GSA journal is born from the need of a publication focused exclusively for Graffiti and Street Art academic studies. It's purpose is to contribute to the credibility and recognition of the field from the academic perspective.
Along the territorial edges of urban development, graffiti visually dominates the space, even if extremely temporarily. New condominiums, fenced-in lots, and plastic traffic barriers are marked repeatedly by graffiti writers that take claim over their neighborhoods through their tags. Graffiti as a medium has been highly politicized and commonly associated with vandalism, crime, and lower property values by city governments, law enforcement, and traditional media. In contrast, gentrified areas are awarded city-funded, public murals that seek to inhibit the creation of graffiti and to protect the commercial value of those spaces through aesthetics. This case study examines how graffiti challenges spaces of gentrification in Philadelphia – the birthplace of modern graffiti. We identify three areas that are currently undergoing problematic developments: Northern Liberties, Fishtown/Kensington, and West Philadelphia. We argue that these territories represent a dialogue between the local community and developers, regarding property ownership, cultural/demographic shifts, and the commodification of space. Graffiti writers challenge the imposition of gentrifying forces through their everyday uses of public space in their community. Graffiti’s relationship with gentrification has been gaining more attention in recent years. Our research considers the ephemerality of graffiti as it relates to the materials used in the construction of these developments. The impermanence of the structures graffiti is created on makes this medium a useful tactic in opposing urban developers and speaking to their community. In these territories of mutually understood change, graffiti writers visually disrupt capital movement and investment. These spaces of urban development are representative of present and future private investment, and the complex relationship between graffiti writers, developers, and the larger community.
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The urban landscape of Naples, in both its material and immaterial dimensions, has always been characterised by a dense and complex iconographic fabric. Sacred and profane images, murals, votive icons, posters, signs, and inscriptions compose a chaotic, stratified, and ever-evolving visual scenario. Within this setting, graffiti writing has emerged as one of the most widespread and recognisable expressions of contemporary Naples, actively contributing to the construction of the city's urban imaginary. Due to the absence of strict regulatory control and the significant presence of young people and students, graffiti writing is a widespread practice in the city that transforms walls into integral parts of urban communication. Among the most pressing themes, the right to housing is a central issue. The expansion of tourism has led to a progressive residential ‘exodus’ from the historic centre, forcing lower-income residents out and reshaping the city's social and economic balance. This phenomenon, common to many metropolitan cities, threatens to accelerate the process of gentrification in Naples, altering its cultural and traditional characteristics. In this context, graffiti writing becomes a visual form of protest, making visible conflicts that are often ignored, and transforming the urban wall into a space of resistance and sociocultural affirmation. By examining how this practice contributes to the creation of a bottom-up urban discourse, the article aims to demonstrate how graffiti writing operates as an expressive and critical tool in the struggle for housing rights in today’s Naples. The purpose is to analyse how these visual expressions represent alternative forms of communication as tools for struggle for the identity affirmation, in an urban context subject to strong transformational pressures.
This issue of Graffiti and Street Art develops from the 2025 edition of Urban Creativity, whose overarching theme—Territory—foregrounded questions of power, boundary-making, and the social production of space. Within that broader framework, Inscribed Territories: Informal Governance brings together contributions that examine writing, marking, and image-making as practices through which urban territories are regulated, contested, and reimagined outside formal institutional structures. Across diverse geopolitical contexts, the articles assembled here reveal how graffiti, muralism, and other forms of unofficial inscription operate as mechanisms of governance from below.
Methodological pathways for documenting Graffiti Writing and Street Art
This paper explores animation's potential as a documentation and dissemination solution for street art and graffiti Writing practices. Through qualitative comparative analysis of five case studies, it examines how animation techniques capture the multifaceted aspects of urban art cultures while bridging physical and digital territories. The analysis investigates four methodological trajectories. Selina Miles's collaborative works INFINITE and LIMITLESS (2013) demonstrate ‘time-compression’ techniques that preserve graffiti Writing's cultural dimensions through strategic documentation collaboration. María Lorenzo's Urban Sphinx (2020) employs photographic stop-motion to animate year-long street art archives, revealing temporal preservation strategies while addressing decontextualization challenges through multi-sensory approaches. The student-led Byofa (2023) illustrates narrative reconstruction through 2D frame-by-frame animation combined with live-action interviews, balancing expressive interpretation with testimonial fidelity. Finally, BLU's wall-painted animations and TRIPL's train-writing sequences exemplify physical-digital convergence, transforming ephemeral urban interventions into digitally circulating artworks. Key findings reveal animation's capacity to function as dynamic mediator of subcultural knowledge, transforming temporal, spatial, and archival registers into coherent narrative forms. However, a central preservation-decontextualization tension emerges, requiring balance between technical innovation and cultural authenticity. Anchored within the broader multidisciplinary doctoral research project ‘GraffiMotion. Designing Animation Strategies towards a Documentary on Graffiti Writing in Porto’, it fosters a contribution to the academic debate by proposing a framework that interconnects the territories between artistic practice and scientific methods.
