A sua pesquisa

In 2014 we took the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the 031 crew from Bern and produced a 5MINUTES double episode. Actually it's more like a triple episode, because with 14 minutes the episode is very long. But if you are interested in what the guys from 031 had to say back then, you will take your time. Because the Crew is about to release their 500 page book (700 photos) 031 FOR THE PEOPLE via NON STOP Publishing here is the re-upload and a link to check out the books preview and trailer: https://ilovegraffiti.de/blog/2022/12... With the release of this episode there was a lot of feedback, about the film and the crew. From the Swiss media as well as from the scene. We can't repeat it often enough: we are a neutral medium that likes to look behind the scenes and let protagonists speak. Completely unreflective, we deliberately let things stand, and yes, we are convinced that it is "allowed" to do so. This has been our approach for many years and will remain so. In this sense, have fun with 031BERN. 5MINUTES is a project by ILOVEGRAFFITI.DE in cooperation with ARTE. http://ilovegraffiti.de #graffiti #ilovegraffiti #031crew #trainwriting

5 MINUTES WITH: FLORIAN KRAUSE | 2015 Re-Upload: Diese Episode wurde 2015 von arte gestreamt Im Frühjahr 2015 haben wir uns entschieden, eine 5MINUTES Doppelepisode mit dem Fotografen FLORIAN KRAUSE zu drehen. Uns hat besonders interessiert, wie Florian seine Fotos macht, welche Motivation dahintersteckt, ob er alle Künstler kennt und ob die Fotos in Zusammenarbeit entstehen. Wird sich abgestimmt mit den Graffitikünstlern und vieles mehr. Um die Fragen zu beantworten sind wir dem Fotografen und Kameramann aus Wiesbanden bis nach Berlin in ein weit abgelegenes Gelände gefolgt, wo er zusammen mit den Graffitikünstlern RAWS, SKENAR, STEREOHEAT und STAN gearbeitet hat. Was dort passiert ist, die Antwort auf unsere Fragen und vier neue Fotoarbeiten gibt´s in unserem 5MINUTES Spezial 'LIGHTBRUSH GRAFFITI VON FLORIAN KRAUSE' 5MINUTES ist ein Projekt in Kooperation mit arte: http://arte.tv/5minutes

Dividida em oito livros – "Poema Feio", "Folclore Íntimo", "Livro de Maldições", "O Resto da Minha Alegria", "Útero", "A Cobrição das Filhas", "Três Minutos antes de a Maré Encher" e "A Remoção das Almas" –, Publicação da Mortalidade é a terceira "poesia reunida" de Valter Hugo Mãe (Saurimo, Angola, 1971), depois de Folclore Íntimo (2008) e de Contabilidade (2010). (...) A avaliar pelo itinerário poético de Valter Hugo Mãe e pelo que o autor afirma nas notas autorais das suas duas primeiras coletâneas de "poesia reunida", publicação da mortalidade anuncia futuras recolhas de poemas. Se é de esperar que ao poeta interessará que esse novo livro seja "a passagem para um tempo outro mas como um estádio intermédio e nunca uma fixação definitiva", já quando acontecerá essa nova publicação é, no mínimo, imprevisível. Apenas dois anos (de 2008 para 2010) separaram as duas primeiras recolhas, enquanto que da segunda para a terceira há um intervalo de quase uma década.

No mundo ocidental, são muitas as vozes que nos vão lembrando, de tempos a tempos, que já não sabemos encarar a morte com frontalidade e dignidade. Assumiu-se que falar da morte é produzir uma dor ou um mal-estar que colidem com os valores da nossa sociedade, cada vez mais voltada para o culto da beleza e da eterna juventude. Até sensivelmente às décadas de 70 ou 80 do século passado, a sociedade portuguesa, sobretudo a mais rural, não escondia dos mais novos as doenças, o envelhecimento e a morte dos entes queridos, e o cancioneiro infantil e juvenil era uma das grandes expressões e uma das fontes de todos estes temas. Hoje, estas são questões praticamente silenciadas, dir-se-ia até proibidas, e por isso muitas crianças são educadas sem o conhecimento da morte. Partindo destes pressupostos, abordaremos neste artigo a questão da morte na poesia oral e tradicional infantil portuguesa moderna e contemporânea. Veremos, em particular, se a morte aparece mais como personagem ou mais como acontecimento, refletiremos sobre os seus tipos e as suas incidências semânticas, simbólicas e pragmáticas, e discutiremos se vale a pena trazer estes textos para o contexto educativo.

