Papers by Plácido Muñoz Morán
[Thesis]. Manchester, UK: The University of Manchester; 2015., Nov 30, 2015
Jaques Ranciére (2009b) argues that if there is a political question in contemporary art, '…it wi... more Jaques Ranciére (2009b) argues that if there is a political question in contemporary art, '…it will be grasped through the analysis of the metamorphoses of the political 'third', the politics founded on the play of exchanges and displacements between the art world and that of non art' (2009b:51). Looking at graffiti and street art in Barcelona as 'textures', which stimulate the mind, body and senses. I have investigated what public space means for its inhabitants through the material nature of the surfaces by which it is contained and by applying media devices. This has led me to develop an ethnography of encounters, perceptions and sensibilities linked to political practices and different modes of participation in the everyday life of the city. Following Jacques Ranciére's (2004) conception of 'political aesthetics', I argue that the aesthetic of graffiti and street art can be embodied according to different sensible orders in the city. The public space is key in this process and I see it as an interface between graffiti artists, the general public and the institutions of the city. Graffiti activate the urban landscape through visual and tactile transformations of space through surfaces. These interactions, as De Certeau (1985) claims about everyday practices, may articulate narratives, which became the main source of information for this thesis. Thinking about the graffiti works in Barcelona in terms of Bakhtin's (1981) idea of 'the chronotope', I have recounted the stories, which make the transformation of public space indicative of the everyday life of the city applying practices of collaboration, dialogue and intervention. These practices connected me to different surfaces of the city so as to explore how their material qualities are permeated with social relations and artistically inscribed with historical and political meanings. Here, graffiti and the city formed a compound of images in which I have studied the 'visuality' of graffiti in Barcelona. This, as Hal Foster (1988) argues, encloses at the same time social facts and physical operations (body and psyche) and moves, as I will show throughout this thesis, between dominant and resistance cultures. In short, I have materialized these ideas and images in the graffiti texture of Barcelona, seeing it as a mutable surface, which mediates between different ways of seeing and living in this city. Declaration I declare that no portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning.
The Unfamiliar, 2017
The banning of the practice of graffiti in public space since the approval of the civic regulatio... more The banning of the practice of graffiti in public space since the approval of the civic regulation in 2006 has restricted the production of graffiti artworks in Barcelona. It transformed and coerced the local graffiti and street art scene towards new forms of production in the city, which are the central focus of this article. ‘La Escocesa: A factory of images’, is based on my dialogues with the resident graffiti artists of the art centre ‘La Escocesa’ in ‘Poble Nou’. Some of these artists participated in both the creation of the graffiti scene in the 90s and the development of this practice in the city. Today they are recognized artistic figures of the local and international graffiti scene. I shared with some of these graffiti artists in the art centre some of my fieldwork experiences in connection with other local artists and representatives of the local council. In addition, I also opened up dialogues with them using anthropological examples about art and artists, the city and ...
Graffiti at the interface between tourism and the city we become
Routledge eBooks, Feb 21, 2023
Anthropological Notebooks , 2020
In this article, I approach graffiti as a relational entity across social and power dynamics in B... more In this article, I approach graffiti as a relational entity across social and power dynamics in Barcelona. Taking a broad understanding of graffiti beyond its material dimension, I examine what graffiti does and what it becomes in the public space of the city. In this context, I see public space as an interface of political meanings and perceived injustice between the city's inhabitants. This allows me to address graffi-ti as a heterogenous movement, which stimulates protest practices across shared spaces and times. To access this entanglement of relations, I propose the concept of "graffiti texture" as a way to explore the relationships between sensory and symbolic orders in the city. This texture is not only created by material surfaces or substances but is also permeated by a plurality of social networks shaped by multiple ways of making and seeing the city. Drawing on my ethnographic material from Barcelona, I engage in "multi-temporal" analogies between graffiti produced in the city and events linked to the Spanish civil war, gender relations, and protests. The connections between them will be used as active sources of analytical thought and story making to search for unlikely connections between graffiti and the transformation of human perception across times. Moreover, to support and contrast my argument, I incorporate the voices of graffiti artists and other actors from my ethnographic research in Barcelona.
lo Squaderno no. 53: Neighbourhood Portraits , 2019
This article addresses how the urban transformation of Vallcarca, a neighbourhood in Barcelona, h... more This article addresses how the urban transformation of Vallcarca, a neighbourhood in Barcelona, has fuelled the empowerment and creativity of its inhabitants. In this ongoing process, the neighbourhood space and its material elements have fostered multiple relations across political and social processes. They are the contested grounds for local collectives and their claims; have facilitated social cohesion and inspired creativity and have also become key actors in political debates. This article focuses on the material dimension of the neighbourhood to explore how it activates multiple social and political relations shaping the everyday life as well as the possible futures of Vallcarca.
The contemporary space of Barcelona is mainly designed and ordered according to the principles of... more The contemporary space of Barcelona is mainly designed and ordered according to the principles of the ‘Barcelona Model’. The aesthetic of this model can be linked to what Tim Edensor (2005) refers to as “normative and modernist aesthetic” (2005, 73), a regulation replete, in the case of Barcelona, with architectural and urban design codes to embody and evoke specific imaginaries of the city. These ordered worlds coexist with the urban life and its constant processes of adaptation and transformation in the city. Mass tourism illustrates the tension between the aims of the ‘Barcelona Model’ and the everyday life of the local inhabitants in the city. In this chapter, I see the case of the mural on the façade of the squatted building of ‘La Carbonería’ as a visual subject that is both an object of discussion and debate and the contested arena of individual and collective actions in connection with different political representations of the city, contributing to the discussion in this edited volume on the politics of the mural.
