writers integrate themselves into the matrix of the city assemblage. Furthermore, Deleuze and Guattari offer that art consists of blocs of affects and percepts and that its role is to draw attention to these processes (Deleuze and Guattari 1994, 163-199), '[a]ffects are sensible experiences in their singularity, liberated from organising systems of representation' (Colebrook 2001, 22). Thus graffiti operates on a purely affective level and the works of its anonymous authors, whose collective texts are often indecipherable, appear to have little cultural relevance to the general public. This is demonstrative of a Deleuze-Guattarian reading where graffiti's significance as 'writing' is actually negligible. The pragmatic significance of graffiti in terms of territorial marking is its role as a refrain, providing infinite transference of signification. The refrains create relations of corresponding affective assemblages and in this way the graffiti is able to generate a range of audience positions. Whilst it may indicate signify a hostile environment for some, it similarly provides information to others or is perhaps merely treated with indifference. To this extent the recollections of Wimsatt and his peers recall Deleuzean empiricism and its 'commitment to experience,' as '[o]ne way of thinking empiricism is to see all life as a flow and connection of interacting bodies, or 'desiring machines'. These connections form regularities, which can then be organised through 'social machines' (Colebrook 2001, 89). Graffiti consciously draws attention to its procedure thus creating corresponding affective assemblages, and the ensuing relations inform audience opinions. Many would contend that graffiti is inherently destructive and would necessarily disagree with my claim that it derives from a love of the city. Dissenting opinion is invariably based on relative aesthetic merits and as a result will always be inconclusive. The only thing that can be tangibly measured is the ownership of capital and in this context graffiti will always remain the visual sign of a losing battle. Graffiti is the evidence of its writers' respective status as 'ghosts in the machine'. Presented in terms of information theory, we could view graffiti as feedback, either signal or noise depending on how you are positioned. As a permanent fixture of the urban environment it is indicative of a city that is all but running smoothly. The nature of this underlying antagonism is elaborated in Houston A Baker jr's Black Studies, Rap and the Academy where graffiti is 'perceived as the ethnic pollution of public space' by the 'other' (Baker 1993, 43). Baker then proceeds to the heart of the matter, questioning the values inherent in the regulation of public space, 'the contest was urbanely proprietorial: Who owns the public spaces? What constitutes information and what constitutes noise? Just what is visually and audibly pure and what precisely is noise pollution or graffiti?'. He contends that community opinion over such aesthetic maintenance of the public space will continue to be dominated by corporate capital. 'Urban public spaces of the late twentieth century are spaces of audiovisual contest. It's something like this: My billboards and neon and handbills and high-decibel-level television advertising are purely for the public good. Your boom boxes and graffiti are evil pollutants. Erase them, shut them down! (43)' Graffiti writers are fully aware that any attempt for consensus over aesthetics is futile as the urban subcultures have little political clout. Their ongoing battle is a vain attempt at seeking alternate ways to access this public space and will continue to sustain casualties both architectural and human. Thus the visibility of graffiti on a train line provides an affective assemblage that is as intrinsic to the network as the tracks themselves. As public property3 the railway is installed to serve the collective population and graffiti writers, it can be argued, just seek to use it in an unorthodox manner. Their work is undoubtedly just as creative and perhaps less objectionable than most billboard ads. Advertising on the other hand, represents the collusion of private property ownership that informs public opinion. This view perpetuates the 'reasonable' assumption that advertisements are an acceptable use of the public space based on the 'logic' that they are spatially contained and regulated by capital. Alienated from that sphere of capital ownership, graffiti impinges on this private stranglehold of public aesthetics. In this capacity graffiti artists invite a momentary existential awakening, drawing attention to our internalised self-regulation. It is such conditioning that in turn may provoke us to mouth an obligatory 'tut tut'. Yet, running into this visual 'other' requires self-reflection, caught up in our daily routine we are oblivious to our physical surroundings and only realise what we are missing when it has been tampered with. The writers' unorthodox interaction with city architecture questions our fetishizing of blank walls, and our instilled lack of practical interaction with our surrounds. Nevertheless, the reality is that graffiti signifies to a large percentage of the population a sense of danger, a side effect that Wimsatt is indeed aware and is trying to discourage. Bomb the Suburbs is concerned with mapping out relations within the city's delicate ecosystem and how the mere act of graffiti affects a feedback loop that ends up in the pockets of the corporates: 'Every time we fat cap an outside, or even scratch-bomb a window, we've got guys with last names like Ford, Toyota, and Isuzu with us all the way, cheering us on - we're helping them fuck up public transportation for free' (Wimsatt 1994, 142). So the more graffiti, the fewer people ride the subway and will instead continue to buy cars and perpetuate the urban/suburban divide. Wimsatt and his peers are embittered that those who actually own most of the city care so little about it that they leave for the suburbs every night, to retreat from the 'urban noise' epitomised by graffiti culture to one of secluded suburban silence. Hence Wimsatt's enthusiasm for a communal project of graffiti led urban renewal believing it will liven up neglected and plain forgotten parts of the city (104). He goes out of his way to visit the more ravaged and neglected cities in the US, dreaming of how graffiti could help promote reinvestment, both emotional and financial, back into the heart of the city. Wimsatt also realises this can only be achieved with the grass roots support of the graffiti writing community themselves. 