Bei der 10. Ausgabe des Street Art Festivals IBUg Ende August 2015 wurde wieder gesprayt, gemalt und geschraubt was das Zeug hält. Hierfür wurde der alten Kaffeerösterei in Plauen ein neuer Anstrich verpasst. Neu dieses Jahr: Die IBUg zu Gast auf der OSTRALE Dresden. Fabrikhallen, Stahltüren, Schornsteine – auf der IBUg wurde alles zur Ausstellungsfläche. Ende August war es wieder soweit: 60 Street-Art-Künstler aus 11 Ländern verwandelten mit ihren Graffiti, Murals und Installationen die alte Kaffeerösterei in Plauen in eine Street-Art-Galerie. In einer einwöchigen Kreativphase tobten sich die Künstler auf dem Industriegelände aus und brachten an die Wand, was die Street-Art-Palette zu bieten hat. Am letzten Tag der Veranstaltung lassen wir uns über das Gelände führen und treffen dabei u.a. auf Künstler wie Florian Huber aus Hamburg, der auf dem Dach der Alten Kaffeerösterei mit der Münchener Graffiti Legende Loomit kollaboriert, und wir begegnen Tommi vom Kollektiv Quintessenz, Simo und Tasso, der dieses Jahr selbst aktiv mitwirkt. Zudem treffen wir Guido Zimmermann aus Frankfurt, der mit der Künstlerin Chinagirl Tile aus Wien zusammen arbeitet. Sie zeigt uns, wie man Keramik in ein Wandgemälde einarbeiten kann. Dr. Molrok erklärt seine Buchstaben-Installation aus Metall. Auf unserem Spaziergang entdecken wir auch jede Menge visuelle und installative Kunst, u.a. von Benuz aus Mexiko, Bond TruLuv aus Leipzig, Christian Rug aus Leipzig, Farbgefühl aus Jena, Herr Orm, HiFi, HNRX, Innerfields aus Berlin, KERA, Madame Moustache aus Montpellier, Majilina (Italy), Odourodessa aus Nürnberg, Theo Eifrig, Royal TS aus Leipzig, Zone56 oder auch Monarch aus Erfurt, der eine fantastische Skulptur gestaltet. Ins Leben gerufen wurde die IBUg 2006 vom Künstler Tasso in seiner Heimatstadt Meerane. Seitdem hat sich der Event zu einem international renommierten Festival entwickelt, das jedes Jahr Street-Art-Künstler aus aller Welt und mehrere Tausend Besucher anlockt. Mit solchen Dimensionen hatte Tasso, der 2006 eigentlich nur auf der Suche nach freien Flächen in Industriebrachen war, nicht gerechnet: "Ich hätte nie gedacht, dass die IBUg mal eine so große Sache wird." Die zehnte IBUg-Auflage ist gleichzeitig auch eine Premiere: Die meisten Brachen vergangener Jahre sind samt Kunstwerken längst abgerissen. Dagegen ist die Alte Kaffeerösterei mehr Kulturzentrum als Brache. Das ist neu, denn die entstandenen Arbeiten bleiben zum ersten Mal erhalten. Für die Künstler sei das eine Herausforderung, sagt Tasso. Die IBUg ist aber schon längst weit mehr als ein einmal im Jahr stattfindendes Event. Die Organisatoren wollen mit "IBUg on Tour" auch Schnittstelle zu anderen Projekten sein, die sich mit Street Art beschäftigen. Dieses Jahr kooperierte die IBUg dafür mit der OSTRALE, eine seit 2007 stattfindende Gruppenausstellung für zeitgenössische Kunst in einem ehemaligen Schlachthof in Dresden. *** La dixème édition du festival IBUg s'est tenue fin août 2015. Cette année, ce grand raout du streetart était jumelé à un autre grand rendez-vous : la Ostrale. Les équipes de 5 MINUTES étaient sur place. Fin août 2015, nous sommes retournés au IBUg, qui a eu lieu cette année à Plauen, dans la région du Vogtland, en Allemagne. Pour cette dixième édition du festival IBUg ("Industriebrachenumgestaltung" en version longue, littéralement "relooking de friches industrielles"), pas moins de 60 artistes de 11 pays avaient été invités, parmi lesquels des créatifs venus d’Allemagne, d’Autriche, de Suisse, de France, d’Espagne, d’Italie, de Biélorussie, d’Ukraine et même du Mexique. La manifestation s’est déroulée dans l’ancienne usine de torréfaction située dans le quartier de Haselbrunn, à Plauen. Durant une semaine dédiée à la créativité, ce monument de l’histoire industrielle saxonne a été transformé en œuvre d’art collective à coups de graffitis, de fresques, d’illustrations, d’installations et d’autres projets multimédias. Trois jours durant, les visiteurs ont pu en profiter et se laisser surprendre par l’éventail et la qualité des œuvres. Un programme en marge de ce week-end festivalier proposait également visites guidées, projections de films, conférences, discussions et soirées. L’IBUg a été créé en 2006 par l’artiste Tasso, qui souhaitait en faire un symposium du graffiti dans sa ville natale de Meerane. Depuis, la manifestation est devenue un festival de renommée internationale qui, année après année, attire des artistes de street art des quatre coins du globe et plusieurs milliers de visiteurs. Les organisateurs veulent montrer que l’art urbain ne perd rien de sa pertinence, même en dehors des grandes métropoles. "Jamais je n’aurais imaginé que l’IBUg allait prendre de telles proportions", a déclaré Tasso. En 2006, il s’est simplement mis en quête de surfaces libres dans les friches industrielles de sa ville, et une fois qu’il les a eues trouvées, il a créé un premier petit événement avec une quinzaine de ses amis artistes, afin de faire des expérimentations ludiques avec de vieilles installations, des pièces détachées de machines, des harnais, des fenêtres et des bâtiments insolites. Il ne s’agissait pas uniquement de tagger des murs. L’artiste âgé de 49 ans explique qu’"il s’agissait de s’adapter à l’environnement et de lui donner un nouveau visage en le peignant à l’aide de bombes ou de quoi que ce soit d’autre, en faisant des collages ou en bricolant". Aujourd’hui, dix ans plus tard, il a même fallu refuser des artistes qui voulaient participer. "La demande est telle que l’on pourrait organiser plusieurs IBUg". Après être resté quelques années à Meerane, le festival s’est déplacé à Crimmitschau, Glauchau et Zwickau. Mais cette dixième édition est également une première. En effet, la plupart des précédentes friches ont été rasées depuis longtemps, et les œuvres avec. "Le street art est intrinsèquement éphémère", a déclaré le coorganisateur Michael Lippold. En revanche, l’ancienne usine de torréfaction de Plauen est plus un centre culturel qu’une friche. Voilà la nouveauté. Les œuvres créées seront conservées. C’est à n’en pas douter un nouveau défi pour les artistes. Nous sommes arrivés sur place le dernier jour de la manifestation et, comme l’an passé, avons retrouvé Peter Thormeyer (attaché de presse de l’IBUg) pour une petite visite guidée de quelques heures. Nous avons rencontré entre autres artistes Florian Huber, de Hambourg, qui, cette année encore, a utilisé des clôtures pour ses installations, et a même eu l’occasion de collaborer avec le légendaire Loomit sur la cheminée de l’ancienne usine de torréfaction. Avec son œuvre, Florian a cherché, même si ce n’est que de manière symbolique, à préserver un monument de l’histoire industrielle à l’aide de clôtures soudées. Nous avons également croisé Tommi, du collectif Quintessenz, Simo et Tasso, qui a mis cette année la main à la pâte et n’a donc pas pu prendre part à notre petite balade. Nous avons vu Guido Zimmermann, de Francfort, qui a collaboré avec l’artiste viennoise Chinagirl Tile. Elle nous a montré comment on pouvait intégrer de la céramique dans une fresque murale, tandis que Dr. Molrok nous a expliqué son installation en métal en forme de lettre. Sur le site, nous avons également découvert toutes sortes d’œuvres visuelles et d’installation créées entre autres par Benuz du Mexique, Bond TruLuv de Leipzig, Christian Rug de Leipzig, Farbgefühl de Iéna, Herr Orm , HiFi, HNRX, Innerfields de Berlin, KERA, Madame Moustache de Montpellier, Majilina d’Italie, Odourodessa de Nuremberg, Theo Eifrig, Royal TS de Leipzig, Zone56 ou encore Monarch de Erfurt, qui a réalisé une sculpture fantastique. Mais l’IBUg n’a depuis longtemps plus lieu qu’une seule fois dans l’année. Les organisateurs souhaitent également jouer les intermédiaires avec d’autres projets dans le domaine du street art. Ils ont appelé cela "IBUg on Tour". Cette année, le festival coopère avec l’Ostrale, une exposition collective d’art contemporain qui, depuis 2007, a investi un ancien abattoir de Dresde. Cette année, parallèlement aux expositions sur l’art africain et sur des thèmes politiques d’actualité, l’Ostrale a décidé de mettre à l’honneur le graffiti et le street art. Des artistes de l’IBUg ont donc été invités à participer à cette exposition internationale dirigée par Anne Mrosowski et Florian Bölike de l’agence ATLJAE Kunstvermittlung. L’exposition surprend par sa collection riche et variée où se côtoient petites peintures murales, sculptures, photographies documentaires, vidéos artistiques, performances et installations spatiales multimédia conceptuelles. Nous avons regardé tout cela d’un peu plus près pour vous. L’exposition avait très clairement pour thème le graffiti dans l’espace public. Si elle ne répondait pas à la question : "Qu’est-ce que le graffiti ?", elle proposait cependant diverses interprétations personnelles du terme. Quand certains des artistes sont restés fidèles aux lettrages sous toutes leurs formes, d’autres ont en revanche mis leur bombe de côté et ont utilisé différents moyens et techniques afin de réfléchir sur leur longue pratique du graffiti, de la mettre en scène ou de la parodier, tant aux niveaux de la technique que du matériel utilisé ou du fond. Certains acteurs anonymes de la scène illégale ont exposé leurs œuvres sous des pseudonymes, tandis que d’autres ont abandonné leur alter ego pour se présenter sous leur vrai nom. L’exposition a volontairement cherché à offrir aux artistes travaillant légalement et illégalement une plate-forme qui les réunisse comme une grande famille. Car comme dans toute famille très élargie, tous les membres ont des conceptions artistiques assez similaires en raison de leurs origines communes, bien que ces positions soient encore trop souvent perçues par le public comme fondamentalement différentes.

