ABSTRACT
Joe Austin (2010) has made the point that ‘graffiti art’ is neither just graffiti nor art, but rather a new form of visual “cultural production” that “exceeds both categories” (33). Graffiti art differs from movements like Neo-Dada and Pop Art (mainly manifested on canvas and hung on gallery walls), because it is materialized on walls beyond the galleries in the public sphere. To take account of this kind of cultural production, analyses have drawn on both art history and urban studies (Goldman and Papson 1996; Morley 2003; Taylor 2008; Shannon 2009; Mirzoeff 2012) to investigate the practices that Austin has called the “more mundane experiences of urban walls and streets” (33). It is these ‘more mundane’ (but not insignificant) phenomena within the visual urban studies that will be explored in this chapter. According to Jeff Ferrell (1996), graffiti can help to “investigate the social construction of everyday life” (xi) while illuminating a vital part of contemporary urban culture (3). Investigating graffiti also crosses over into the subcultural life that produces it (Macdonald 2001; Miller 2002; Kaltenhäuser 2007). This chapter will combine these approaches but, in the spirit of innovation and pushing the debates further, will merge them with other critical possibilities concerned with popular culture, hegemony, and practices of marking and pollution.
