‘Live, Love, Graff’: Making Meanings around Sheffield Streetart
This project intends to explore the socio-cultural meanings made around graffiti / street art, created and located in one city. Whilst a range of studies examine graffiti as an (anti) social cultural practice (Ross, 2016; Avramidis & Tsilimpounidi, 2016), there is limited work using new literacies (Street, 1997) as a lens for exploring streetart’s contribution to a city’s ‘textual landscape’ (Carrington, 2005). I position graffiti writing as a multimodal (Kress, 2009) literacy practice, situated within in a particular local and cultural context. Whilst recent work has encouraged taking a multimodal perpective on graffiti (Edwards-Vandenhoek, 2016) this has only been on the basis of the analysis of still photographic images, and therefore I intend to extend this approach to involve the voices and insights of other participants. Work which takes a new literacies approach to graffiti is sparse, the exceptions being DaSilva-Iddings, McCafferty, & Teixeira da Silva’s (2011) analysis of ‘graffiti literacies’ in the Vil Madalena neighborhood of São Paulo, Brazil, MacGillivray and Curwen’s (2007) consideration of ‘tagging as an act of social literacy’ and Aguilar’s (2000) work which frames ‘graffiti as a public literacy practice’. It is notable that none of these examples are drawn from a UK context which, given the situated nature of the literacies involved, suggests that this project could generate new insights into the practices involved here.
Theoretical framing
For the purposes of the project I conceptualise graffiti as an assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987), situated within a network of wider practices, generated both by those who create and view the work. This approach enables me to focus on ‘graffiti’s multi-vocal traces’ (Edwards-Vandenhoek, p. 57). Here, I consider the meanings made around individual pieces of graffiti, in relation to the space in which they are situated and those implicated in their creation, as a means of illuminating the diverse and often playful practice of graffiti writing. This involves engaging with participants involved in the generation and consumption of streetart, using a range of participant directed methods, as well as my own photographic records and autoethnographic reflection. Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) work also helps to focus on the affective nature of exerience. The resulting qualitative data will be analysed using a process of rhizo-analysis in order to illuminate the diverse, complex practice of graffiti from a range of perspectives.
This research is positioned within the post-structuralist paradigm, which tends to reject attempts to discover an underlying or secure pattern to explain culture, instead seeking to challenge accounts of what is often presumed as ‘stable truth and value’ (Williams, 2005, p.3). Poststructuralist explorations often result in accounts that are more complex, messy, partial and less securely bounded, acknowledging that the world is so rich that theories about it will always fail to capture more than a part of it (Law, 2004). This is appropriate here as this small scale, qualitative study intends to engage with graffiti as a complex means of making meaning and telling (social) stories, rather than to reach definitive conclusions about the practice itself. While the terms ‘graffiti’ and ‘streetart’ are often contested (Ross, 2016, p. 1), for this project, graffiti is understood as an ‘assemblage’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987, p. 4) that takes in its many forms (tagging, pastes, stickers, throwups, murals etc, legal and illegal), whilst also connecting it to a multiplicity of other practices, spaces and meanings made around the generation and consumption of visual images in public spaces.
This project is underpinned by work on New Literacy Studies (NLS) (Street, 1997) and multimodality (Kress, 2009). NLS shift focus away from the more traditional concept of a single literacy towards a consideration of literacies as an evolving set of social practices. Literacy is understood as existing in the relationships between people, rather than as a set of properties residing in an individual (Barton and Hamilton, 2003). Literacy is also conceptualized as purposeful, historically and culturally located, contextualized within specific domains and often subject to power relations (Barton and Hamilton, 2003). Whilst literacy practices are often internalised, they are illuminated by literacy events, which are the observable and enacted activities that arise from these practices (Barton and Hamilton, 2003). Whilst traditional understandings of literacy would suggest that texts consist primarily of written or typed words, the concept of multimodality provides a framework for understanding communication as consisting of more than just language (Jewitt, 2013). This involves a broadening of conceptions of literacy (Kress, 2009) to encompass different semiotic modes of meaning making, helping us, in this case, to understand individual instances of graffiti as visual texts. Led by these perspectives, graffiti writing can be understood as a literacy practice, with individual pieces constituting literacy events. These pieces are the result of multiple cultural and social discourses, influences and trajectories, drawn from different and diverse times and places. Taking this perspective also allows for account to be taken of the kind of curational, reproductive relationships pursued by artists and consumers in relation to graffiti, for example using social media and home-produced fanzines.
