Embodied graffiti and street art research

This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details. Author(s): Title: Year: Version: Copyright: Rights: Rights url: Please cite the original version: CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Embodied graffiti and street art research © The Author(s) 2021 Published version Fransberg, Malin; Myllylä, Mari; Tolonen, Jonna Fransberg, M., Myllylä, M., & Tolonen, J. (2023). Embodied graffiti and street art research. Qualitative Research, 23(2), 362-379. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941211028795 2023 https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941211028795 Qualitative Research 1 –18 © The Author(s) 2021 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/14687941211028795 journals.sagepub.com/home/qrj Q R Embodied graffiti and street art research Malin Fransberg Postdoctoral researcher at Tampere University, Finland Mari Myllylä PhD candidate at University of Jyväskylä, Finland Jonna Tolonen Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Lapland, Finland Abstract Graffiti and street art research (GSAR) has become more acknowledged within the academic discourse; however, it has much to gain from theorising its methodological aspects. As a multidisciplinary field, GSAR has mostly used qualitative research methods, exploring urban space through methods that range from visual recordings to ethnography, emphasising the researchers’ reflexivity. This qualitative approach has, however, paid little attention to the role of embodied practices. In this paper we discuss how embodied methodologies provide multisensory research results where the experienced moments, the participant’s and researcher’s senses, cognition and mobility in urban spaces are connected. Our discussion draws on the authors’ fieldwork experiences of walking and edge working, and on the literature concerning embodiment and embodied methodology related to the context of GSAR. Keywords Graffiti, GSAR, street art, embodied methodology, ethnography, senses, cognition, edgework, walking, gender Introduction Graffiti and street art can be defined as public – and often unauthorised – creative art pieces in urban spaces that are produced by self-motivated individuals or collectives. Researching around this issue is a rather new discipline and scholars from the graffiti and Corresponding author: Jonna Tolonen D.A. & M.Ed, Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Lapland, Yliopistonkatu 8, Rovaniemi, Lapland 96101, Finland. Email: [email protected] 1028795QRJ0010.1177/14687941211028795Qualitative ResearchFransberg et al. research-article2021 Standard Article 2 Qualitative Research 00(0) street art research (GSAR) arena are part of a diverse interdisciplinary field (see e.g. Avramidis and Tsilimpounidi, 2017; Ross, 2016a; Ross et al., 2017; Zaimakis et al., 2021). The diversity of disciplinary traditions, such as visual studies, sociology, criminology, geography and art history, enriches the research terminology and its methodologies, which should be realised as one of the GSAR fields’ strongest contributions. On the other hand, a cross-cutting science challenges the epistemological perspectives in GSAR. As Ross states, the field ‘lacks a consistent identifiable body of hypotheses/propositions, theories, and models’ (Ross, 2016b: 8). This intriguing multidisciplinary aspect entails graffiti and street art to be researched from several different perspectives and yet it complicates the development of one concurrent research language. One of the challenges within the interdisciplinary field of graffiti and street art studies could potentially centre around the issue of methodology. There are, however, exceptionally few writings that attempt to contemplate the methodology of GSAR (see e.g. Andron, 2017; Ferrell, 2004; Hansen and Flynn, 2015; Lynn and Lea, 2005; Snyder, 2009). Nevertheless, it is relatively apparent that GSAR’s major method is approached through qualitative research, ranging from ethnographies, to in-depth interviews, and to collections of visual data. One way to reflect this robust qualitative dissemination of graffiti and street art practices is to relate them to embodied practices that substructures the cultural artefacts in urban space. In particular, an embodied methodology is useful when the research object is the practitioner in action and in cases where the aim is to study the interaction between embodied practices, visual interaction and urban space. Embodied methodologies are becoming an established research practice among a wide range of human sciences such as the social sciences, cultural studies and the cognitive sciences. However, it is not constituted as a substantive epistemic field in its own right among disciplines that relate to this methodology (Spatz, 2017). Nevertheless, a wide range of different research methods – such as ‘action research’, ‘artistic research’, ‘practice research’ and ‘performance research’ – have all been related to what may now be distinguished as embodied methodologies, which emphasises the significance of bodily experiences in a multidisciplinary field. This approach puts the focus on the body as an