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Vol. 1 No. 1 (2025): Graffiti, heritage and context: the act and significance of writing
View Vol. 1 No. 1 (2025): Graffiti, heritage and context: the act and significance of writing

Inspired by the panel “Graffiti, heritage and context: the act and significance of writing” presented at the Urban Creativity Conference, this issue brings together interdisciplinary perspectives on graffiti as a situated practice of mark-making across time, cultures, and material contexts. Moving beyond graffiti as mere inscription or visual artifact, the contributions explore writing as an embodied, relational, and meaning-producing act—one that negotiates memory, identity, power, and presence in public and sacred spaces.

Spanning case studies from ancient sanctuaries and rock art sites to modern urban walls and politically charged environments, the issue examines how acts of writing mediate between the personal and the collective, the ephemeral and the permanent, the illicit and the institutional. Through lenses such as epigraphy, semiotics, phenomenology, heritage studies, and contemporary graffiti practice, the articles collectively foreground writing as an action that shapes space, asserts belonging, and inscribes continuity across generations.

Together, these contributions position graffiti not as marginal or ancillary, but as a fundamental cultural practice through which societies articulate meaning, negotiate authority, and leave traces of lived experience in the material world.

Published: 2025-12-18

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