Illegal / legal work
Lynch (2018) acknowledges that ‘the qualitative study of topics that are illegal or socially taboo presents a number of challenges for a researcher’. During this study, I intend to interview participants, which will include those who have been involved in the creation of streetart. Graffiti exists in a grey area of legality; whilst much of the graffiti that appears in the city has is now considered legal (either through commission or on sites that has been approved as appropriate for creative practices) it is possible that the nature of this project will mean that some of the artwork (and particularly the form of graffiti known as ‘tagging’) will not be strictly legal in nature. Even artists / writers who make money from commisioned work may have (or still) engage in the less legal side of Graffiti.
With this in mind, it is important to acknowledge that graffiti, and the creation of graffiti, has a long history as a valid focus of study for academic work, and there are many precidents for researching this kind of activity. See, for instance, recent edited collections of work such as Ross (2016) and Avramidis & Tsilimpounidi (2016). Indeed, one culture’s graffiti can become reframed as a valuable historical artefact, as shown by Baird and Taylor’s (2016) work on ancient graffiti. In more recent history, we have seen a shift in perceptions of graffiti from ‘aggressive anti-graffiti campaigns’ to ‘a growing embrace of street art and some forms of graffiti as valuable markers of urban descirability and vitality’ (Ferrell, 2016). This is particularly exemplified by the reverence shown for artists such as Banksy, whose work is actively protected by authority, regardless of the legality its location. Snyder (2016) refers to such issues as ‘the inherent contradicitions of graffiti’ (p. 264) and, it could be argued, that this tension is one of the things that actually serves to justify further investigation in studies such as this.
This particular project is perhaps less contentious than previous studies, due to the historical context in which it will be working. In addition, local regenerative and communuty project in Sheffield have actively enlisted known street artists. Nevertheless, there is historical precident for working with street artists on projects, most notably Macdonald’s (2001) ethnographic study of largely illegal graffiti writing in London and New York.
Methods
I will be using 1:1 interviews and questionnaires to engage with local street artists, and those with an interest in graffiti.
This project will also involve an aspect of authoethnographic reflection. I intend to view instances of streetart first hand, in the city of Sheffield, and to reflect on these experiences using narrative and researcher produced drawing as a means of visual exploration (Causey, 2017). I will also use photographic records of the pieces, taken by me, in order to provide a visual record of individual pieces and the special context in which they have been generated.
Data Analysis:
Drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari (1987) a process of rhizo-analysis (Ringrose and Reynolds, 2014; Perry and Medina, 2011; Bailey, 2016) will be employed in order to make meaning from the data generated for the project. Rhizo-analysis allows for the combination of different forms of data, from different times and spaces, bought together in an analytical process that is much more fluid than more traditional approaches. ‘Rhizo-analysis’ involves making connections and considering affective relationships between text, people, objects and concepts as a means to ‘spark thinking in new directions’ (Lander and Rowe, 2006, p.434). As means of thinking with theory (Jackson and Mazzei, 2011), the work of others will be bought into the analysis in order to illuminate the data, in relation to the research foci.
Research foci:
This project seeks to explore a number of interrelated dimension of graffiti. These include (but are not limited to):
1. Textual / Intertextual dimension – I seek to explore how individual pieces of graffiti exist as part of a network of other texts, both in the generation of the individual piece and as a result of its production. In what ways are images employed by artists as a means of generating narrative? What meanings do viewers make of these pieces? How do the finished pieces relate to artists notes or other non wall-based works? Who do the artists consider as the audiences for their pieces?
2. Spatial dimension – How does the generation and consumption of streetart contribute to the textual landscape of the city? In what ways does the particular placement of individual pieces of graffiti intervene in the meaning making process for those producing and viewing graffiti? How does the local aspect relate to the global?
3. Affective dimension –To what extent does a consideration of affect help us to understand motivations of involved parties? How does the generation of different pieces of different purposes intervene in the embodies experiences of artists and consumers? How do power relations involved in the generation of individual pieces interplay with the affective dimension of graffiti?
4. Educational dimension – In what ways do pieces produced by local artists connect with their experience of literacy / artistic practices experienced in educational contexts? How is creativity conceptualised by those engaging with streetart?
This project gained ethics approval on 15th Feb 2019, Sheffield Hallam Ethic Review ID: ER7764460
'live, love, graff...' 