Whereas subcultures such as punk, metal, skate, goth and emo have all been the target of moral panics in the past, the conditions that sparked these moral panics have since become banal and normalized, in line with Stanley Cohen’s claim that moral panics per definition tend to be short-lived. The moral panic about subcultural graffiti in Sweden, however, has proved remarkably consistent. Drawing from contemporary work on moral panics as extreme forms of more mundane moral regulations, this article deals with graffiti as mal placé in relation to both urban space and romanticized conceptions of youth resistance, rendering it not only a suitable enemy for moral entrepreneurs but also a reliable source of income for surveillance and graffiti-removal firms. Whereas the previous subcultural research has discussed moral panics as a first step of the commodification of the subcultural (Williams 2011), the authors use the example of graffiti in Stockholm to point to a commodification, not so much of subcultural style, but of the moral panic itself.

Most research describes the relationship between the contemporary phenomena denoted by the concepts graffiti and street art as complex. For example, graffiti and street art have been described in terms of a development, as well as closely related but different sociocultural contexts. However, the institutional discourses on graffiti and street art differ widely, and street art is, in contrast to graffiti, not stigmatized and rarely framed as a criminal activity. Consequently, there are also many cases where graffiti and street art are framed as a dichotomy, where the latter is positioned as creative and beautiful while the former is described as repetitive, ugly and unsophisticated. In contrast to such polarized understandings, street art have also been used as an umbrella term, denoting various kinds of informal image production in the public realm including pieces and throw-ups that in other cases would be defined as graffiti. Thus, while most research suggests that the terms graffiti and street art denote partially different phenomena, it seems to be particularly difficult to pinpoint a clear delineation between them.

This article departs from the assumption that that the concepts ‘graffiti’ and ‘street art’ themselves should be regarded as a part of the studied cultural context, and as such, empirical material rather than preconditioned categories from where the research depart. The concepts themselves are thus viewed as cultural phenomena in their own right, and as such, negotiated in time and space, similarly to the ‘content’ that they in a certain context denote. The article thus focuses on how the relationships between street art and graffiti are contextualized in various media during the last 30 years. 

Snösätra upplagsområde är en samling byggnader i södra Stockholm som de senaste fem åren har vuxit till en central plats för den samtida graffiti- och gatukonsten. Det hela startade med en graffitimålning sommaren 2014, och nu skapas varje år ett stort antal verk.

Redan under första året var samtliga fasader längs områdets gata Snösätragränd täckta av målningar, och när nya verk skapas så sker det ovanpå tidigare skapelser. Denna utveckling har förändrat platsen i grunden, när tusentals besökare som tidigare inte kände till Snösätra kommer dit för att se målningarna. Följdriktigt att platsen fått ett nytt, än så länge inofficiellt, namn – Snösätra Hall of Fame (ibland med det alternativa men närliggande namnet Snösätra Wall of Fame). 

Vilken typ av plats är detta egentligen, och hur ska den konceptualiseras?

Vid slutet av 1970-talet började västsidan av Berlinmuren förvandlas till ett klotterplank. Det som från början var ett marginellt fenomen växte snart till en gigantisk urban fresk. Vid 80-talets mitt täckte graffitin stora delar av murens sträckning. Graffitimuren blev en massmedial symbol för skaparkraft och yttrandefrihet i kalla krigets centrum. Men egentligen är historien betydligt mer komplicerad. Konstvetaren Jacob Kimvall skildrar en subkulturell konströrelse som uppstod i mellanrummet mellan två radikalt skilda samhällssystem.

In the evening of March 8th 2014 – the International Women's Day – a group of young men and women were attacked in the middle of Malmö after having had participated in a demonstration earlier that day. Four of them were severely beaten and stabbed by knives, and one of them was treated in intensive care for his injuries. His name was Showan Shattak, known to the local community for his commitment against racism and homophobia on the streets as well as on the football terraces. Short after the incident the police stated that the attackers had links to a Swedish neo-nazi group which was also confirmed on the following day by the neo-nazi group itself. The news of the attack spread and people gathered on the streets of Malmö on the 9th of March 2014 to express their support with those injured and the fight against racism. A week later a broad movement of organizations and actors including football supporters, autonomous groups, labour unions, political parties as well as people in general participated in the demonstration that consisted of 10000 people making it one of biggest demonstrations in Malmö’s history.

