DESCRIZIONE
Until recently, graffiti and street art were not considered a serious and legitimate academic topic although they are one of the oldest means of human creativity. As specific visual expressions conveying a message in connection with the public space in which they are created, I consider them as “images of dissent” with aesthetic conventions and political situation in a certain society. They poeticize and at the same time politicize urban surfaces in fresh, radical and often controversial ways.
This book presentation and lecture, When Walls Speak, is based on Mitja Velikonja’s book on political graffiti, first published in 2020 and so far translated into seven languages, including Italian in 2025 for Prospero Editore from Milan under the title Dissenso sui muri – Graffiti politici contemporanei. Book reflects and summarizes Velikonja’s ongoing research and fieldworks I conducted in different parts of the world in the last thirty years. Special emphasis will be given to graffiti, murals, stencils, stickers and other forms of street art I took photo of during my stay here in Venice in this semester.
The author will dialogue with Stefano Petrungaro.
The presentation is part of the seminar Portraying the Balkans, curated by Marija Bradaš.
Mitja Velikonja is a professor for cultural studies at University of Ljubljana. Main areas of his research include post-socialist ideologies, subcultures and graffiti culture, collective memory and nostalgia. His last monographs include Post-Socialist Political Graffiti in the Balkans and Central Europe (2020, translated in seven languages) and Ukrainian Vignettes – Essays on Culture at War (2024, translated in three languages and in translation in two more). He was a full-time visiting professor at Jagiellonian University (2002, 2003), at universities Columbia (2009, 2014), Rijeka (2015) and Yale (2020), Fulbright researcher in Philadelphia (2004/05), visiting researcher at The Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies (2012), at the Remarque Institute (NYU, 2018) and at the moment at Ca’ Foscari (Venice). For his achievements he received six national and two international awards.
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