Contemporary Engagements Within Corridors of the Past

Temporal Elasticity, Graffiti and the Materiality of St Rock Street, Barcelona

Bibliographic Data

ID2390915
AuthorsHector A Orengo (0000-0002-9385-2370, Catalan Institute of Classical Archaeology, Spain, corresponding author), David Robinson (0000-0002-0729-5011, University of Lancashire, corresponding author), David W Robinson (UUniversity of Central Lancashire, UK)
Year2008
Volume13
Issue3
Pages267-286
Publication date2008-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Material Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1359-1835 • E-ISSN: 1460-3586
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1359183508095496
OpenAlexW2085871328
LanguageEN
Citations received13
References cited15

In a medieval Barcelonan side street, urine, rubbish and a bewildering array of graphic imagery splatters the narrowing walls between two major thoroughfares. A contemporary conflict between residents, unknown artists and others is played out using banners, bottles, stickers, posters, stencils, spray paint and bodily substances. In this shadowy liminality, local and global debates are superimposed upon substructures constructed from disease, prostitution and the Saint of the Plague. The continuing urban struggle constitutes temporal statements of dirt and purity, violence and humour, dominance and resistance, death and salvation. Like the renovated facades masking the crumbling remains of structures long neglected, the local council's literal whitewashing of the art is a temporal cover-up of a discursive symptom stretching from deeply embedded preconditions. However, from his niche in the angular bend of the short side street bearing three names, the statue of St Rock remains unblinkingly staring, raised above the contestations expressed below him

Aesthetics · Art · Cartography · Dirt · Geography · Liminality · Sociology · Visual arts · Diverse Cultural and Historical Studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Public Spaces through Art

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