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This working paper will unfold the methodological design of the PhD research project, Behind The Murals – A Participative Webdocu on the Motivations and the Reclamations of Street Art, with a focus on the incident when BLU repainted his murals at Berlin’s Cuvrybrache completely black. In contrast to BLU’s strategy – to erase his art so that it can no longer be made profitable by the investor of the lot or even by Berlin’s city marketing – I aim to investigate what other strategies against the reclamation of street art are imaginable. The main methodological question is, how is it possible to carry out this research in such a way that its results support the communities (potentially) affected by gentrification/touristification to gain a voice? The experimental methods of participatory video and digital storytelling will be applied with the target of producing a participative webdocu accompanied by a locally exhibited video installation.

The phenomenon of urban art is one of the forces shaping contemporary urban spaces. Historically fought as vandalism in its “writing” component (the “black sheep” of the urban actors performing in the contemporary city), urban art has recently become more appreciated as an artistic expression, especially when regarded as a stage in the historical evolution of muralism. As several examples worldwide have shown, in the context of urban renewal, urban art can set off positive dynamics. Focusing on the Italian scene, I recognize the importance of past Italian interventions realized both in big cities, such as Rome, Turin and Bologna, and in small cities, such as Grottaglie (Taranto), Gaeta (Latina), Catanzaro, and Dozza (Bologna). In addition, the growing number of urban art festivals and public interventions seems to voice the citizens’ will to take the streets back, particularly where institutions are unable to intervene effectively in the urban domain due to political short-sightedness or lack of financial resources. The first aim of this paper is to illustrate and analyze some collective projects and informal actions through which citizens, associations, and institutions have given added value to the urban space. I will focus particularly on Turin, which has become one of the most interesting and rich urban art territories, thanks to public projects such as Murarte, Picturin, Nizzart and B.Art: Arte in Barriera. This study offers insights on how, by way of artistic deeds and apparently “weak” transformation systems, urban art may take innovative action so as to regenerate the city’s architectural heritage. The second aim of this paper is to propose a methodology for architectural surveying techniques applied to urban art. isIn current critical analysis, as well as in the representation and documentation of this type of work, the fundamental importance of the physical, architectural and urban environment in which the work is placed is often overlooked, if not completely omitted. In acknowledgment of these limitations, this paper proposes a documentation methodology that respects both the values of the process and the work itself. In this regard, painted walls must be considered as inseparable from the space in which they are located, from the material substrate supporting them, and from the time conditions in which they were realized. The process of examination and documentation therefore requires observation in situ, new digital and traditional survey techniques, and a variety of representations at different scales; with a view to understanding the reasons that led to the selection of a particular place in the city, and the way in which artistic action arises in relation to the historical environment and the social and political system that influenced its creation.

The Egyptian revolution of 2011 produced a massive transformation in the perception of urban space and the interrelated dynamic of people, their bodies, and the language within that space. Cultural expressions such as caricature galleries, makeshift exhibitions, chants, poetry readings, and memorial spaces defined the square as a place where activism and art intersected weaving a lyrical tapestry of the revolution. The most prominent of these expressions was the street art of the revolution where the act of painting on walls re-territorialized the city making it the revolution’s barometer by registering the shifting political discourses as they unfolded. Documenting and preserving these visual expressions was the driving force behind a three-year book project, entitled Walls of Freedom: Street Art of the Egyptian Revolution, which narrates the revolution through striking images of the art that transformed Egypt’s walls into a visual testimony of bravery and resistance. This article will serve to offer a detailed analysis of the methodologies and tools used in creating the book as well as managing, financing, and collecting all of its necessary components. Primarily focused on qualitative visual research methodologies, the book is layered into three components or levels: one level is a visual journey of the revolution through a chronological image-timeline. The categorization and indexing of images by artist, photographer, date and translation was an important function allowing quick access to images visually placing them in a larger continuum. The second level is a reference-based timeline of events where a connection between the art and the historical/political events is presented. The third level involves the essays and analysis supplementing the timeline with historical implications, political and social contexts and personal voices collected from artists and activists.

There is an abundance of books, magazines, films and internet-forums dedicated to graffiti. How this documentation has influenced and been a part of the graffiti subculture has not been studied much. Drawing on personal experiences, as a documentarian and publisher of graffiti media over 27 years, Malcolm Jacobson recollects how the positions of participant and observer incessantly have twisted around each other. This has been mediated through development in media technology as well as by the coming of age of graffiti and its practitioners.

This article addresses the notion of the socially engaged visual arts. The first part explores some fundamental historical periods to help understand this practice, from the Greek concept of teknè until the present time. Then, the idea of a machine for the emancipation of creativity is explained, as well as its operation in two neighborhoods of the Portuguese city of Amadora. Finally, as a result of this immaterial machine, the focus turns to a detailed description of an archive of audiovisual elements that represents each activity undertaken within the project.

