EVA YOUKHANA AND LARISSA FÖRSTER (EDS.) GRAFFICITY Visual Practices and Contestations in Urban Space MORPHOMATA Graffiti has its roots in urban youth and protest cul- tures. However, in the past decades it has become an established visual art form. This volume investigates how graffiti oscillates between genuine subversiveness and a more recent commercialization and appropria- tion by the (art) market. At the same time it looks at how graffiti and street art are increasingly used as an instrument for collective re-appropriation of the urban space and so for the articulation of different forms of belonging, ethnicity, and citizenship. The focus is set on the role of graffiti in metropolitan contexts in the Spanish-speaking world but also includes glimpses of historical inscriptions in ancient Rome and Meso- america, as well as the graffiti movement in New York in the 1970s and in Egypt during the Arab Spring. YOUKHANA, FÖRSTER (EDS.) — GRAFFICITY MORPHOMATA EDITED BY GÜNTER BLAMBERGER AND DIETRICH BOSCHUNG VOLUME 28 EDITED BY EVA YOUKHANA AND LARISSA FÖRSTER GRAFFICITY Visual Practices and Contestations in Urban Space WILHELM FINK unter dem Förderkennzeichen 01UK0905. Die Verantwortung für den Inhalt der Veröffentlichung liegt bei den Autoren. Umschlagabbildung: © Brendon.D Bibliografische Informationen der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek: Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen National­ biblio grafie; detaillierte Daten sind im Internet über www.dnb.d­nb.de abrufbar. Alle Rechte, auch die des auszugsweisen Nachdrucks, der fotomechanischen Wiedergabe und der Übersetzung vorbehalten. Dies betrifft auch die Verviel­ fältigung und Übertragung einzelner Textabschnitte, Zeichnungen oder Bilder durch alle Verfahren wie Speicherung und Übertragung auf Papier, Transpa­ rente, Filme, Bänder, Platten und andere Medien, soweit es nicht § 53 und 54 UrhG ausdrücklich gestatten. © 2015 Wilhelm Fink, Paderborn Wilhelm Fink GmbH & Co. Verlags­KG, Jühenplatz 1, D­33098 Paderborn Internet: www.fink.de Lektorat: Larissa Förster, Eva Youkhana, Orla Mulholland, Björn Moll Gestaltung und Satz: Kathrin Roussel, Sichtvermerk Printed in Germany Herstellung: Ferdinand Schöningh GmbH & Co. KG, Paderborn ISBN 978-3-7705-5909-1 CONTENTS EVA YOUKHANA / LARISSA FÖRSTER Introduction 7 HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES MARTIN LANGNER Ancient Street Signs, Posters, and Graffiti. Walls as Means of Urban Communication in Pompeii and Beyond 21 CHRISTIANE CLADOS Pre-Hispanic Graffiti and Social Organization in Peru 55 SASCHA SCHIERZ Governing Graffiti NYC Style. Zum Ort von Graffiti in der kriminalpolitischen Ordnung der Dinge 85 FOCUS ON THE AMERICAS TEREZA VENTURA Graffiti Practices in Rio de Janeiro and Berlin. A Comparative Perspective 121 TEOBALDO LAGOS PRELLER Fall of Presence(s). The Art Projects ¡Ay, Sudamérica! and ‘Poem Rain’ 141 SOFÍA CARILLO / JOAQUÍN BARRIENDOS Stencil Ixtlilxóchitl. Demián Flores, La Curtiduría, and the Visual Guerilla in Oaxaca 171 OLAF KALTMEIER Urban Cultural Politics of Graffiti. City-Marketing, Protests, and the Arts in the Production of Urban Imaginaries in Vancouver and Oaxaca 193 GENTRIFICATION AND COMMERCIALIZATION JAVIER ABARCA Graffiti, Street Art, and Gentrification 221 ALLAN GRETZKI Graffiti, Street Art und Culture Jamming zwischen urbanem Protest und Kommerzialisierung 235 MONA ABAZA Graffiti and the Reshaping of the Public Space in Cairo. Tensions between Political Struggles and Commercialization 267 MONA ABAZA AND SORAYA MORAYEF Interview on the Graffiti Scene in Cairo 295 English summaries of German contributions 307 Contributors 311 EVA YOUKHANA / LARISSA FÖRSTER INTRODUCTION Creative forms of protest in urban space have experienced a worldwide renaissance in recent years. The city’s public spaces are increasingly being shaped by a symbolic appropriation through squatting, protest­camps, graf­ fiti, and stencils that convey political messages, advance communication, or merely increase visibility. Such practices of occupying and re­imagining urban infrastructures can be traced back to ancient times. In Rome, Egypt, or Mesoamerican cities informal graffiti, inscriptions, and drawings were part of everyday practices and lifestyles and can today yield important historical information.1 Historical examples can also be found in later ep­ ochs. For example, after the Spanish conquest of Mesoamerica producers of street graffiti, namely soldiers of the crusades who felt deprived of their rights, tried to communicate with the Spanish elites outside the dominant communication channels.2 With their wall paintings and messages in the subsequently destroyed Aztec city­state Tenochtitlan they marked their resistance to existing power relations and unequal resource allocation.3 Four centuries later, muralismo was developed in Mexico, i.e. after the Mexican Revolution (1910–1917). Muralismo aimed to visualize the political program of the revolutionary state and incorporate the socially and ethnically diverse population into a construction of national identity.4 During the last four decades graffiti and urban art have increas­ ingly been used as an instrument, mainly by young men, in order to re­appropriate urban space collectively and so to articulate themselves as citizens and as part of the urban collective. An essential motivation of 1 Weeber 2003, Langner in this volume, Clados in this volume. 