TAG: name writing in public space (2nd Edition)

This book is a report published on the occasion of the "Tag Conference" held at the Freie Universität Berlin in 2017.

Tag has rarely been seriously examined. The Tag Conference is a first attempt to conceptually frame the contemporary Tag and study it alongside its many largely ignored historical antecedents. The informal writing of names in public spaces is an age-old practice, probably as old as writing itself. Over the last century it has acquired an unprecedented intensity and become the central feature of several full-fledged popular cultures around the world.

The most sophisticated of these cultures is the graffiti tradition that developed in the subways of New York in the 1970s. Under the influence of this tradition, the writing of names is now generally referred to by the slang term 'tagging'.

The Tag Conference provided a space for discussion of the practice of Tag, its nature, meaning and history, as well as the various tag traditions and cultures that exist and have existed. It gathered participants from about 15 countries and covered topics from from Ancient Rome to the 2000s.

Authors and thema 

Javier Abarca

Jean-Baptiste Barra & Timothée Engasser (antigraffiti policies in Toulouse)

Edward Birzin (Taki 183 as Bildungsroman)

Jake Carter (between tagging and traditional practices throughout the East)

François Chastanet (For a geography of urban signatures, New York globalisation & metropolitan particularities)

Andreas Dorn (Tagging in the Valley of the Kings around 1300-1050 BC)

Konstantina Drakopoulou & Argiro Papathanasiou (The HIT And LIFO Graffiti Crews: Redefining Athens Streets)

Valeria Federici (The role of tags between place and existence)

Danny Flynn (Invasive tags, Île de la Passe)

Edwige Fusaro (Taggings on classroom desks)

Lukas Fuchsgruber (Glass Tagging and the Art Histories of Graffiti)

Elena García Gayo and Calota Santabárbara Morera (Graffiti and the ethics of conservation)

Gabriele Goffriller (Joseph Kyselak (1798-1831) – the world’s first graffiti tagger?

Matthias Hübner

Theo Kindynis (Excavating ghosts: Urban exploration as graffiti archaeology)

Norbert Kirbach (Tagging, calligraphy and public writing in China)

Polly Lohmann (Tagging in Antiquity: Pompeian Graffiti Between Individuality and Convention)

Kadir Memis (Movement of letters)

Orestis Pangalos (Football, military and adolescent tagging in Greece)

Vittorio Parisi (Tags as weapons – Structuralism, Futurism, RAMM:ELL:ZEE and the symbolic war on language)

Jo Preußler (Writing in the air)

Will Shank (To tag and to untag: the preservation point of view)

Dr Rafael Schacter (Graffiti and Street Art as Ornament)

Tomasz Sikorski (Illegal signs and names in public space in Poland)

Pedro Soares (agging 22000 years ago, relations between today graffiti and the oldest known open air Paleolithic art complex)

Vladimir Stekachyov

Julia Tulke (Tags of Crisis: Polysemic Performances on the Wall of Athens)

Layout & design concept by Caroline Lei and Anita Nguyen

Language: english