From New York’s subway writers in the 1970s to today’s global street artists, graffiti has long functioned as a form of spatial hacking. Yet if digital technology is said to have transformed graffiti, what exactly has changed? Which new forms of territorial engagement and representation emerge when graffiti intersects with digital tools? This paper examines evolving relationships between graffiti, territory, and digital media, focusing on how technologies such as drones and social media reshape access to space, visibility, and memory. What occurs when ephemeral, site-specific practices meet persistent, shareable, and searchable infrastructures? How does the logic of tagging adapt – or resist – to the demands of algorithmic visibility? Through a selected corpus of works, this paper identifies two key shifts in territorial engagement in the digital age. First, access to inaccessible spaces: drone footage, video documentation, and online sharing allow visibility beyond physical reach, exemplified by high-risk actions of crews like 1UP in Athens and Naples. Second, access to multiple temporalities: digital tools preserve or reactivate erased works, as in Blu’s animated murals, Insa’s ‘GIF-iti,’ or social media archives. This paper contributes to a broader reflection on how graffiti continues to negotiate – and redraw – the boundaries of territory in an increasingly hybrid, digitized urban environment.
Social context. The ongoing conflict in Ukraine since 2022 has led to significant transformations in the country's economic, social, and cultural landscapes. The war has disrupted traditional industries and healthcare systems while causing mass displacement of millions of Ukrainians, leading to new social networks and fragmented communities. Amidst these challenges, street art has emerged as a powerful form of cultural expression and resistance, reflecting the resilience of Ukrainian identity. Objectives. This research aims to document and analyze the evolution of street art as a response to existential threats, exploring how artists use urban spaces for political commentary and social critique. Methodology. The study employs a mixed methodology, including Hybrid Discourse Analysis and Sociological Network Analysis, to understand the complex relationships between street art, community engagement, and cultural heritage preservation. Additionally, the research emphasizes the role of digital platforms in documenting and sharing Ukrainian street art, fostering international solidarity and cultural exchange. Results. Ultimately, the project seeks to create a Mini Encyclopedia of War Street Art, serving as a resource for future scholarly investigation and public understanding of Ukraine's cultural heritage during wartime.
The purpose of this article is to develop an anthropological theory for the study of graffiti and street art. Although the field of graffiti and street art research (GSAR) has gained exponential multidisciplinary academic recognition, few anthropologists have examined these practices from an explicitly anthropological perspective. Addressing this gap, the article proposes an anthropological approach for observing graffiti and street art not as mere passive objects of research, but as active subjects — thereby shifting the focus from what graffiti and street art are to what they do. It further argues that considering graffiti and street art as subjects implies taking into account not only what they do — their agency — but also what they say — their discourses — and what they want — their desires. Building on this theoretical argument, it proposes some methodological insights based on ethnographic fieldwork in Comuna 13 of Medellín, Colombia. In doing so, it aims to offer a theoretical framework and methodological tools to GSAR scholarship for exploring graffiti and street art through an anthropological lens.
This article is based on a systematic literature review (SLR) and aims to provide a comprehensive overview of existing research on practices related to cultural mapping processes, as well as to understand the benefits, possibilities, and experiences that may arise from the application of this methodology, specifically in urban art. This review is driven by the need to discern and synthesise the diverse range of cultural mapping applications, methodologies, and outcomes that stem from this practice, understood as a tool for preserving local cultural resources. At the same time, it seeks to explore the potential of cultural mapping in preserving the intangible cultural heritage associated with urban art. The main research question guiding this SLR is: “How are projects, activities, or experiences related to cultural mapping characterised from the perspective of urban art?” To answer this question systematically, the PRISMA method is applied, resulting in an exhaustive review of 23 studies. The findings highlight the application of cultural mapping to a variety of urban cultural resources — such as built heritage, landscape, and historic centres — as well as to artistic expressions, namely graffiti, public art, and photography. This breadth illustrates the versatile and adaptive nature of this approach. Research focused on graffiti underscores the importance of documenting these acts as a way of marking community interaction with urban space — an objective that aligns with the intangible aspects of this artistic expression and the valorisation of place. It is therefore concluded that this methodology holds significant potential for preserving the intangible cultural heritage associated with urban art, by safeguarding its memory through the recording of practices, meanings, and community connections that define the spaces where this expression occurs.
The post-industrial ruin graffiti spaces and writer
The aim of this article is to explain the use of abandoned industrial building for the graffiti writer with the example of the urban incinerator of Carrières in Montréal (l’incinérateur des Carrières), by using three methods of data collection: archaeoanthropology as a method of ethnographic observation, collection of online documents and archives, and the semi-directed interview. Some scholars described the use of abandoned industrial buildings for graffiti, but they didn’t describe deeply those functions related to their graffiti vocation, especially the surfaces used by graffiti writers of post-industrial ruin. The results show the functions of an abandoned industrial building within is graffiti vocation regarding the surfaces invested by graffiti writer, thanks to a deep detailed analyze of the used surfaces, the distinction between upper and lower surfaces, in terms of visibility and invisibility. It reveals the importance of the use of high surfaces in the graffiti tradition, as part of the hierarchy of graffiti spaces and the artistic spatiality of graffiti.