Tactile Encounters and the Ephemerality of the Graffiti Image

Abstract

The use of new materials such as stickers, posters, and stencils has transformed how graffiti (or if you prefer street art) is made in the public spaces of Barcelona. In this article, I explore the practice of graffiti in this city through my participation in the project Haciendo la Calle, “Making the Street.” Here I collaborated with the local photographer Teo in pasting his photographs of street workers on surfaces of public spaces. The project was inspired by the work of the French contemporary street artist JR who mixes photography and graffiti, pasting large-scale photographs on the walls of cities worldwide. Like JR, Teo tries to give visibility and voice to the subjects of his photographs and produce alternative representations of them, in contrast to those provided through mainstream media channels. Using audio-visual media I recorded and became part of Teo’s performances in the public spaces of Barcelona. I argue that graffiti is shared and rejected as part of Barcelona’s everyday life, travelling between multiple ways of doing and being in the city. This project offered me the opportunity to move between different situations and play with my position as an anthropologist as well as a subject in my own research. It required me to cross the boundaries between the observer and the observed and allowed me to get an insight into the politics and aesthetics of public space in Barcelona through the practice and representation of graffiti.