The Endless Repetition of Graffiti Writing and Removing: Gestures, Sites, Traces

Although graffiti writing has been the object of numerous analyses for fifty years, the entangled practices of graffiti writers and buffers’ interventions remain understudied. By considering their actual gestures in front of urban surfaces, this text emphasizes the similarities of practices usually seen as antagonistic. Drawing on Deleuze’s masterful work about repetition and difference, it notably points out the sensitive, attentional, and technical common features of graffiti writers and buffers, the choreographic dynamics at the core of their performances, and the layered material rhythm resulting from their intertwined actions. Whether they take the form of a soothed dialogue moved by a shared experience, a trench warfare in performances, or an intense unintended collaboration, the relationships between graffiti writers and buffers appear to be driven by the transformative principle of repetition.