ABSTRACT
The right to inscription is a form of cultural heritage, street art as a cacophony of spatial co-production. Surfaces produce new sites of publicness immediately next to private property and resist the valuation and management of cities as series of private assets. Beyond street art and graffiti scholarship, an emerging field of surface studies is developing with input from disciplines as diverse as urban studies, semiotics, architectural history, material studies, visual culture, legal geography, linguistics, and media studies. The right to the surface is unique but manifold; its energy is singular, yet its traction comes from multitudes. The right to the surface is a contestation of private property and a production of spaces for collective use. The right to the surface is the right to produce urban art, to decide the image of the city, and to contest its regimes of regulation.