2 López 1998. 3 Bernal Diaz del Castillo described this phenomena in ‘Historia verdadera de la Conquista de la Nueva España’ [http://isaiasgarde.myfil.es/get_file?path=/ diaz­del­castillo­bernal­histor.pdf, last accessed in January 2015]. 4 Lateinamerika­Institut 2010. 8 graffiti sprayers is to gain public esteem through a strong visual presence and by taking risks.5 Therefore, the symbolic re­appropriation of North American cities documents how graffiti nowadays express the counter­ vailing power of subaltern groups who stake their claim to belong to a place from which they are usually excluded by planners and politicians. Since the 1960s, the debate about graffiti and different forms of street or urban art has shifted from merely aesthetic views to approaches that interpret these (sub)cultural expressions as an important instrument of communication for those who are widely excluded from social, politi­ cal, and cultural participation.6 While graffiti challenges power relations by its very act,7 urban art gives more attention to the transcription and translation of political content. THE CONFERENCe ‘GraFFICITY’ The international conference ‘GraffiCity’, jointly organized by Morpho­ mata and the Research Network on Latin America in April 2013 in Co­ logne, is the result of a shared scientific interest in art and urban space. Financed by the German Federal Ministry of Research and Education (BMBF), both projects have worked on the nexus between visual and material practices in public space and on power relations. Morphomata explores how the persistence and durability of material forms help to reinforce, transmit, and disseminate ideas and concepts over time and across space. Notions of power and ideas about political rule and resistance have been a primary focus in Morphomata’s research program for the past three years. In this context graffiti and urban art are interesting genres because of their contested and sometimes subversive or even illegal nature, but also due to their durable, yet at the same time volatile and ephemeral character. The Research Network on Latin America explores processes of social inclusion and exclusion by analyzing notions and practices of ethnicity, citizenship, and belonging, as well as their interdependencies and political embeddedness in different regional and urban settings.8 Besides social constructivist approaches, the Research Network employs a material 5 Reinicke 2007, p. 46 ff. 6 Baudrillard 1978. 7 Waldner and Dobratz 2013. 8 Albiez et al. 2011, Célleri et al. 2013. INTRODUCTION 9 semiotic approach to the study of social relations in order address the “power of symbolic forms”9 and to investigate the agency exerted by artworks.10 At the conference scholars of the humanities and the social sciences, practitioners, and in particular artists and activists met to discuss graf­ fiti and urban art in a historically as well as geographically comparative perspective. We aimed to revisit the scholarly debate on both the history and meaning of informal and subversive visual practices in public urban spaces on the one hand, and on socio­political dynamics and power rela­ tions within cities on the other. The main questions addressed by the conference were: What role have graffiti and urban art played in differ­ ent historical settings? Why and how do urban art and graffiti influence social and power relations and the continuation, transformation, and/or the dissolution of social boundaries and inequalities? In which conditions do these practices in public urban space undergo processes of cooption and commercialization and become a component of the cultural industry? Although in general a comparative approach was taken, the primary focus was on case studies from the Americas, and especially Latin America. In the Latin American context, different forms of urban art serve as demonstrations of ethnic identities and of collective belonging. Urban art activism points up social inequalities and exclusions from the ‘majority society’ and lays claims to citizenship rights and political participation. Often Latin American graffiti and urban art practices are closely related to social protest