Writing on the Margins: Graffiti in Italy (7th–16th centuries)

ongoing

In all modern languages, the word ‘graffiti’ is associated with social criticism, protest movements and vandalism. On the contrary, what historians call graffiti is unrelated to transgression. Nonetheless, contemporary and ancient graffiti share one important aspect: both are public writings, produced spontaneously and beyond any control from authorities. Graffiti give us access to the worldview of individuals in the past: this is why they are an important historical source, worthy of being considered, alongside the conventional sources. The Graff-IT project aims to develop a new interdisciplinary approach to the study of medieval and Renaissance graffiti (7th-16th c.) as a historical source, in order to allow a correct contextualization of graffiti within their space-time and social production frame. The project will focus on the following objectives: 1) Giving graffiti full dignity as a written source and asserting the study of graffiti as intrinsic to palaeography; 2) Overcoming the atomistic approach to graffiti, in order to identify new textualities and new languages; 3) Reading graffiti as a source for the history of devotional practices; 4) Interpreting graffiti as signs of the socio-cultural identity of people and places; 5) Exploring graffiti to change our perception of historical artworks, shifting the focus from the creation stage to its social function and use over time. The project will have an innovative and groundbreaking effect on the established method of historical investigation: different perspectives will merge towards an integrated approach that takes the multifaceted complexity of graffiti (writing, image, language, and material aspects) into account. Innovative tools and methods will be used to build out the first national graffiti survey and the related digital Archive. Other outputs are expected: 5 workshops; 2 international conferences and proceedings; a monograph; at least 15 open access articles; a virtual exhibition and a documentary.