A sua pesquisa

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.

There is a need to create a documentation system adapted to facilitate the conservation and restoration of Street Art and Graffiti. Even though they are ephemeral manifestations of art, there have been some signs of the need for preservation mechanisms that would respect their own special features. For selected works we must establish a procedure that enables their preservation with the highest guarantee.

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.

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.

Poesía: ¿Qué poesía? ¿Cuál escritura? El deseo de ir hacia la frontera. Arrastrar la sed, el no saberse; la incertidumbre. Preguntarse por la poesía, por cuál poesía, qué escritura, implica presentir un cuerpo; un rostro. Una vida dentro de lo escrito que siempre está sujeta a cambios y que, sin embargo, ha de ser rescatada de la muerte. En palabras de Hélène Cixous (2006: 11-14), la escritura pretende: No dejarle lugar al muerto […]. Escribir para hacer retroceder el olvido, para no dejarse sorprender jamás por el abismo. / Escribir para tocar labios, soplo para acariciar con la lengua, lamer con el alma, saborear con la sangre del cuerpo amado, de la vida alejada; para saturar de deseo la distancia. / Yo escribo y tú no estás muerto. Si escribo, el otro está a salvo.

El estudio de prácticas poéticas surgidas de experiencias políticas antagonistas o, en general, vinculadas a los movimientos sociales, muestra la existencia de productos literarios que incorporan modelos, criterios y habitus (Bourdieu, 1992) propios de campos sociales no específicamente literarios. En ese marco puede ser analizada la poesía de Patricia Heras –activista queer de base, escritora inédita y artista ocasional–, que fue víctima de un montaje policial (el conocido como Caso 4F) y de un sistema represivo que la llevaron al suicidio en abril de 2011. Dado que fueron su implicación en el caso y su muerte los factores que desencadenaron la salida a la luz de sus textos literarios (poemas, guiones, diarios y narraciones), primero en el blog Poeta muerta (Putas cárceles de papel) y posteriormente en el libro Poeta muerta (Heras, 2014) este artículo desarrolla determinadas propuestas metodológicas que permiten estudiar los vínculos entre creación poética, antagonismo político y marginalidad social. La tensión público-privado en obras relacionadas con experiencias reivindicativas, los horizontes de eficacia sociopolítica previstos para textos y procesos de este tipo, o los repertorios (Even-Zohar, 1997) y criterios de reconocimiento activados en el caso de Patricia Heras son algunos de los aspectos que merecen un estudio específico.

Més que no pas d’incidència, m’ha sortit de parlar de dissidència, ja que la incidència ha de respondre en primer lloc a una manera de ser, de fer i de situar-se en el món. I començaré, per citar una frase del nostre company de llibre, en Márcio-André, que ve en relació al que és per mi un artista. Sempre dic que un artista ho és perquè no sap fer una altra cosa (o no vol, o renega de fer-ho). I vet aquí el que Márcio-André respon pel que fa a això, en una entrevista que es fa a ell mateix, i la seva resposta, la subscric.