Emisión del programa Metrópolis titulado South Graff. Pintando la voz del barrio. El programa Metrópolis invita al experto e investigador en graffiti y arte urbano Fernando Figueroa a que seleccione una serie de proyectos en los que artistas procedentes del graffiti han dado voz a sus barrios, dignificando estos espacios desde la creatividad colectiva y desde la convivencia.

In den letzten Jahren hat sich der Künstler und Graffiti-Writer SOTEN aus Dänemark durch seine Zielstrebigkeit, viel harte Arbeit, enormes Können und große Leidenschaft von einem jungen, regional bekannten Writer zu einem angesehenen, internationalen Künstler entwickelt. Seine Arbeiten sieht man an jedem Ort, an dem man sich Graffiti nur vorstellen kann, außerdem an vielen Galeriewänden und bei zahlreichen kulturellen Ereignissen. Und sie alle enthalten die für ihn typischen Buchstabenformen, ausgefallenen Farbkombinationen und klassischen Elemente der Zeichenkunst. In den letzten Jahren hat er auf seinen ausgedehnten Reisen in Australien, Südafrika, Kanada, Russland und ganz Europa seinen Namen und seine Kunst in weiten Teilen der Welt verbreitet. Wir luden SOTEN zu uns ein und sprachen mit ihm über Graffiti, seine Anfänge, seine Motivation, seine Inspiration, seine Reisen und weshalb Graffiti für ihn noch immer das Wichtigste in seinem Leben ist. Und zusätzlich zum Video hier gleich noch ein paar Eindrücke in Form einer Fotostrecke. *** SOTEN est le nom d’un artiste visuel et graffeur de Copenhague, au Danemark. Au cours des 15 dernières années, ce jeune artiste local a acquis une renommée internationale grâce à sa détermination, sa ténacité et son grand talent. On retrouve ses œuvres partout dans le monde sur des murs, mais aussi dans de nombreuses galeries et dans le cadre d’innombrables événements culturels. On y reconnaît sa patte à la forme des lettres, l'association de couleurs originales et l’utilisation d’éléments illustratifs classiques. Au cours de ses nombreux voyages, il a propagé son nom et son style dans le monde entier, dans des pays tels que l’Australie, l’Afrique du Sud, le Canada, la Russie ainsi qu’aux quatre coins de l’Europe. Nous avons invité SOTEN dans notre QG pour une discussion passionnante sur les graffitis, ses débuts, ses motivations, son inspiration et ses voyages, afin de comprendre pourquoi toute sa vie tourne toujours autour de cet art. Et, en plus de l'épisode, retrouvez ci-dessous quelques photos de nos explorations.

What is the role of art in the reinforcement or rejection of current models of public space management in our cities? To answer this question, we must attend to the ties of all artwork with public institutions, and whether or not it questions the dominant order. In this article, I will focus on the works of the Ana Botella Crew, a group of artists from Madrid, as an example of “artivism” that challenges the City Council’s management of public spaces in Madrid. My aim is to explore how useful internet tools can be to articulate artistic interventions that challenge the hegemonic uses of public space, in what Sassen has called the global city.

In this article we try to show how the work of the Portuguese writerLiberto Cruz establishes a compromise between the poem as text freeof any ideological imposition and the poem as social and politicalaction; between the internal and personal experience of the authorand his commitment to the history of the country; between the selfsufficiency of the poem and its links to the larger world; betweencommunication and elevation; between the work’s expansion ofimage and semantics and the communication of feelings, emotionsand ideas; and between the textual “I” and the biographical “I”.

The phenomenon of urban art is one of the forces shaping contemporary urban spaces. Historically fought as vandalism in its “writing” component (the “black sheep” of the urban actors performing in the contemporary city), urban art has recently become more appreciated as an artistic expression, especially when regarded as a stage in the historical evolution of muralism. As several examples worldwide have shown, in the context of urban renewal, urban art can set off positive dynamics. Focusing on the Italian scene, I recognize the importance of past Italian interventions realized both in big cities, such as Rome, Turin and Bologna, and in small cities, such as Grottaglie (Taranto), Gaeta (Latina), Catanzaro, and Dozza (Bologna). In addition, the growing number of urban art festivals and public interventions seems to voice the citizens’ will to take the streets back, particularly where institutions are unable to intervene effectively in the urban domain due to political short-sightedness or lack of financial resources. The first aim of this paper is to illustrate and analyze some collective projects and informal actions through which citizens, associations, and institutions have given added value to the urban space. I will focus particularly on Turin, which has become one of the most interesting and rich urban art territories, thanks to public projects such as Murarte, Picturin, Nizzart and B.Art: Arte in Barriera. This study offers insights on how, by way of artistic deeds and apparently “weak” transformation systems, urban art may take innovative action so as to regenerate the city’s architectural heritage. The second aim of this paper is to propose a methodology for architectural surveying techniques applied to urban art. isIn current critical analysis, as well as in the representation and documentation of this type of work, the fundamental importance of the physical, architectural and urban environment in which the work is placed is often overlooked, if not completely omitted. In acknowledgment of these limitations, this paper proposes a documentation methodology that respects both the values of the process and the work itself. In this regard, painted walls must be considered as inseparable from the space in which they are located, from the material substrate supporting them, and from the time conditions in which they were realized. The process of examination and documentation therefore requires observation in situ, new digital and traditional survey techniques, and a variety of representations at different scales; with a view to understanding the reasons that led to the selection of a particular place in the city, and the way in which artistic action arises in relation to the historical environment and the social and political system that influenced its creation.

The Egyptian revolution of 2011 produced a massive transformation in the perception of urban space and the interrelated dynamic of people, their bodies, and the language within that space. Cultural expressions such as caricature galleries, makeshift exhibitions, chants, poetry readings, and memorial spaces defined the square as a place where activism and art intersected weaving a lyrical tapestry of the revolution. The most prominent of these expressions was the street art of the revolution where the act of painting on walls re-territorialized the city making it the revolution’s barometer by registering the shifting political discourses as they unfolded. Documenting and preserving these visual expressions was the driving force behind a three-year book project, entitled Walls of Freedom: Street Art of the Egyptian Revolution, which narrates the revolution through striking images of the art that transformed Egypt’s walls into a visual testimony of bravery and resistance. This article will serve to offer a detailed analysis of the methodologies and tools used in creating the book as well as managing, financing, and collecting all of its necessary components. Primarily focused on qualitative visual research methodologies, the book is layered into three components or levels: one level is a visual journey of the revolution through a chronological image-timeline. The categorization and indexing of images by artist, photographer, date and translation was an important function allowing quick access to images visually placing them in a larger continuum. The second level is a reference-based timeline of events where a connection between the art and the historical/political events is presented. The third level involves the essays and analysis supplementing the timeline with historical implications, political and social contexts and personal voices collected from artists and activists.

There is an abundance of books, magazines, films and internet-forums dedicated to graffiti. How this documentation has influenced and been a part of the graffiti subculture has not been studied much. Drawing on personal experiences, as a documentarian and publisher of graffiti media over 27 years, Malcolm Jacobson recollects how the positions of participant and observer incessantly have twisted around each other. This has been mediated through development in media technology as well as by the coming of age of graffiti and its practitioners.

When discussing the paradox of displacing the street art aesthetic, i.e. commissioning street artists to create work for art galleries, museums, or public murals, one inevitably has to address issues of co-opting, appropriation, and the institutionalization of a movement that began as a countercultural form of expression. Two commissioned pieces by OSGEMEOS are used as a case study. This paper parses through the discourse surrounding their production and removal. The goal therein is to break down these narratives and gain insight into the mechanisms at work and the inherent contradictions in the process of institutionalizing street art.

It is the goal of this paper to aesthetically rethink Street Art’s artistic process and question its narrative in urban and public space. We intend to highlight the anonymity, ephemeral, and transitory element as a key feature of its artistic creation. To this end, we will use as a starting point the relationship between the street artist and Baudelaire’s flanêur, to reach Foucault’s point of view, which somehow finds the key to the street artist’s aesthetic features, synthesized in the understanding of Baudelaire’s modernity, understood not as a mere historical period, but rather as an “attitude.”

What is the role of art in the reinforcement or rejection of current models of public space management in our cities? To answer this question, we must attend to the ties of all artwork with public institutions, and whether or not it questions the dominant order. In this article, I will focus on the works of the Ana Botella Crew, a group of artists from Madrid, as an example of “artivism” that challenges the City Council’s management of public spaces in Madrid. My aim is to explore how useful internet tools can be to articulate artistic interventions that challenge the hegemonic uses of public space, in what Sassen has called the global city.

This article addresses the notion of the socially engaged visual arts. The first part explores some fundamental historical periods to help understand this practice, from the Greek concept of teknè until the present time. Then, the idea of a machine for the emancipation of creativity is explained, as well as its operation in two neighborhoods of the Portuguese city of Amadora. Finally, as a result of this immaterial machine, the focus turns to a detailed description of an archive of audiovisual elements that represents each activity undertaken within the project.

