Excavating ghosts: Urban exploration as graffiti archaeology

Abstract

Based on several years of near-nightly excursions into London’s disused, non-public, forgotten, subterranean and infrastructural spaces, this article considers the significance of discovering years - or even decades - old surviving traces of graffiti (‘ghosts’, in graffiti parlance) in situ. The article also draws on extensive ethnographic research into London’s graffiti subculture, as well as in-depth semi-structured interviews with several generations of graffiti writers. The article proceeds in four parts. The first part reflects on three sources of methodological inspiration: unauthorised urban exploration and documentation; more-or-less formal archaeological studies of graffiti; and ‘ghost ethnography’, an emergent methodological orientation which places an emphasis on absence and the interpretation of material and atmospheric traces. The second part of the article considers recent theoretical work associated with the ‘spectral turn’. Here, ghosts and haunting provide useful conceptual metaphors for thinking about lingering material and atmospheric traces of the past. The third part of the article offers some methodological caveats and reflections. The fourth and final part of the article seeks to connect theory and method, and asks what significance can be drawn from unauthorised encounters with graffiti ‘ghosts’.

The Haunting of Surveillance Studies: Seeing, Knowing, and Ghostly Apparitions

“…Similarly, the contributors to Ghost Criminology (Fiddler, Kindynis, and Linnemann 2022) seek to think about the lingering violences and shadowy traces of bodies, institutions, places, and practices that haunt the criminological enterprise. From motel rooms where sexual violence has occurred (McKay 2022) to the memorialization of the Grenfell Towers fire (Young 2022) to the hidden and undocumented lives of the peripatetic urban homeless (Ferrell 2002) to the police (Linneman and Turner 2022; McClanahan 2022), graffiti (Kindynis 2022), corpses (Robins 2022), evidence (Biber 2022), and X-ray machines (Fiddler 2022), the essays here grapple to offer "an ethical response to haunting, to the presence-absence of the spectral" (Fiddler, Kindynis, and Linnemann 2022: 21). Perhaps most profoundly, Michelle Brown (2022) calls upon this approach as an address-or, redress-to criminology itself.…”

Experience of deprivation of liberty: Comparative analysis of symbols of graffity in a child psychiatric ward and in prisons

“…A graffiti kutatása ellentmondásos lehet, de elterjedt vizuális kriminológiai módszer, amely leginkább etnográfiai színezetű (Fine, 1999) eszközöket használ (Kindynis, 2019). Ez utóbbi a kulturális kriminológia fontos és megkerülhetetlen módszere (Marsh, 2016), néha spekulatív, de mindenképpen tudományos alaposságú, hiszen nem várható el, hogy a múltból a falfirkák készítőit in vivo előhalásszuk.…”

Karanlık Turizm ve Kentsel Keşif Üzerine Teorik Bir Karşılaştırma

“…Öte yandan kanalizasyonlardan fabrikalara ve askeri üslere kadar, genellikle terk edilmiş veya kullanımdan düşmüş kentsel altyapıyı keşfetme amaçlı (Fulton, 2017: 191) olan kentsel keşif (urban exploration) de son zamanlarda birçok yabancı akademik çalışmaya (Arboleda, 2016;Fulton, 2017;Klausen, 2017;Le Gallou, 2018;Kyndnis, 2019) konu edilmiştir. Söz konusu iki kavram ilk bakışta birbirine oldukça benzer görünmektedir.…”