Konstantinos Avramidis - Graffiti and Street Art: Reading, Writing and Representing the City

Graffiti and street art images are ubiquitous, and they enjoy a very special place in collective imaginary due to their ambiguous nature. Sometimes enigmatic in meaning, often stylistically crude and aesthetically aggressive, yet always visually arresting, they fill our field of vision with texts and images that no one can escape. As they take place on surfaces and travel through various channels, they provide viewers an entry point to the subtext of the cities we live in, while questioning how we read, write and represent them. This book is structured around these three distinct, albeit by definition interwoven, key frames. The contributors of this volume critically investigate underexplored urban contexts in which graffiti and street art appear, shed light on previously unexamined aspects of these practices, and introduce innovative methodologies regarding the treatment of these images. Throughout, the focus is on the relationship of graffiti and street art with urban space, and the various manifestations of these idiosyncratic meetings. In this book, the emphasis is shifted from what the physical texts say to what these practices and their produced images do in different contexts.

All chapters are original and come from experts in various fields, such as Architecture, Urban Studies, Sociology, Criminology, Anthropology and Visual Cultures, as well as scholars that transcend traditional disciplinary frameworks. This exciting new collection is essential reading for advanced undergraduates as well as postgraduates and academics interested in the subject matter. It is also accessible to a non-academic audience, such as art practitioners and policymakers alike, or anyone keen on deepening their knowledge on how graffiti and street art affect the ways urban environments are experienced, understood and envisioned.

Konstantinos Avramidis is a PhD Candidate in Architecture by Design at the University of Edinburgh, UK.

Myrto Tsilimpounidi is a Marie Curie Researcher at the Institute of Sociology, Bratislava, Slovakia.

This essay collection yields illuminating insights into graffiti and its close cousin street art. With a globally-diverse range of sites, and contributions from leading academics, this is essential reading for anyone wishing to better understand one of the most distinctive features of twenty-first century urbanism.

Iain Borden, University College London, UK

With contributions by authors from diverse geographical and disciplinary backgrounds, this book pushes for new ways to understand, study and write about graffiti and street art. In doing so, this volume constitutes an important step towards breaking down disciplinary boundaries and establishing street art studies as a multifaceted academic discipline in its own right.

Peter Bengtsen, Lund University, Sweden

Reading, Writing and Representing the City

Edited by
Konstantinos Avramidis and
Myrto Tsilimpounidi

First published 2017
by Routledge
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2017 selection and editorial matter, Konstantinos Avramidis and Myrto Tsilimpounidi; individual chapters, the contributors

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ISBN: 978-1-4724-7333-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-58576-5 (ebk)

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KONSTANTINOS AVRAMIDIS AND MYRTO TSILIMPOUNIDI

PART I
Reading graffiti, street art and the city

JEFF FERRELL

ALISON YOUNG

SAMANTHA EDWARDS-VANDENHOEK

SABINA ANDRON

KURT IVESON

PART II
Writing graffiti, street art and the city

RAFAEL SCHACTER

ANDREA MUBI BRIGHENTI

PANOS LEVENTIS

STAVROS STAVRIDES

MONA ABAZA

PART III
Representing graffiti, street art and the city

ALEXANDER LAMAZARES

DEBORAH LANDRY

LACHLAN MACDOWALL

STEPHEN LUIS VILASECA

GREGORY J. SNYDER

Editors Konstantinos Avramidis is a practising architect in Greece and the UK (TCG/ ARB), and PhD Candidate in Architecture by Design at the University of Edinburgh. He holds a DipArch from the AU Thessaloniki and an MSc, with Distinction, in Interdisciplinary Theories and Design of Space from the NTU Athens. Konstantinos has taught architectural design, history and theory at the NTUA and UoE, his designs have been awarded, published and exhibited internationally, while his research has been presented at conferences, and published in journals and books. He is a co-founder of the architectural design research journal Drawing On, and co-edited its first issue. His research interests include: text in the city; systems of archiving and taxonomy; and architectural design as mode of enquiry.

Myrto Tsilimpounidi is a social researcher and photographer. After completing a DPhil at the University of Sussex, she was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of East London. She is currently Marie Curie Fellow at the Institute for Sociology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and the co-director of Ministry of Untold Stories. Her research focuses on the interface between urbanism, culture and innovative methodologies. Past work explores empirical investigation of cosmopolitan theory in Southern Europe. Current projects focus on street politics, landscapes of belonging, and the new aesthetics of crisis in Europe. Myrto is the author of Sociology of Crisis: Visualising Urban Austerity (Routledge, 2016) and the editor of Remapping Crisis: A Guide to Athens (Zero Books, 2014).

Mona Abaza is Professor of Sociology at the Department of Sociology, the American University in Cairo. She was a Visiting Professor of Islamology in the Department of Theology at Lund University (20092011). Visiting scholar at the Institute for South East Asian Studies, Singapore (19901992), Kuala Lumpur (19951996), lcole des Hautes tudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris (1994), the Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin (19961997), the International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden (20022003), the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Wassenaar (20062007) and the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center (2005). Research Fellow at Morphomata, Cologne (2014). Her books include: