Abstract

ABALOS JUNIOR, José Luís. The gestures of urban art: For an etnography of gestuality. Forum Sociológico [online]. 2019, n.35, pp.19-29.  Epub July 28, 2021. ISSN 0872-8380.  https://doi.org/10.4000/sociologico.7979.

Tags. Graffiti. Sticker art. Stencil. In the last years we have noticed a raise, both in these forms of visual expression in the city as in academic research that seeks to understand them. By thinking urban art beyond its final aesthetic, I propose that there are other elements involved in the artistic process of those who intervene in the streets. The “gestures of urban art” go beyond an initial moment in which artists imagine their expressions, until the digital dissemination of their works. An etnography that handles this processes needs to have a careful education attented to the gestualities represented in performatic hands, in sounds, and in the relation between the subject and the structure in which he interveins, etc. Bringing theoretical references that explore the gesture, I resort authors that address a phenomenology of experience and a political ontology of gestures. I conclude by reflecting on the gesture in urban art and how it operates as a “sharing of the sensible”: artistic, aesthetical and political dimension of visual expressions in the city.

Keywords : street; urban expressions; graffiti; ethnography.

        · abstract in Portuguese     · text in Portuguese     · Portuguese ( pdf )