Nowadays, walking around any city is a guarantee of seeing graffiti, while the public transportation are still a good canvas for writers. It is a well-established social phenomenon and has catch the attention of ethnographers, academic artists and other scholars that have entered the worlds of graffiti writers to explain their origins, trajectories, motivations, their identity construction, their conception of the self and their role and relation with society at large. However, still there is no synthetic effort of categorisation that provides understandable and communicable approaches to graffiti in the real world. From some sectors graffiti is still something to “deal with”. Generally speaking, authorities and dutyholders consider graffiti as threat a security and safety issue, turning it into something that needs to be addressed. For social workers, for instance, graffiti can be a means of communication with certain youth sectors or even a tool for social cohesion generation. Departing from this perspective, Graffolution was designed: an EC funded project for generating awareness and advance in the provision of best practices for tackling graffiti in Austria, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. The first rule encountered is no-one-size-fits-all and referring to graffiti and graffiti writers, this requires a complex understanding of the phenomenon, their trajectories as well as individual and collective dispositions. The aim of this paper is to provide a consistent typology of graffiti writers, offering a comprehensive picture of whose are the hands behind the graffiti cans. This serves a double level purpose: advancing at the theoretical level putting forward the sociocultural approaches to careers and social backgrounds provided by ethnographic approaches, as well as capturing the complexity of the phenomenon to serve as an operative conceptual basis for practitioners, professionals and decision makers. In doing so, the analysis is made on the transcripts obtained for 22 semi-structured interviews, carried out in the four participating countries. The transcripts have been analysed according to the “persona” methodology, which constitutes a systematic and novel approach and a qualitative technique for clustering information. As a result, three main categories have been defined according to important ambitions, challenges and stages of typical ‘journeys’ or ‘pathways’ of actors. These findings contribute to form a basis of a) highlight the misconceptions around graffiti as a petty crime, and b) offer a guide to understand graffiti writers under a socio-cultural perspective.

Recently there has been a resurgence of murals in several European and American cities. Street art visual practices have privileged murals as one of the most suitable formats to address public spaces. Despite the increasing recognition and significance of murals for the visual culture of these cities, this contemporary urban art practice has not received much attention from recent literature. This paper provides a literature review on contemporary murals, giving an account of their popularity, their relation to location-specificity and global presence, as well as the means of dissemination of such art expression. The study will then focus on a set of case studies in Lisbon, regarding the paradigmatic shift from sculpture commissioning to mural commissioning within Portuguese Brazilian cultural relationships. The works of OSGEMEOS, Bicicleta sem Freio and Nunca will be discussed in this framework, questioning what the contributions of contemporary mural works might be for the public spaces of the city.

This article sets out to show how a sociological research project on the production of street art in Lisbon was built, from the construction of an object of research to the development of a methodological approach that enabled the collection of a diverse set of expressive data. The notion of 'route' serves not only as a valuable instrument of research in the first stages of an investigation in urban sociology, but also as a powerful visual depiction of the development of a specific methodology and the set of techniques adopted. The diverse set of interrogations about the object that stem from these incursions, as well as the specific urban context at hand, allowed the researcher to conceptualize street art as a component of contemporary urban space and as a visual means to reveal social dynamics between the several actors involved in its production, and the city itself. Therefore, in this paper it is briefly shown how this object is theoretically framed, namely in what concerns the street artists and the way they build an artistic path and attribute meaning to the act of intervening artistically in the streets of the city, and how this connects with the worlds of contemporary art and the several contexts of production of street art; the contexts in which street art is currently created in Lisbon, from individual initiatives to the actions of associations or collectives, and the municipality; and the way in which the city, through its institutional powers, can instrumentalize street art as a way of creating 'images of the city', and how this can be explored in terms of tourism and the marketing of cities, and the conflict or opportunities that these processes reveal for the actors involved.