Abstract

Graffiti Writing, a Seventies-born visual subculture, spread globally over the decades. Despite the large amount of material documenting it (both in editorial and cinematographic fields), it remains a marginal subculture, little known by large audiences, in its deepest characteristics.
The following paper presents a practice-based research, whose objective is to investigate the contribution of animation to the documentation and communication of the subculture of Graffiti Writing, deciphering its interpretation for uninformed audiences. Through documentary fieldwork, with testimonies and memories emerged in interviews, are registered artists from the Writing movement. The study aims to provide a partial-multifaced description of the phenomenon, supplied by the artist different approaches and styles. This fieldwork starts by contextualizing the province of Ferrara, in northern Italy.
The documentary work is developed with representation strategies and narrative reconstruction aiming the communication of this graphic subculture in a specific geographical context, through the project for an animated documentary short film. It is fulfilled as a documentary strategy for the representation and reconstruction of Graffiti Writing memories. The choice allows the exploration of new concepts with the encounter of two distinct visual arts, the Graffiti Writing and the animation, simultaneously allowing the definition of an authorial language appropriate to the project and its theme.