“Just writing your name?” An analysis of the spatial behaviour of graffiti writers in Amsterdam

Abstract

The phenomenon of graffiti has received much attention from many sub-disciplines in social science. Scholars often engage with a small fragment of graffiti writing using ideas popular in their own-subdiscipline. This practice has given birth to a rich, but fragmented literature. This paper tries to connect the fragments by focusing on the spatial behaviour of practitioners of graffiti (i.e. (graffiti) writers) in Amsterdam. Interviews with them provide a basis for demonstrating that graffiti is part of a global phenomenon associated with recurrent social features such as the achievement of fame. Moreover, the triggers for graffiti writers to produce graffiti on a certain surface seem to be interconnected with 1) geographical factors such as the visibility of a location and 2) a certain regulatory regime which characteristics writers can observe on a surface. The complex mixture of such factors on a certain place influences the behaviour of individual graffiti writers, it creates a specific sense of place. Nevertheless, there seem to be groups of graffiti writers whose actions are rather similar. In order to understand their spatial behaviour better this paper argues to use a typology with the dimensions “degree of illegality of the graffiti produced” and “connection to graffiti subculture”. Consequently, four types of writers are distinguished: amateurs, outsiders, bombers, and artists, making it possible to research graffiti in a much less fragmented way.

Keywords

• public space
• sense of place
• graffiti
• urban landscapes
• urban art