"Graffiti is by nature a protean art. In movies, it is often the backdrop used to create a sense of danger and lawlessness. In bathroom stalls, it is the disembodied expression of gossip, lewdness, or confession. In protests, it is a resistive tool, visually displaying the cacophony of disparate voices and interests that come together to make up a movement. Every graffito has an unstable afterlife-fated to be added to, transformed, overlaid, photographed, reinterpreted, or painted over. In short, as this book artfully explains, graffiti makes for messy politics. It brings the unwieldiness of the crises it engages to the fore, giving shape to a conflict's evolving nature. The book closely examines the many permutations of graffiti in conflict zones-moving from the protest graffiti of the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson and the Arab Spring in Egypt to the tourist attraction murals on the Israeli Separation Wall, to the street art used for city rebranding and beautification in Detroit and post-Katrina New Orleans. Graffiti has played a crucial role in the revolutionary movements of these locales, but has also been variously appropriated, policed, and exported, ushering in postconflict consumerism, gentrification, militarization, and anaesthetized forgetting. Yet, the book concludes, as protest movements change and adapt in turn, graffiti is also uniquely suited to shapeshift with them, opening up new apertures of resistance with every wave"--

This study examines the waves of graffiti that occur before, during, and after a conflict—important tools of political resistance that make protest visible and material. Graffiti makes for messy politics. In film and television, it is often used to create a sense of danger or lawlessness. In bathroom stalls, it is the disembodied expression of gossip, lewdness, or confession. But it is also a resistive tool of protest, making visible the disparate voices and interests that come together to make a movement. In Conflict Graffiti, John Lennon dives into the many permutations of graffiti in conflict zones—ranging from the protest graffiti of the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson and the Tahrir Square demonstrations in Egypt, to the tourist-attraction murals on the Israeli Separation Wall and the street art that has rebranded Detroit and post-Katrina New Orleans. Graffiti has played a crucial role in the revolutionary movements of these locales, but as the conflict subsides a new graffiti and street art scene emerges—often one that ushers in postconflict consumerism, gentrification, militarization, and anesthetized forgetting. Graffiti has an unstable afterlife, fated to be added to, transformed, overlaid, photographed, reinterpreted, or painted over. But as Lennon concludes, when protest movements change and adapt, graffiti is also uniquely suited to shapeshift with them.

Based on empirical observations in Helsinki, Manchester and Berlin, this is a ground-breaking constructive critique of the concepts, underlying the practices of planning and architecture. With central notions of temporality, experiment and conflict, this book contextualizes Lefebvre's ideas on urban planning and architecture, but also allows insights to new theoretical work, including that of Finnish and Swedish authors. In doing so, it suggests and develops exciting new approaches and tools leading to 'experiential urbanism'.

This collection of original articles brings together for the first time the research on graffiti from a wide range of geographical and chronological contexts and shows how they are interpreted in various fields. Examples range as widely as medieval European cliff carvings to tags on New York subway cars to messages left in library bathrooms. In total, the authors legitimize the study of graffiti as a multidisciplinary pursuit that can produce useful knowledge of individuals, cultures, and nations. The chapters-represent 20 authors from six countries; -offer perspectives of disciplines as diverse as archaeology, history, art history, museum studies, and sociology;-elicit common themes of authority and its subversion, the identity work of subcultures and countercultures, and presentation of privilege and status.

This theoretically and empirically grounded book uses case studies of political graffiti in the post-socialist Balkans and Central Europe to explore the use of graffiti as a subversive political media. Despite the increasing global digitisation, graffiti remains widespread and popular, providing with a few words or images a vivid visual indication of cultural conditions, social dynamics and power structures in a society, and provoking a variety of reactions. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, as well as detailed interdisciplinary analyses of "patriotic," extreme-right, soccer-fan, nostalgic, and chauvinist graffiti and street art, it looks at why and by whom graffiti is used as political media and to/against whom it is directed. The book theorises discussions of political graffiti and street art to show different methodological approaches from four perspectives: context, author, the work itself, and audience. It will be of interest to the growing body of literature focussing on (sub)cultural studies in the contemporary Balkans, transitology, visual cultural studies, art theory, anthropology, sociology, and studies of radical politics.

Whether aesthetically or politically inspired, graffiti is among the oldest forms of expression in human history, one that becomes especially significant during periods of social and political upheaval. With a particular focus on the demographic, ecological, and economic crises of today, this volume provides a wide-ranging exploration of urban space and visual protest. Assembling case studies that cover topics such as gentrification in Cyprus, the convulsions of post-independence East Timor, and opposition to Donald Trump in the American capital, it reveals the diverse ways in which street artists challenge existing social orders and reimagine urban landscapes.

Demonstrates the role of Beirut's postwar graffiti and street art in transforming the cityscape and animating resistance.