International Graffiti conferenceTAG: Name Writing in Public Space

23 June 2023

Photo: Javier Abarca

The TAG Conference is the spearhead event in graffiti studies. This year, it comes to Hamburg for the first time, as part of the programme accompanying the exhibition 'EINE STADT WIRD BUNT' and in partnership with CSMC. The opening event takes place on 29 June with keynotes lectures at SUB Hamburg.

This year's edition of the conference gathers over 20 speakers coming from 14 countries on all 5 continents, and covers a diverse range of views into different forms of tagging, from historical name-writing to contemporary urban tags.

The conference will kick off with a special opening on 29 June, 5:00 pm - 8:00 pm, at Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg (Lichthof) featuring keynote speakers Matthew Champion (UK) and Susan Phillips (US), two of the main voices in graffiti studies.

Archeologist and expert in historical graffiti Matthew Champion will recount in his talk how graffiti has actually been commonplace until recent times. Susan Phillips, an expert on early 20th century American graffiti, will provide her perspective on the different graffiti traditions that took form in that century, leading to the birth of today’s worldwide graffiti culture.

The conference’s director Javier Abarca will close this first session linking historical and contemporary perspectives by looking at the venerable tradition of ‘moniker’ graffiti, and will describe how modern urban tagging is, in essence, a new incarnation of the same old human behaviour.

Two more days of fascinating insights into tagging

On Friday and Saturday, the programme will continue at the auditorium of Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte. Talks will study a whole range of forms of name-writing, from the marks left underground by Australian urban explorers to unique local tagging traditions from India, Russia, and Spain.

Speakers will explore the dense and now popular historical graffiti of Venice, discuss approaches to preserve the heritage of contemporary graffiti, and delve into cutting-edge developments in graffiti letterforms.

The programme includes, of course, a look into the figure of Oz, the outsider artist and prolific tagger who was for decades a local folk hero for the city of Hamburg.

All lectures are free and open to the public. More information on the programme is available here.