Aesthetics of crisis is an ongoing ethnographic research project located at the intersection of urban theory, visual culture, and social movement studies.
The project looks at the crisis from a micro-perspective focusing on the symbolic practice of street art, tracing the various and complex iconographies and aesthetics of the crisis. Based on a dialectic approach that takes into account street art as visual artifacts mediated through historical, political, and affective narratives and iconographies, as well as a performative practice, I argue that street art is not merely a static representation of the given socio-cultural context it is embedded in but also has the potential to actively transform urban space and reimagine everyday life by inscribing alternative histories and possibilities into the very surface of the city.
Apart from building an extensive photo archive and exploring the local geographies of street art, I am conducting interviews with street artists, activists and researchers. This website is meant to make my field data accessible and part of the ongoing discussions surrounding the crisis. On a broader level this will help build an understanding of how political discourses manifest in urban public space and are negotiated through critical spatial practices.