The banning of the practice of graffiti in public space since the approval of the civic regulatio... more The banning of the practice of graffiti in public space since the approval of the civic regulation in 2006 restricted the production of graffiti artworks in Barcelona. It transformed and coerced the local graffiti and street art scene towards new forms of production and perception of the city. However, this transformation did not stop graffiti artists to keep opening up dialogues through their works in public space and other contexts. Inspired by this dialogic nature of graffiti, in ‘La Escocesa: A factory of images’, I put in practice dialogic methodologies sharing writing research cases with the resident graffiti artists in the art centre ‘La Escocesa’. It allowed me to gain an insight of how graffiti artists perceive and represent the city and its objects in contrast and comparison with researchers who think and write about similar issues. The following paper contains part of the conversations, debates and reflections that we had.
The planning of fieldwork in anthropology is always shaped by a combination of expectation, uncer... more The planning of fieldwork in anthropology is always shaped by a combination of expectation, uncertainty and adventure. Before I began my own fieldwork in Barcelona in 2013, I imagined it as a kind of organic process in which my relationship with the participants would flow through the application of particular methods. This idea made me think initially that the filming of a collaborative documentary would be the perfect means through which to explore the relationship between graffiti and the use of public space in Barcelona. Then this idea was transformed throughout my research into a changeable process shaped by my everyday life in the city. In this setting, I applied visual methods within different contexts such as collaborations with artists and collectives, walking routes, exhibitions and alternative TV channels. This allowed me to get involved in multiple ways of making graffiti and produce videos about them. I edited together this visual material together using the 'Korsakow' 1 software and it was presented as the visual practice project for my PhD thesis in Social Anthropology with Visual Media at the University of Manchester. The result is an interactive film called 'Walking in Barcelona' (play at the end of this text), which allows the viewer an exploration of the mutable and diverse nature of the city looking at the relations between surfaces, places and people. Here I want to reflect on these experiences and on the application of audiovisual methods within them. Throughout this process, I realized that if my aim was to engage in an anthropology 'in' the city rather than an anthropology 'of ' the city (Low 1996: 384), I would have to focus on how the city was lived and embodied by its inhabitants, particularly 1 http://korsakow.org/ 2 http://teovazquez.tumblr.com/post/134979971596/anatoli-‐iglesia-‐de-‐la-‐misericordia-‐pla%C3%A7a-‐
The use of new materials such as stickers, posters, and stencils has transformed how graffiti (or... more The use of new materials such as stickers, posters, and stencils has transformed how graffiti (or if you prefer street art) is made in the public spaces of Barcelona. In this article, I explore the practice of graffiti in this city through my participation in the project Haciendo la Calle, “Making the Street.” Here I collaborated with the local photographer Teo in pasting his photographs of street workers on surfaces of public spaces. The project was inspired by the work of the French contemporary street artist JR who mixes photography and graffiti, pasting large-scale photographs on the walls of cities worldwide. Like JR, Teo tries to give visibility and voice to the subjects of his photographs and produce alternative representations of them, in contrast to those provided through mainstream media channels. Using audio-visual media I recorded and became part of Teo’s performances in the public spaces of Barcelona. I argue that graffiti is shared and rejected as part of Barcelona’s every- day life, travelling between multiple ways of doing and being in the city. This project offered me the opportunity to move between different situations and play with my position as an anthropologist as well as a subject in my own research. It required me to cross the boundaries between the observer and the observed and allowed me to get an insight into the politics and aesthetics of public space in Barcelona through the practice and representation of graffiti.
Conference Presentations by Plácido Muñoz Morán
Work exhibited at the Workshop: ‘Sensor Publics: On the Politics of Sensing and Data Infrastruct... more Work exhibited at the Workshop: ‘Sensor Publics: On the Politics of Sensing and Data Infrastructures’ (5-7 April 2017, Munich Center for Technology in Society).
Book Reviews by Plácido Muñoz Morán
Armstrong, Andrew B. 2019. 24 bars to kill: hip hop, aspirations, and Japan’s social margins. New York: Berghahn Books. 173 pp. Pb.: US$135.00. ISBN: 9781789202670., 2019
Interface: a journal for and about social movements , 2020
Susana Draper, 2018, 1968 Mexico: Constellations of Freedom and Democracy. Durham: Duke Universit... more Susana Draper, 2018, 1968 Mexico: Constellations of Freedom and Democracy. Durham: Duke University Press (251 pp., paperback, $ 20.99).
Published on Urbanitties,- Journal of Urban Ethnography - Vol 8 No 2- November 2018 http://www.an... more Published on Urbanitties,- Journal of Urban Ethnography - Vol 8 No 2- November 2018 http://www.anthrojournal-urbanities.com
Journal Issues by Plácido Muñoz Morán
by losquaderno_ journal, Cristina Mattiucci, Alessandro Coppola, Fuad Musallam, Serena Olcuire, Lucia Baima, Plácido Muñoz Morán, Miriam Tedeschi, Andrea Pavoni, Valeria Raimondi, Gaia Caramellino, and Giuseppina Forte
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Papers by Plácido Muñoz Morán
Conference Presentations by Plácido Muñoz Morán
Book Reviews by Plácido Muñoz Morán
Journal Issues by Plácido Muñoz Morán