area of investigation and proposes a specific understanding of knowledge through embodied practices (Spatz, 2017: 6). While the embodied methodology is not a novel approach in the social sciences and humanities, it has been tenaciously neglected through the mind–body dualism, in which the mind is presenting ‘rationality’, and the body ‘impulsive’ and ‘irrational passions’ (Frank, 1990; Howson and Inglis, 2001; Merleau-Ponty, 1962; Shilling, 2001). In sociological thinking, the ‘bringing bodies in’ has stressed the transcendence of the mind– body dualism, limiting accounts of embodied or ‘carnal’ knowledge as crucial for understanding social agency in interaction with social order (Howson and Inglis, 2001). Thus, such as the conceptualisations of ‘habitus’ by Bourdieu have sought to incorporate fleshly embedded methodologies that recognise reflexivity and bodily actions as ways of knowing (Wacquant, 2014). Similar challenges have been recognised within the cognitive sciences (Gallagher and Zahavi, 2012; Varela et al., 1993), where dualistic thinking has been criticised for reducing cognition and the mind to ‘a disembodied computer program’ (Gallagher and Zahavi, 2012: 7). Fransberg et al. 3 Feminist scholars have been at the forefront of developing embodied methodologies and qualitative enquiries (O’Neill and Roberts, 2020; Young, 1980), and specifically strengthened the criticisms against the dualistic approach of the body–mind set (Howson and Inglis, 2001: 303). It refuses to approach the body merely as a static ensemble of a subject’s actions (Butler, 2010), as well emphasised the relevance of embodied experience as crucial in producing scientific knowledge (Sinclair, 2019). In the field of artistic research, the conception of embodied knowledge is also fairly standard. Mainstream scientific research paradigms are often ill-fitting with artistic and cultural research that deals with studying performances, emotions and tactile or bodily experiences in an urban space. The body, in artistic research, is relevant ‘ever-present in any kind of meaning making’, and therefore it is natural to ‘understand thinking as something we do with our body as much as our brain’ (Fentz and McGuirk, 2015: 16–17). A multidisciplinary field such as GSAR may elaborate some of the aspects regarding methodologies concerning embodiment. This paper puts forward the views and experiences of embodied methodologies from three graffiti and street art researchers with backgrounds in artistic research, sociology and cognitive science. Such a multidisciplinary approach may at times challenge a mutual research angle or shared conceptions. On the other hand, it provides a productive setting in which we can carry out research from a holistic perspective. Thus, we attempt to demonstrate how embodied methodologies can be applied and elaborated into GSAR. Here, embodiment emphasises our understanding of the mind–body as one construct, as a process that experiences and interacts with objects and other people in changing contexts and times (Clark, 2013a; O’Neill and Roberts, 2020; Varela et al., 1993). Our paper considers the following questions: What can be understood as an embodied methodology in GSAR and what kinds of examples are presented in the current literature? Moreover, we demonstrate how an embodied methodology, can be exemplified further by illustrations of case studies that are drawn from research that ranges from walking (e.g. Ingold, 2007; Pink, 2015) to edge ethnography (e.g. Lyng, 1990). We will begin by distinguishing the embodied and its methodological aspects as a framework for conducting multidisciplinary GSAR. The article continues with methodological examples from the authors’ research. First, we take a closer look at how embodied methodologies may be illustrated in walking as a multisensory embodied experience in exploring political street art on foot in Spain (Tolonen, 2021a; 2021b). We analyse Tolonen’s research situations and draw reflections on field notes that were maintained over four months of field work between 2017 and 2018. The next section depicts how gender as an embodied practice becomes relevant in ethnographic edgework related to graffiti writing. The section draws on examples from Fransberg’s long-term ethnography (2011– 2019) in a Finnish male-dominated graffiti subculture (Fransberg, 2021). The article concludes with three findings that are proposed for further GSAR field studies. The embodied as a framework Graffiti and street art practices may be understood as embodied experiences where both scholars and research participants are part of the embodied process, accumulating fieldrelevant knowledge. Some graffiti and street art researchers have considered how their 4 Qualitative Research 00(0) creators’ agency, identities, cultures, bodies, thoughts and emotions are embodied in artefacts (Hannerz, 2017; Schacter, 2014). Other researchers have emphasised the joint mind–body actions in generating and perceiving graffiti and street art products through embodied experiences (Myllylä, 2018; Halsey and Young, 2006; Nomeikaite, 2017). Bengtsen (2014: 48–53) describes the interplay of verbal and nonverbal communication between