Explorativ graffiti. Flerdimensionalitet och polyagenter

Abstract

Graffiti is a widespread term, often referring to illicit or troublesome imagery practices. In this essay graffiti from four independent locales has been explored through a polyagentive multidimensional approach. How changes in attitudes and uses, as well as agents affects and effects on one another beyond time will be central for these analysis´. The material derives from four locales in Western Sweden: 1. a pre-historic/early historic coastal soapstone quarry in Vallda perish in Northern Halland, containing carved, scratched, cut and sliced graffiti deriving from c. early 1500s to c. 1980, mainly consisting of initials and years. In and around the quarry there are also earlier forms of graffitiesque expressions – cupmarks. 2. a block of stone with historical carvings, some painted in, as well as two nearby motifs on bedrock, from c. late 1600s to late 1800s. This locale is in Hol perish, on the Västra Götaland countryside. 3. a railway bridge on the outskirts of an industrial area in Bälinge. The bridge has been/is subject for recently painted graffiti. The graffiti is mainly painted on the underside of the bridge, creating a semi-concealed room with lots of graffiti. 4. a natural cave in Tumberg, the Västra Götaland countryside, that forms two rooms. The southern of these contains unambitiously painted graffiti from recent times. Graffiti are polyagents, separated from its agents through agency. In a pragmamorfic dialectic relationship graffiti functions like an enabler of agency – created through a bricoleur. With graffiti, agents create social formations that are bound in space – beyond time. Since the agent is gone from the context when the temporal act of agency has ended, so is the Being gone. When agents interact with the graffiti of others – concretised in the place as polyagents – they create mythological relationships by including themselves in relation to an imagined version of a Being that has been, but now is “caught somewhere in time”. The main subjects for research is dialectic properties of graffiti, its agents and time. Through exploring these dialectic properties one can understand how a place is created, both as a Third Space, and in a more general term – the place is an organisational polyagent.