Between Material and Digital Cities: outlines of an etnography of the urban art flows in Lisbon

Abstract

This article leads to some points of the trajectory of an ethnographic study of street art in Lisbon and how they, the arts, stand out amongst digital and material landscapes. It intends to reflect upon the challenges, limitations and needs and ‘dribbles’ of ethnographic studies that cross the spacial cities and go beyond to establish multiple connections with the cyberspace. The challenge was probably to follow the hybrid zigzag flows, dotted paths whose limits and boundaries are not always discernible. I take the trajectory of Tinta Crua and his practice of illegal graffitiin the historic district of Lisbon as a model case. While the fines and decrees, and the House’s erasing actions curtail the actions of the artist in the city’s material landmarks, it is easy to “have” a Tinta Crua piece at home, via the Internet. The virtual landscape has thus created a kind of mobilizing interaction in which the work moves online as much as it can be the target of ‘shares’, content interference, captions, thus establishing a curious space/time relationship. I so conclude that the cyberspace ends up acting as an extended stage, a large, fast moving and multiple container of the arts that flood walls, walls and screens of urban displays.