a street art researcher and an informant in the different physical and temporal contexts. As Hansen and Flynn (2015) explain, experiencing street art may be understood as an active conversation between the work, the artist and the viewer, where interpretations are made in people’s sense-making processes and that are affected by physical contexts as well as viewers’ perceptions and values. To understand human practices and experiences, humans can be studied as intentional and social agents. We interact with the physical and sociocultural world, making sense of information from internal and external environments that are embedded in objects and other agents (De Jaegher and Di Paolo, 2007; Reinhardt and Loke, 2013; Rowlands, 2010). Receiving and processing information assumedly causes bodily sensations, which lead to cognitive and somatic affects (Noland, 2010: 4; Reinhardt and Loke, 2013: 137). Our experiences and embodied actions are thought to be guided by, for example, thoughts and emotions, past memories and future goals (Gallagher and Zahavi, 2012; Rodaway, 1994). We learn by participating in our culture’s practices and sense-making, as we engage in our physical and intersubjective mental realities, coordinating and expressing our actions within the changing life situations (De Jaegher and Di Paolo, 2007; Rodaway, 1994). We may perceive our environments as affordances, as possibilities for our actions by enactive processes (Gibson, 1986; Rowlands, 2010). Through our actions – actions such as altering our environment and its corresponding objects – we extend our embodiment outwards towards artefacts (Reinhardt and Loke, 2013; Rowlands, 2010). The framework of embodied experiences expounds that we humans are interwoven mind–body entities; ‘embodied minds’,1 where our bodies and senses shape our cognition (and vice versa) in thinking, emotions, perceptions, memories, experiences and social interactions, how we are situated and how we behave and move in the world (Gallagher and Zahavi, 2012; Ignatow, 2007; Ingold, 2007; Noland, 2010; O’Neill and Roberts, 2020). Our mental states are expressed, for example, in our physical movements – such as our gestures and bodily expressions (Gallagher and Zahavi, 2012; Ignatow, 2007). According to Noland (2010), intentional or spontaneous gestures can exhibit aesthetic and expressive – among other types of – goals. However, our ability to sense qualitative differences in gestures’ meanings in terms of shifting social situations is somewhat of a learned skill (Noland, 2010: 6). Cultural artefacts and concepts may convey social, symbolic meanings; for example, expressing one’s membership within a peer group or identity within a subculture (Macdonald, 2002). Bodies can be perceived as cultural objects, where a person’s symbolic identity is distinguished, evaluated and communicated through bodily practices (Hannerz, 2017; Ignatow, 2007; Noland, 2010). Within graffiti and street art, cultural artefacts may embody the creators’ individual and culturally idealised forms (Hannerz, 2017). Fransberg et al. 5 Embodied methodology: Setting up the research, expanding the analysis Embodied methodology emphasises the importance of the physical and socio-temporal contexts and the interactions with all people who are involved in the study. In a research situation, the researcher, participant(s) and the other involved parties are all engaged in intersubjective sense-making performances, leading to the construction of socially shared meanings and embodied experiences (De Jaegher and Di Paolo, 2007; Noland, 2010). When people try to understand each other, they observe and react to their opponents’ bodily movements, which in turn may create imagined assumptions about others’ experiences and interpersonally shared, similar gestures (Fuchs and De Jaegher, 2009). This kind of intersubjective functioning may enrich the research analysis. For example, Chadwick (2017) has described embodied methodologies as the means to record multivocal practices and how female body presences are demonstrated in speech narratives. Her method primarily focuses on the language used in self-reference, relations to and memorised topics of one’s own and others’ bodies (Chadwick, 2017). Embodied methodology has been used also in GSAR. Schacter (2014: 224) reflects: ‘It was by action, by subjective involvement (with all the affective qualities these engendered) that one gained embodied knowledge, a knowledge more important than any purely cognitive understanding.’ Quotes from Schacter’s (2014) field notes describe the environmental context, physical spaces and temporality, bodily gestures and interactions between the informants and the researcher. Such interactions allow to conclude research findings in ways that concern field activities as bodily engaged, a form of social enactment for relationships, communication and commitments (Schacter, 2014: 226–227). Similarly, as Ferrell (2004) notes, methodologies that entail engagement with the research subjects provide an understanding of different cultural nuances and momentary experiences that are related to graffiti. Nomeikaite (2017) explores the possibilities of researching street art by including observations and verbal explications of the physical interactions and experiences with people and artefacts (Nomeikate, 2017). Halsey and Young (2006) suggest that the act of graffiti writing involves bodily, affective aspects, causing a powerful embodied experience. Graffiti connects their creators to the world, reflecting their subjective, varying relationships through the act of writing graffiti. Thus, for a researcher, the point of GSAR is not only to confirm existing theories, but also to investigate: ‘how do various lived bodies conceive of and speak about what they do?’ (Halsey and Young, 2006: 294). Ryan (2017: 133) and Tolonen (2021a) have both reported on graffiti writers and street artists gaining remedial benefits from the act of painting, reflecting that ‘painting does something’ to their bodies and acknowledging the intense physical and emotional sensations that occur during the process of creating. Graffiti subculture is often described as male-dominated and hence researched through a masculine lens of thought (Fransberg, 2021; Macdonald, 2002). In ethnographic research the researcher is physically involved in the lives of the study participants in the observed field. Gendered bodies often create meanings in these research settings and are crucial in understanding the process of knowledge creation (Naegler and Salman, 2016). Butler (1988: 520) proposes that gender identity is performed 6 Qualitative Research 00(0) as a ‘stylized repetition of acts through time’. It is expressed in bodily signs and other discourses, which construct identities through embodied acts in a social performance (Butler, 1988; 2010). Gender may therefore influence how the research is conducted. For some researchers, when walking alone in urban environments, a feeling of safety might not necessarily be consistent due to reasons such as their gender, age or the overall context (O’Neill and Roberts, 2019: 51). According to Tay and Diener (2011), the feeling of safety and security can be understood as a fundamental need that people usually intend to fulfil foremost. However, individual psychosocial needs such as feeling respected, being able to master one’s field of expertise and having a sense of independence might be pursued before basic or safety needs are fully met (Tay and Diener, 2011). We are also driven by the emotion of interest (Clark, 2013a; Izard, 2009), which according to Izard (2009: 4) is essential ‘for engagement in creative and constructive endeavours and for the sense of well-being’, also impacting upon one’s attention and other mental processes. An individual’s prior knowledge and experiences, emotions, values, needs and interests can affect subjective inferences and behaviour (Ignatow, 2007; Ingold, 2007; Saariluoma et al., 2016). This may explain that something such as graffiti, tag or street art may seem deviant or insignificant for one, but it may seem novel, interesting and appealing to the other. Embodied methodologies can utilise several methods, ranging from firstto thirdperson perspectives, and from qualitative to quantitative data. For example, Myllylä (in press) uses think aloud method, which is common in user psychology, a scientific discourse of studying people’s minds and behavior when they interact with technical artefacts (Saariluoma et al., 2016), to investigate the research participants’ embodied experiences of selected graffiti works. Thus, we would argue that different methodologies should be viewed as complementary and not as exclusive or excluding. In the following sections we will focus on research cases that perceive urban environments through walking and edge ethnography. We illustrate that walking can be a usable means for experiencing and interacting with the environment and is elaborated here upon as an embodied methodology within GSAR (Tolonen, 2021b; Young, 2016). We also present that edge ethnography is a methodology that requires deep involvement and immersion in the physical, social and emotional activities of the subjects, even in the potential risk and ethical issues that are related work to the engagement for both the researcher and the subjects (Ferrell, 1998; Lyng, 1990). With these two cases we provide examples of how embodiment can be depicted and how it can impact upon both research methods and analysis, in this case, in the examination of street art and graffiti. Walking as a researcher’s embodied experience Walking has been theorised in many fields of science, for example, in anthropology, geology, philosophy and sociology (see e.g. Ingold, 2007; O’Neill and Roberts, 2019; Pinder, 2008; Pink, 2015). Walking in environments is, in itself, an endeavour that includes experiential, psychological, social, bodily and physical aspects (O’Neill and Roberts, 2019). In GSAR, walking has become an increasingly utilised research method. For example, Phillips (2015), Tolonen (2021a; 2021b) and Young (2016), among many others, have studied and analysed graffiti and street art by walking around cities and Fransberg et al. 7 photographing artworks. Walking per se has not yet been the main focus of graffiti and street art researchers and yet even the researchers themselves