'I'm not even going to talk about the train yards. Yes, they're easy, but you're not allowed to bomb them as a personal favor to me. Cleveland is struggling not to become another Detroit and scare all its capital off to the suburbs. If you're going to do graffiti in Cleveland, do it to help Cleveland back up, not to kick it while it's down' (43). Yet his vision of urban renewal is one that scorns permission for legal designs (113) as the impetus for this project must derive organically from the graffiti writers' collective process of observation via urban exploration. For them, legal design defeats the purpose of this empirical process, and for this reason the artists believe there is no challenge in doing 'pieces' in the easy spots as a necessary part of the process requires the 'becoming' with the urban environment. The graffiti writers' lifestyle is itself an experimental project intended as a direct challenge on the 'conventional' epitomised by suburban existence. The graffiti markings operate as Deleuze-Guattarian 'lines of flight' that indicate that there are alternate ways of moving about the city, replete with a set of refrains to indicate the existence of a suitably alternative culture. We are aware that the smooth running of the urban capitalist machine requires the striations that demarcate no-go areas and territories forbidden to pubic access. To paraphrase Deleuze and Guattari, that in order to run smoothly, you have to striate, and there is a lot of wasted space created in the process. The graffiti writers merely seek to claw back these neglected territories. Notes 1. The following list is provided as a guide, and is by no means considered exhaustive, of some of the key texts employed in my research: Castleman, Craig. Getting Up: Subway Graffiti in New York. New York: MIT Press, 1984; Chalfant, Henry, and James Prigoff. Spraycan Art. New York, N.Y.: Thames and Hudson, 1987; Baker, Houston A. Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy. Black Literature and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993; Wimsatt, William 'Upski'. Bomb the Suburbs. New York: Soft Skull Press, 1994; George, Nelson. Hip Hop America. London: Penguin, 1998; Poschardt, Ulf. DJ Culture. Trans. Shaun Whiteside. London: Quartet Books, 1998; Light, Alan. The Vibe History of Hip Hop. Three Rivers Press, New York, 1999; Ogg, Alex, and David Upshal. The Hip-Hop Years: A History of Rap. London: Channel 4 Books, 1999; Toop, David. Rap Attack # 3: African Rap to Global Hip Hop. London: Serpent's Tail, 2000; Gonzales, Michael A. 'Hip-Hop Nation: From Rockin' the House to Planet Rock' in Crossroads. Seattle, Marquand Books, 2000. 2. Note: The relation of this quote to the practice of graffiti writing was previously outlined in Richard Higgins article 'Machines, Big and Little' available at http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/gsandss/sl... My discovery of this essay occurred during my research and whilst my own analysis takes a different approach I am obviously compelled to acknowledge my familiarity with this excellent piece of work. 3. Although this situation is rapidly changing as railway's status as public property is being slowly compromised as its running is increasingly handled by the private sector. References Baker, Houston A. jr. (1993) Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy. Black Literature and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Castleman, Craig. (1984) Getting Up: Subway Graffiti in New York. New York: MIT Press. Chalfant, Henry, and James Prigoff. (1987) Spraycan Art. New York, N.Y.: Thames and Hudson. Colebrook, Claire. (2001) Gilles Deleuze. London: Routledge. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. London: Athlone Press. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. (1994) What Is Philosophy? Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchill. New York: Columbia University Press. George, Nelson. (1998) Hip Hop America. London: Penguin. Gonzales, Michael A. (2000) 'Hip-Hop Nation: From Rockin' the House to Planet Rock.' Crossroads. Seattle: Marquand Books. Light, Alan. (1999) The Vibe History of Hip Hop. Three Rivers Press, New York. Ogg, Alex, and David Upshal. (1999) The Hip-Hop Years: A History of Rap. London: Channel 4 Books. Poschardt, Ulf. (1998) DJ Culture. Trans. Shaun Whiteside. London: Quartet Books. Toop, David. (2000) Rap Attack # 3: African Rap to Global Hip Hop. London: Serpent's Tail. Wimsatt, William. (1994) 'Upski'. Bomb the Suburbs. New York: Soft Skull Press. Links http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/gsandss/slavic/papers/rhizome.html. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Scannell, John. "Becoming-City" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.2 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/becoming.php>. Chicago Style Scannell, John, "Becoming-City" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 2 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/becoming.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Bennett, Simon A.. (2002) A City Divided. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(2). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/divided.php> ([your date of access]).