Volume 35Scratched, Scrawled, Sprayed: SMC Volume on Graffiti Out Now

29 November 2023

Photo: De Gruyter

Wherever people learn how to write, they eventually use this ability to claim their voice in the visual landscapes that surround them. The resulting written artefacts – known as graffiti – are the subject matter of the new volume of SMC, which studies them from a cross-cultural perspective.

No other type of written artefact is as visible in our public spaces, especially in large cities, as graffiti. And to this day, no other type is perceived so ambivalently: condemned by some as vandalism, graffiti has long since found its way into the commercial art world and into lavishly curated exhibitions. In the last 20 years, it has also become the focus of academic attention and is extensively studied from historical, sociological, and anthropological perspectives. The remarkable rise of scholarly interest seems to indicate that graffiti is primarily a contemporary phenomenon. Indeed, most people probably associate the term primarily with the colourful, eye-catching writing and images in urban stations and on park walls.

This modern form, however, is only the tip of the historical iceberg. In fact, the history of graffiti goes back to the beginnings of writing. In their introduction to the recently published anthology Graffiti Scratched, Scrawled, Sprayed: Towards a Cross-Cultural Understanding, the editors Ondřej Škrabal, Leah Mascia, Ann Lauren Osthof, and Malena Ratzke put it this way: ‘Wherever people learned how to write, the writing (and non-writing) sooner or later spilled over to places and surfaces that were originally not conceived to receive writing, as though leaving a graphic mark was a deeply ingrained instinct. In other words, humans’ urge to claim their voice in the surrounding visual landscape seems to be one of the universals of literate societies past and present.’

Such a global phenomenon cannot be fully understood if we prioritise the viewpoint of a particular discipline, epoch, or area. Instead, what is required is a genuinely global perspective. Precisely this is the aspiration of the volume at hand: instead of artificially distinguishing between historical and contemporary graffiti, it takes the historical continuities seriously and examines them together; and by providing case studies from Africa, Asia, America, and Europe, it clearly brings to the fore the cross-cultural character of the subject matter.

A holistic understanding of graffiti as written artefacts

One of the central aims of the volume is to clarify what we are actually talking about when we talk about graffiti. While the term sparks multiple associations, it is not well-defined: ‘Even within the academic sphere, the use of the term remains extremely fluid, utterly subjective and thus notoriously problematic, as it commonly denotes a heterogeneous range of epigraphic phenomena across disciplines and scholarly traditions’, write the editors. In the current discussion, they recognise two main ‘camps’: the ‘documenters’, who want to apply the term to all types of informal inscriptions sharing some common traits in an objective and value-neutral way; and the ‘interpreters’, who consider the transgressive character of graffiti as essential. According to the latter approach, only that which has been scratched, scrawled, or sprayed on a writable surface without the consent of its owners counts as graffiti.

The volume at hand does not aim to settle this controversy. Instead, it pursues research approaches that will prove fruitful for everyone with a scholarly interest in graffiti, regardless of whether they are ‘documenters’ or ‘interpreters’. In particular, the contributions place emphasis on the spatial context of a graffito and its relation to other inscribed objects. The editors call this the ‘holistic written artefact approach’, which also entails a sensitivity to the multigraphic character of graffiti, which oscillate between writing and imagery. The holistic written artefact approach also has important implications for the practice of documenting graffiti – another aspect that plays a central role in this volume. Each of the essays shows in its own way how productive this approach is, making the book a rich resource both for established experts in graffiti research and for all those who want to study graffiti as a cross-cultural phenomenon for the first time.

Graffiti Scratched, Scrawled, Sprayed is the most comprehensive publication to date to emerge from ‘Situating Graffiti’ (Research Field J) at the Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’. It has been published in the Studies in Manuscript Cultures series and, like all other volumes in this series, is available open access. It can be downloaded on our website.