In direct relation to the demonstration, the most visible part of one the city’s two open graffiti walls was painted with the message ”Kämpa Showan” [Keep fighting Showan] in bold straight letters and the colors of the local football team. The graffiti-piece was updated a couple of months later, on Showan’s request, to a piece that stated ”Kämpa Malmö” [Keep fighting Malmö]. The colors were the same, except that a rainbow colored banner was added through the letters as well as the anti-fascist slogan “No Pasaran”. The piece quickly became an unofficial landmark that brought different groups of interests together. People were photographed in front of it and the local neighborhood restored the piece when tags and slogans appeared on it. It became a visual representation of the city’s fight for a tolerant and open Malmö as opposed to racism, and calls were even made to turn it into a monument and officially protect it from damage. Altogether the two versions of the piece lasted for more than a year on a wall that otherwise is repainted by graffiti writers at least once a week.

In this chapter we take the example of the “Kämpa Showan/Malmö”-pieces to define and discuss the notion of open graffiti walls (hereafter referred to as open walls) in a Scandinavian context. In so doing we also want to point to a number of important aspects of open walls in relation to urban studies as well as the research on graffiti and street art: What role does an open wall play in the negotiation of public place? What interests does it represent and what are the consequences for different groups? How does open walls differ from other types of (legal) graffiti, and other types of visual artistic expressions in the public spaces?

We will draw from ethnographic work conducted on graffiti writers in Malmö – gathered by one of the authors as part of a larger investigation of how graffiti writers perceive and make use of urban space – so as to clarify how the openness of the open wall is first and foremost negotiated and realized through subcultural activity and place making. The endurance of the Kämpa Malmö-piece and its status as an iconic representation for a broader variety of groups is here used as a deviant case so as elucidate the subcultural boundary work through which Open walls are defined, used and controlled. We will also use mass-mediated and archived material regarding the debate on (legal) graffiti in Sweden from the late 1960s and onwards, gathered by the other author in his PhD-project, as well as a visual study of the open wall in Tantolunden in Stockholm (opened as late as September 2016), as well as other legal graffiti spaces in Sweden and elsewhere. This combination of analyzing contemporary ethnographic material in relation to discursive statements from the 1960s and onwards enables us to frame the phenomena of contemporary legal graffiti in a diachronic historical perspective.

Kapitlet analyserar olika mediala och materiella kontexter som är viktiga för graffiti- och gatukonstens historieskrivning. Det konstateras att merparten av de graffitimålningar som blivit kanoniserade inte främst är kända som målningar i rent materiell mening utan som fotografiska bilder av målningar. Dessa fotografier har spritts genom böcker, tidningar och filmer och under de senaste decennierna genom internet. På detta sätt återskapas bilderna i nya och föränderliga kontexter som påverkar meningsproduktionen. Samtidigt diskuteras verken ofta som vore de just de målningar som avbildas i fotografierna. För att analysera dessa sammanhang används begreppet visuell ekologi. Kapitlet avslutas med att konkret studie av ett enskilt verk – graffitimålningen Fascinate – och hur detta verk får officiell titel och status som ett kulturarv genom ett samspel mellan reproducerade bilder och som en specifik målning i stadsrummet.

I stora delar av Sverige har lagliga eller öppna graffitiväggar varit föremål för en långvarig och intensiv politisk debatt, och som även intagit en central position i den svenska graffiti- och gatukonstdebatten i stort. Denna presentation utgår från en översikt av litteratur och forskning om laglig graffiti samt en genomgång av den svenska debatten om lagliga graffitiväggar.Det finns en synnerligen omfattande litteratur om graffiti, men samtidigt är det relativt lite av den som behandlar laglig graffiti. Även vad det gäller forskningen så finns endast ett fåtal studier med laglig graffiti som huvudfokus. Ofta är också studierna direkt eller indirekt kopplade till förekomsten av olagligt utförd graffiti. Kriminologen Ronald Kramer hävdar forskningen tenderat att överbetona olagliga aspekter av graffiti, bland annat genom att tolka olagligt graffitimålande som ett medvetet sätt för graffitimålarna att positionera sig oppositionellt visavi samhället. Den aktuella forskningsöversikten pekar på ett liknande sätt att olaglig graffiti intar en normativ position.Genomgången av debatten om lagliga graffitiväggar i Sverige visar på att den präglas av polarisering mellan högt ställda förväntningar på en tydlig brottsförebyggande effekt och långtgående farhågor om en tydlig brottsgenererande effekt. Även här blir alltså det olagliga en slags norm. Samtidigt finns det mycket lite systematiserad kunskap om hur lagliga graffitiväggar faktiskt används i de olika sociala, geografiska och kulturella sammanhang där de finns – varken vilken funktion de fyller för dem som målar på väggarna, eller för de som besöker platserna som betraktare.Sammantaget argumenterar presentationen för att det finns ett större behov av att förutsättningslöst undersöka hur lagliga graffitiväggar används, än att undersöka om de fungerar brottsförebyggande eller brottsgenererande.