ABSTRACT
Graffiti and street art kill nobody, neither does Guthrie’s guitar, neither do fan chants calling for the massacre of opposing fans, neither does inciting political speech by itself. The understanding of graffiti and street art oscillates between cynical rejection on the one side and the acknowledgement of their emancipa-tory potentials on the other. The defenders of the affirmative or positive visual ideology use every means possible to rob such creativity of its street component and reduce it to art. Graffiti—and also street art— are forcibly pulled from the outer side of the walls onto the inside: in galleries, museums, stores, designer bars, or trendy community places. Graffiti writers believe in the omnipotence of the word or image— as if it represents enough of an intervention in itself. Graffiti are, of course, also adolescent showing off, an adrenalin rush, and, however hard it is to accept it, pure aesthetic artwork.
