TAG:
NAME WRITING
IN PUBLIC SPACE

A CONFERENCE ABOUT TAGGING,
IN HISTORY AND TODAY
HAMBURG UNIVERSITY
MUSEUM FOR HAMBURG HISTORY
JUNE 29-30 & JULY 1, 2023

The Tag Conference is the spearhead event in graffiti studies. This new instalment of the conference will gather over 20 speakers coming from 14 countries on all 5 continents, and feature a diverse range of views into different forms of tagging – from historical name-writing to contemporary urban tags.

All lectures are free and open to the public. Some talks will be delivered in German. The conference is presented as part of the program of the exhibition EINE STADT WIRD BUNT.

The call for papers is now closed. Download the PDF here.

PROGRAM

The conference will start with an eye-opening keynote lecture by British independent researcher and professional archeologist Matthew Champion.

Champion is a leading international figure in the study of historical graffiti, and will recount in his talk how name-writing in public space has actually been commonplace until recent times.

The program of the conference will study overlooked tag-related tools, obscure developments in graffiti lettering styles, unique local forms of public name-writing in non-western countries, and different ways to archive the intangible heritage of tagging.

Two great name-writing figures from very different eras will be examined at this Tag Conference. One is Antonio Bosio, the seminal Renaissance archeologist who left prominent tags on the Roman frescoes he discovered underground. The second figure is Oz, the outsider artist and prolific tagger who was for decades a local folk hero for the city of Hamburg.

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS

Matthew Champion (UK)
KEYNOTE

Altland, Weinfurter and Dockweiler (DE)
‘Archiving the Ephemeral: The Tag Collector’

Anna Nistratova (RU)
‘Contemporary petroglyphs, tagging stone’

Egidio Emiliano Bianco (IT)
‘Antonio Bosio and the curious case of a 1600’s ‘heaven spot’ in the catacombs of Rome’

Javier Abarca (ES)
‘Monikers, in history and today’

Katharina Tyran (AT)
‘„Naš kraj“ – Our hood: südslawische Tag-Kulturen in Wien’

Kathleen Göttsche (DE)
‘OZ said’

Mohamed N. El-Barbary (EG), Mariko Ikeda (JP), Ondřej Škrabal (DE)
‘New Approach Towards the Documentation of Tagging Subculture in Tokyo’

Orestis Pangalos (GR)
‘Collectivity in individual name-writing’

Polina Stohnushko (DE)
‘Das ist unser Krieg’

Rory Maley (AU)
‘Object Infinity: Obsession, Mania, and Living Forever in the Underground’

Sanja Ewald (DE)
‘Das Blackbook: mehr als nur ein Skizzenbuch. Betrachtungen auf ein multifunktionales Medium’

Tobias Barenthin (SE)
‘Building history: a how-to in archiving, cataloging and collecting memories’

Vittorio Parisi (IT)
‘Graffiti occulto: Weird, dark lettering and its relationship to contemporary ruins’

VENUES AND TIMES

THURSDAY 29 JUNE (OPENING)
5–8 pm
Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg Carl von Ossietzky
(Hamburg University Library)
Von-Melle-Park 3

FRIDAY 30 JUNE & SATURDAY 1 JULY
9–5:30 pm
Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte
(Museum for Hamburg History)
Holstenwall 24

Free entrance

‘THE TAG CONFERENCE’

Since its founding instalment in 2017 at the Freie Universität Berlin, the Tag Conference has travelled to different European cities to host talks from over 70 speakers coming from 19 countries on 4 continents.

The event’s groundbreaking focus on ‘name-writing of all eras’ has brought together academics studying historical wall-writing with the new scholars of contemporary graffiti –often insiders of the culture–, creating the first point of contact between these two research spheres.

The Tag Conference is proud to showcase as well the work of independent researchers and ‘rogue archivists’, culturally invaluable but often overlooked by academia.

‘TAG SPOTLIGHT’: UNIQUE PUBLICATIONS AND SCREENINGS

‘Tag Spotlight’ is a new series of small-format Tag Conference publications featuring unique visual insights into tagging from special contributors. Each volume in the series is edited and launched together with an exclusive video.

The series uncovers unknown images of early NYC tags, explores the streets of Philadelphia to document the local ‘tall hand’ tradition, and showcases rare images from the punk era of Dutch graffiti.

Contributors include rogue visual archivists like Mike Delmar aka @tape.delay, established scholars like tagging specialist François Chastanet, and independent heritage institutions like the Dutch Graffiti Library and the Kladmuur Foundation.

The first volumes of ‘Tag Spotlight’ will be unveiled at the Tag Conference in Hamburg, together with the premiere of their accompanying films, as part of the special opening afternoon of the conference at the covered courtyard of the Hamburg University Library.

CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS BOOK

The contributions to this Tag Conference will be collected in a proceedings volume with layout and production by Double-H Publishing, the imprint behind the milestone book Eine Stadt Wird Bunt.

The book will be distributed to every bookstore in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, as well as through Amazon and other online retailers.