NON-CONVENTIONAL PERCEPTION AND (TRANS)FORMATION OF URBAN SPACE: THE STUDY OF VILNIUS GRAFFITI WRITERS

Article

Abstract

[In English]

This article examines graffiti as the illicit strategy of contemporary
urban space formation and presents the non-conventional
cityscape perception of the graffiti subculture members. The findings
of the study based on detailed interviews with graffti writers
from Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, reveal their motivations towards
illegal spatial practices and their attitudes towards politics
of urban structure and design. The main difference between traditional
perception of urban space and the views of graffti writers
lies in the distinction of ‘free’ and controlled, public and private,
striated and smooth space experience. The social context of the
struggles over ‘free’ urban space is determined by the emergence
of symbolic economy in post-industrial city and its hyper-aestheticised
and commercialized cityscape that enables the visual
resistance – a subversed form of production of symbols known as
illegal graffiti practice.