tend to acknowledge its impacts on their perceptions, as Young (2016: 92) here reflects: Walking on the street puts you in the midst, able to see textures up close, to walk away, turn and see a work from a distance, to lay your hand upon it and feel the underlying stone through the paper or paint. Therefore, it can be argued that walking as a multisensory experience is a methodology, as opposed to being simply a research method (see also Pink, 2015), as Tolonen underlines: I’m no longer sure if walking for me is just a research method. I see it now more as a bodily and multisensory state of thinking. A state in which, through my movement and observations in the city space, I’m testing the empirical data and theoretical frameworks of street art.2 By walking, a graffiti and street art researcher gains an experience of the surroundings of the artwork as well as of the artwork itself. The researcher is able to see artworks from different angles and distances, feel the textures underneath, and sometimes later return to the artwork and observe how the weather conditions or other artists have modified it (see Figure 1). Figure 1. Sometimes walking takes a researcher to surprising locations, as happened to Tolonen during her two-month stay in Las Palmas, Spain, where she encountered a multilayered practising place for beginners. 2018. Photograph @Jonna Tolonen. 8 Qualitative Research 00(0) There might also be moments when the researcher can still smell the freshly sprayed paint, discuss with other passers-by about the feelings the artwork raises or even witness the artwork being painted over (see Figure 2). Therefore, walking is a series of perceptions, thoughts, emotions and experiences that coincide with graffiti and street art and also with the researchers themselves. Walking requires one being present with all of one’s senses. The idea of multi-sensoriality – intertwining one’s sight with one’s other senses – is a fundamental principle in terms of the researcher’s walking experiences. Vision is not understood as a primary sense of the researcher, as the perception of the environment could be characterised as a sensory process where seeing works alongside the other senses. Doing graffiti and street art research on foot Walking is a form of fieldwork on foot and it generally involves perceiving, routing and recording. A researcher observes the ever-changing environment and perceives information from mutually overlapping sounds and olfactory scenery, landscape views and variations in the ground surfaces under his or her feet. During the walk, the researcher can Figure 2. A popular graffiti spot in Madrid, Spain, overpainted by the city’s cleaning crew. After taking the photo Tolonen had a chat with the cleaners and one of them told he was ‘a painter myself’. 2015. Photograph @Jonna Tolonen. Fransberg et al. 15 ORCID iD Jonna Tolonen https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3363-9946 Notes 1. In this paper we condense the concepts of ‘embodied mind’ and embodiment into rather brief descriptions, though extensive literature exists regarding these concepts. See, for example, Clark (2013b) for embodiment and cognition, and Scarinzi (2015) for embodied mind in aesthetics. 2. Tolonen’s field note, Valencia, December 2017. 3. Tolonen’s field note, Valencia, November 2017. [some additional information has been deleted to maintain the integrity of the review process]. 4. Tolonen’s field note, Las Palmas, January 2018. [some additional information has been deleted to maintain the integrity of the review process] 5. Tolonen’s field note, Valencia, November 2017. [some additional information has been deleted to maintain the integrity of the review process]. 6. Fransberg’s field note with female graffiti writer, June 2018. 7. Fransberg’s field note, Helsinki, September 2016. [some additional information has been deleted to maintain the integrity of the review process]. References Andron S (2017) Interviewing walls: towards a method of reading hybrid surface inscriptions. In: Avramidis K and Tsilimpounidi M (eds) Graffiti and Street Art. 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She is currently studying young people’s relationships and perspectives on animals, and its relevance to pro-environmental behaviour. Mari Myllylä is a cognitive scientist with previous degrees in design and IT business. She is currently finishing her PhD thesis about information content of mental representation in experience of graffiti. Her research interests are in graffiti art experience, representational mental contents and embodied mind. She currently works in the ETAIROS project that studies ethical assessment and design frameworks for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and associated technologies. Jonna Tolonen is a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Art and Design at the University of Lapland, Finland. She has presented and published widely on gentrification and street art. Jonna is also a member of INDAGUE, the Spanish Association of Researchers of Graffiti and Urban Art. Her current research interests deal with visual culture, socio-environmental justice and artivism. www.streetwalker.fi