Timothée Engasser & Jean-Baptiste Barra - Occupation visuelle

156 pages
Edited by Timothée Engasser & Jean-Baptiste Barra
Designed by Typographyque 
21 x 21 cm 
Language: Portuguese & French 
Paperback 
Publisher: Ombu Editions
2016

Two photographic perspectives that, from Santiago to São Paulo, explore the conflicts between authorities and graffiti writers in urban space. This artist’s book offers keys to understanding the saturation of urban inscriptions that cover the walls of cities in both the Western world and Latin America. It is the product of encounters, as well as of photographic and filmic work. It provides a space for reflection on the discourses surrounding practices that are generally clandestine, and on the criminalization that usually accompanies the examination of these particular urban actors. While listening to graffiti writers and giving voice to their experiences, Jean-Baptiste Barra and Timothée Engasser seek to challenge the stereotypes associated with these practices and the stigmatization that too often results from them. Through two complementary and closely connected perspectives, they navigate the urban and mural jungle—whether in the form of tagging in Santiago de Chile or pixação in São Paulo—in order to reveal graphic codes rooted in little-known traditions and cultural legacies. There is little doubt that taggers and pixadores create complex networks in which competition coexists with the sharing of writing practices. Although these practices are often perceived as sources of conflict, they can also generate recognition and belonging. As identity markers of communities formed on the margins of urban space, these words and signatures do not necessarily become slogans, yet they testify to forms of violence embedded within our societies. At the same time, erasure is not the only response adopted by the institutions responsible for protecting public space—the very space against which taggers “rebel.” Alongside the two authors, readers are invited to question the ways in which urban authorities appropriate, reframe, and recycle these graphic interventions, seeking to absorb, alter, or neutralize the critical force contained within them.