Graffiti: refers to a range of practices from tagging to more elaborate “pieces” involving stylized signatures, usually of the writers' alias and their associated crew.
“It is the peculiar feature of political life that within it, behavior that could only otherwise be considered insane is perfectly effective. If you managed to convince everyone on earth that you can breathe underwater, it won’t make any difference: if you try it, you will still drown. On the other hand, if you could convince everyone in the entire world that you were the King of France, then you would actually be the king of France.” (Revolutions in Reverse, 94)
“The entire apparatus of of the art world –critics, journals, curators, gallery owners, dealers, flashy magazines and the people who leaf through them and argue about them in factories-turned-chichi-cafes in gentrifying neighborhoods—could be said to exist to come up with the answer to one question: what is art? Or, to be more precise, to come up with some answer other than the obvious one, which is ‘whatever we can convince very rich people to buy.’” (Revolutions in Reverse, 93)
Grafite and pixação were both illegal according to the law of environmental crime established in the Constitution of 1988
In 2011, the term ‘grafitar’ (to make graffiti) was removed from the original environmental crime law, and the government made a public statement legitimizing grafite as art while still adamantly criminalizing pichação.
If the act itself is not the crime, where is deviance being located (by the state and by “law-abiding citizens”)? Is criminality inscribed in the content of these unsolicited markings or is it mapped onto particular acting bodies? What are the implications of this struggle for legitimacy, this contestation of signs, on the lived realities of these artists, particularly those working at the cusp of art and crime? When the images and text they produce are relegated to either category, what is the effect on their identities, their citizenship, and their encounters with establishment? This project investigates the way shifting symbolic boundaries of graffiti may reinforce or influence structural inequalities in the lived realities of both graffiti writers and other urban citizens, particularly within the context of a nation that has recently legitimated one form of graffiti over another.
Grafiteiros and pixadores are both conscious of the way their craft and their bodies are coded
Grafiteiros have to defend against being classified as a pixador even while they disagree with mainstream categories of grafite as art and pixo as crime
Pixadores similarly leverage the more positive reputations of grafiteiros to their own benefit
These redrawn boundaries between art and crime have manifested as another justification for crafting marginal bodies as criminal and that the language of aesthetics has become embedded in the reinforcement of existing inequalities.
However, the semiotic processes involved in creating these distinctions are ambiguous, that repulsion often accompanies attraction, and the resulting tensions are multiple and complex. The illicitness of pichação is necessary to the elevation of grafite and instrumental in constructing an alternative experience of the city.