Framing Graffiti & Street Art

As in the first two yearly conferences of the NSAP, the 2017 conference gathered various researchers, young and seasoned, French and foreigners, from a wide range of disciplines: Cultural Studies, Aesthetics, Philosophy, Art History, Italian Studies, English-American Studies, Architecture and Urbanism, Psychology and Communication Studies. As all scholars interested in G&SA (graffiti and street art) know, such an object of study requires a comprehensive, transdisciplinary approach. The focus of the third edition was on borderlines, frames and framing. Once more, we addressed the vexata quaestio of what we are talking about, id est what street art is (compared to or beside Graffiti, Graffiti Writing, Urban Art, Street Creativity, Urban Creativity, Public Art or other names, for its boundaries are blurred and constantly changing) because we need categories to comprehend concepts and objects. Beyond terminological dissents among scholars and between the latter and non-academics, and taking for granted that the “term Street Art cannot be defined conclusively since what it encompasses is constantly being negotiated” (Bengtsen 2014), we have decided to stick to a very large conception of street art as an umbrella term, including all sorts of art made in the public space for the people, indiscriminately, and with the people, while keeping Graffiti in the title of the book in the acronym G&SA, for its pioneering prominency.