This reflection blog is part of a joint blog by Mark Dierick, Jules van Iperen, Lindsay Lo-A-Njoe, Manouk Boelhouwers, David Madaj, Pauline Poetto and Aimee Overhof. 

________

In the days following our previous blog post entered by Mark Dierick, our group has made a lot of progress.

First of all, an interview has taken place. Graffiti artist Joep van Gassel has agreed to share his story with us and clarify some of our biggest questions. As a real “insider”, van Gassel provided us with plenty of useful information. For instance, he gave us his views on whether graffiti always has a purpose or “hidden message”, on whether graffiti artists are connected and on the connection between online and offline concerning graffiti.

Looking back, the process of looking for and contacting a graffiti artist to interview went smoothly. This may have been because van Gassel mainly creates legal graffiti – as he himself mentioned, most graffiti artists don’t usually share their work because it’s illegal, and sharing what they do might get them arrested or fined. Luckily, van Gassel was very willing to share his knowledge with our group.

Also, following our fieldwork of mapping graffiti in Tilburg, we have been researching the links between the online and offline world of graffiti. As mentioned in the previous blog post, we were able to find the story behind the “M-Tag” – its origin and the reason for its high-scale spread around Tilburg and other cities - supported by multiple online media platforms. We also looked for the development of the “ Echte Liefde!” tag as a brand and found some interesting information as well as new links between online and offline. For instance, an “Echte Liefde!” graffiti workshop is offered online.

Another interesting finding was the link between offline graffiti and Facebook. It seems that this online media platform is a popular place for sharing media on graffiti and for connecting graffiti artists. However, other social media such as Instagram are very popular. This is, we suspect, because these media are image-based, and of course images play an immense role in the world of graffiti.

Though we managed to find these links, it has not been awfully easy to find links to the online environment. This probably has to do with the fact that, as mentioned above, most graffiti artist don’t want to risk getting fined by posting their graffiti work online. But there are exceptions: for instance, the M-tag is placed illegally, but its story is shared on multiple non-anonymous online media platforms.

All and all, the previous weeks have proven themselves as being quite productive; in the following weeks, it will be our goal to deepen our current knowledge and broaden our findings on online graffiti networks. Who knows what we'll discover next?