Dissidência e subordinação: um estudo dos grafites como fenômeno estético/cultural e seus desdobramentos

Abstract

Painted, written, carved or glued on walls and other surfaces, graffiti become common around big cities. Taken by youngsters as a radical way of expression, they consist in a different and special code as well as slogan of urban visual displays. Spontaneously left on the streets, graffiti take place as a hybrid and open manifestation, allowing itself to dialogue with media and architecture, becoming a steady way of political and poetical contestation, affirming itself on the social field.The signs and meanings analysis proposed here goes through a path made of social sciences, education and philosophy as its tread stones, aiming to center itself in the art, provided the strong connection existent between the both, not only because of its visual use, but also for its irrefutable involvement with the human senses: aisthesis. This study aims to scan the variety of symbols recognized in the urban landscapes, since the expansion ofthe big cities until the nowadays unfolding phenomenon. It makes use of the critical theory of art and aesthetic as well as testimony of several BeloHorizontes graffitists and other artists, whose performances are articulated, or not, with projects and institutionalized spaces. It contemplates, however, the graffiti understanding as a kind of conflict segregating culture and sometimes a subordinating one: dissident when taken as a way of freedom expression and aesthetical, ethical and political subversion, subordinating when, taken by the media, market or official institutions. This dissertation, which intends to show that the emancipation factor of the graffiti lies among the gaps and boundariesof this approach, will not define them onto precise categories or even less aims to provide certainties over its legitimate place to be, but intends to point out perspectives of its understanding as a kind of art of our time, whose powers reach political and social dimensions, in a way that includes social classes often deprived from cultural participation and inclusion. Until what extent goes the limits of art, capable of integrating such fluid offspring as graffiti? A possibility to redefine arts senses of aesthetics expanding the meaning of art dwells on these limits.