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

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 gathers over 20 speakers coming from 14 countries on all 5 continents, and covers 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 call for papers is accessible for download here. The conference is presented as part of the program of the museum exhibition EINE STADT WIRD BUNT.

➔ READ THE FULL PROGRAM

➔ SEE PICTURES FROM THE EVENT

➔ WHY A ‘TAG CONFERENCE’?

A special opening afternoon with keynote speakers

The conference will kick off with a special opening afternoon on Thursday 29th at the Hamburg University Library featuring keynote speakers Matthew Champion (UK) and Susan Phillips (US), two of the main voices in graffiti studies.

Archeologist and expert in historical graffiti Matthew Champion will recount in his talk how graffiti has actually been commonplace until recent times. Susan Phillips, the main authority in early 20th century American graffiti, will provide perspective on the different graffiti traditions that took form in that century, leading to the birth of today’s worldwide graffiti culture.

The conference’s director and respected specialist Javier Abarca will close this first session linking historical and contemporary by looking at the venerable tradition of ‘moniker’ graffiti, and will describe how modern urban tagging is, in essence, a new incarnation of the same old human behaviour.

Two more days of fascinating insights into tagging

On Friday and Saturday the program will continue at the auditorium of the Museum for Hamburg History. Talks will study a whole range of forms of name-writing, from the marks left underground by Australian urban explorers to unique local tagging traditions from India, Russia and Spain.

Speakers will explore the dense and now popular historical graffiti of Venice, discuss approaches to preserve the heritage of contemporary graffiti, and delve into cutting-edge developments in graffiti letterforms.

The program includes, of course, a look into the figure of Oz, the outsider artist and prolific tagger who was for decades a local folk hero for the city of Hamburg.

INTRODUCING
‘TAG SPOTLIGHT’

‘Tag Spotlight’ is a new series of small-format Tag Conference publications featuring unique visual insights into name-writing from special contributors.

The first four volumes in the series feature Delta INC, Walter Josef ‘OZ’ Fischer, François Chastanet and Mike Delmar aka @tape.delay, and have been co-published for the conference by Urbanario and Hitzerot.

The publications will be presented on Friday at the Museum auditorium.

Screening room at the Museum

Mike Delmar and François Chastanet have produced two special videos related to their ‘Tag Spotlight’ volumes. The videos will be screened on loop throughout the two main days of conference at the Museum for Hamburg History.

You can find the screening room close to the auditorium.

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.

WHY A ‘TAG CONFERENCE’?

Graffiti is new, but it is timeless as well. Leaving one’s mark for other people to read is a fundamental human impulse, and has been more historically common than most suspect.

Yet the idea of graffiti has shifted radically in the past half century. Written names are now prominent everywhere, and graffiti has become a difficult term to make sense of.

Making sense of graffiti and tagging

The 20th century saw the birth of several graffiti traditions that went beyond the generally inconspicuous markings of previous centuries. One of those cultures originated in New York City and grew to become an international phenomenon.

This form of name-writing is by now an expected sight in most cities, to the point of becoming synonymous with the term ‘graffiti’ in most conversations. But, as scholars of history know, graffiti is a whole field of study that encompasses many other fascinating subjects.

Bringing together different research spheres

For a long time, most scholars of historical graffiti found no interest in contemporary name-writing, or could not afford to lose credibility by looking at it. Similarly, enthusiasts of contemporary graffiti have typically skipped the old graffiti books on library shelves. They simply thought it had nothing to do with them.

The Tag Conference was launched in 2017 as the place for a serious study of tagging. It was founded by insiders of contemporary graffiti, but the call was open to scholars of history as well. At that point it was clear we are all talking about the same thing, and a space had to be created for that conversation. We chose to focus on the written names, the perfect overlap between both research spheres.

More reasons to focus on tags

Featuring contemporary tags as a central topic is also an explicit stance for the Tag Conference.

Tags are still the maligned part of today’s graffiti, the one that even appreciative observers prefer to omit. But those same tags are the foundation of the whole culture of graffiti – as well as its most fascinating part, as we hope the conference is helping to show.