Nowadays, walking around any city is a guarantee of seeing graffiti, while the public transportation are still a good canvas for writers. It is a well-established social phenomenon and has catch the attention of ethnographers, academic artists and other scholars that have entered the worlds of graffiti writers to explain their origins, trajectories, motivations, their identity construction, their conception of the self and their role and relation with society at large. However, still there is no synthetic effort of categorisation that provides understandable and communicable approaches to graffiti in the real world. From some sectors graffiti is still something to “deal with”. Generally speaking, authorities and dutyholders consider graffiti as threat a security and safety issue, turning it into something that needs to be addressed. For social workers, for instance, graffiti can be a means of communication with certain youth sectors or even a tool for social cohesion generation. Departing from this perspective, Graffolution was designed: an EC funded project for generating awareness and advance in the provision of best practices for tackling graffiti in Austria, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. The first rule encountered is no-one-size-fits-all and referring to graffiti and graffiti writers, this requires a complex understanding of the phenomenon, their trajectories as well as individual and collective dispositions. The aim of this paper is to provide a consistent typology of graffiti writers, offering a comprehensive picture of whose are the hands behind the graffiti cans. This serves a double level purpose: advancing at the theoretical level putting forward the sociocultural approaches to careers and social backgrounds provided by ethnographic approaches, as well as capturing the complexity of the phenomenon to serve as an operative conceptual basis for practitioners, professionals and decision makers. In doing so, the analysis is made on the transcripts obtained for 22 semi-structured interviews, carried out in the four participating countries. The transcripts have been analysed according to the “persona” methodology, which constitutes a systematic and novel approach and a qualitative technique for clustering information. As a result, three main categories have been defined according to important ambitions, challenges and stages of typical ‘journeys’ or ‘pathways’ of actors. These findings contribute to form a basis of a) highlight the misconceptions around graffiti as a petty crime, and b) offer a guide to understand graffiti writers under a socio-cultural perspective.

Este volumen nace con el propósito de producir conocimiento crítico sobre las prácticas poéticas en el espacio público, sus funciones y su eficacia dentro de éste. A la inestabilidad funcional de la poesía y lo lírico en la actualidad se une la noción de espacio público, entendida tanto desde su vertiente conceptual, filosófica y social, como desde su vertiente material, física, ligada a la (re)presentación escénica. Espacios, sujetos e instituciones se redefinen de la mano de esta combinación. Así, la inclusión de la espacialidad en una teoría poética actualizada, la constitución de nuevos sujetos y subjetividades y la identificación de públicos y prácticas en torno a los conceptos de performatividad e intervención constituyen los vectores fundamentales de este libro. Sin acotación de ningún tipo en términos lingüísticos, nacionales o interartísticos, los trabajos aquí recogidos se reparten entre lo teórico-crítico y metodológico, los estudios de caso y las reflexiones en primera persona, teniendo como objetivo último la valoración de la incidencia de la poesía en el espacio público y sus efectos socio-políticos.

This study presents an analysis of the appropriation of public space by cultural producers in Cuba, with a focus on art collectives, in particular, OMNI Zona Franca from Alamar, east of Havana. Based on primary research conducted with the artists, cultural producers, and scholars, I discuss OMNI’s work in the context of the history and formation of a nascent movement for civil society in Cuba, locating the collective’s work within the matrix of alternative and African diasporic cultural production. The latter is framed as part of a historical continuum and in the context of the discussion of race that emerged in Cuba’s public sphere during the 1990s with a concurrent movement among black Cuban artists to address issues of race. Situating OMNI’s work in a longer history of Afro-Cuban cultural production in Cuba as well as within the history of art collectives this study demonstrates how OMNI’s participation in the public sphere relates to social practice, appropriation of space, alternativity, and the forging of a wide coalition of civil and artistic alternatives among diverse communities. I draw on discourses on the production of space, particularly those of Henri Lefebvre and Raymond Williams, and argue that the unique and specific history of Alamar provided a fertile ground for alternative culture where multiple and countercultural expressions could be incubated and take root. The struggle over public space and the attempts by artists to create an autonomous public sphere in Cuba have led to continual conflict with the state. Using Gramsci’s theorization of civil society as incorporating both the hegemonic and contestatory realms, I contend that the level of contestation in OMNI Zona Franca’s work should be seen as counter-hegemonic expression aimed at altering the status quo. Producing new social relations, the collective’s practice is offered as an example of how art and cultural production is inaugurating alternative counter-spaces in the context of a demand for a more inclusive and representative Revolutionary public sphere.

Street Poetry (A first experiment with augmened reality). View along the walls of Macerata. A for Augmented, R for Reality. Adam Accademia, poesia di strada in Realtà Aumentata, Macerata http://www.mobypicture.com/user/adamaccademia/map Adam Accademia, poesia di strada in Realtà Aumentata, L’Aquila http://www.mobypicture.com/user/poesiadistrada/map “Internet e la Realtà Aumentata” Il Corriere Adriatico, 16/09/2011 http://www.accademiadelleartimacerata.it/site/2011/09/sessanta-quadri-affissi-sulle-mura-ma-si-vedono-solo-con-il-cellulare-il-resto-del-carlino-16-09-11/ (25/10/2013)