IDEAS FROM STREET ART by Johannes Stahl

• GRAFFITI AND POLITICS (page 67)

There are two reasons for which street art and politics are related: on the one hand, the scenery of graffiti is totally open to the public and on the other, it is not controlled by governments. Graffiti make it possible for the artist to be heard by people and that is mostly why they have a long term tradition as a means of political confrontation. Symbols written on walls have always contributed to create people’s opinion.

The most important example of graffiti with a political message is Berlin’s Wall. Many times the wall was used to explain the meaning of this wall to the divided Germany.

Berlin Wall

• GRAFFITI AND SOCIAL MESSAGE (page 164)

Graffiti, though it often employs images, is fundamentally a form of writing, and indeed graffiti artists refer to themselves as “writers.” The medium of much of it is the name. The name itself occupies an uneasy or ambiguous zone of the language.