Supporting rogue research

The Tag Conference has always supported independent researchers who operate outside of academia. We are proud this time to present the first institutional work from famed ‘rogue archivist’ Mike Delmar (US).

Delmar has contributed a very special selection of photographs for the opening volume of ‘Tag Spotlight’, the new publication series from The Tag Conference.

Don’t miss Delmar’s impressive video, produced to complement the printed publication. It will be shown on loop at The Tag Conference’s screening room throughout the whole Friday.

PROGRAM

Thursday 29

5pm
Welcome screening
«Hobo Carvings in Red Bluff, CA»
Unedited footage by Robert Ranberg
US, 1969, 26′ (loop)
Courtesy of the Tehama County Historical and Genealogical Society

6pm
Keynote talk
Matthew Champion (UK)

6:45pm
Keynote talk
Susan Phillips (US)

7:30pm
Closing talk
Javier Abarca (ES)

Friday 30

10am
Gauri Paprikar and Mayukh Gosavi (IN)
«Information barrage through public name tagging»

10:45am
Polina Stohnushko (UA)
«Das ist unser Krieg»

11:30am
Book presentation
«Graffiti Scratched, Scrawled, Sprayed: Towards a Cross-Cultural Understanding»
With editor Ondřej Škrabal (CZ)

11:40am
Book presentation and film screening
«Tag Spotlight»
With editors Javier Abarca (ES) and Sascha Blasche (DE)

12pm — LUNCH BREAK

1pm
Kathleen Göttsche (DE)
«OZ said»
🇩🇪 in german

1:45pm
Mohamed N. El-Barbary (EG), Mariko Ikeda (JP) and Ondřej Škrabal (CZ)
«New approach towards the documentation of tagging subculture in Tokyo»

2:30pm
Orestis Pangalos (GR)
«Collectivity in individual name-writing»

3:15pm — COFFEE BREAK

3:45pm
Tobias Barenthin Lindblad (SE)
«Building history: a how-to in archiving, cataloging and collecting memories»

4:30pm
Desi Marangon (IT)
«‘I graffiti di Venezia’: a history of Venice from below»

Saturday 1

10am
Katharina Tyran (AT)
«„Naš kraj“, Our hood: südslawische Tag-Kulturen in Wien»
🇩🇪 in german

10:45am
Sanja Ewald (DE)
«Das Blackbook: mehr als nur ein Skizzenbuch»
🇩🇪 in german

11:30am
Anna Nistratova (RU)
«Carved tags: contemporary graffiti on rocks by Russian street artists»

12:15pm — LUNCH BREAK

1:15pm
Vittorio Parisi (IT)
«Graffiti occulto: Weird, dark lettering and its relationship to contemporary ruins»

2pm
Isabel Carrasco (ES)
«The ‘mayos’ graffiti tradition from Torrenueva, Spain»

2:45pm — COFFEE BREAK

3:15pm
Rory Maley (AU)
«Object infinity: Obsession, mania, and living forever in the underground»

4pm
Rashi Karkoon (IN)
«Erasing heritage through love tagging»

SCREENING ROOM

At the Museum for Hamburg History

FRIDAY 30 JUNE

‘HAER Survey of the 3rd Avenue EL line, 1974’
Mike Delmar (US)
9’20» (loop)
2023

SATURDAY 1 JULY

‘Philadelphia Hands, The Survival of The Whip’ (excerpt)
François Chastanet (FR)
3’10» (loop)
2023

VENUES AND TIMES

THURSDAY 29 JUNE
5—8pm

Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg Carl von Ossietzky (Hamburg University Library)
Von-Melle-Park 3
At the Lichthof (covered courtyard)
Best access through Grindelallee / Edmund-Siemers-Allee
Free entrance

FRIDAY 30 JUNE & SATURDAY 1 JULY
10am—5:30pm

Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte
(Museum for Hamburg History)
Holstenwall 24
At the auditorium
Free entrance