The simposium Politics and street art poetics, deeply grounded in the academic study of street art and its concretizations in the public space, focuses on the reflection of theory and practice in the world of street art and graffiti.

Symposium program:
Sandi Abram: Introducton
17:00: Mitja Velikonja: Extremism of the center: political graffiti as a ‘weapon of the power’
17:30: Beja Protner: Violent graffiti and photographs from the war zones of Northern Kurdistan: Conceptual reflection and epistemological capabilities of anthropology
18:00: Nina Perger: Love, love fagot!

18:30-18:45: Break

18:45: Mankica Kranjec: Looking for a graffiti writer
19:15: Božidar Zrinski: Would you like graffiti?
19:45: Blaž Bajič: Nosing around Ljubljana, or what smells do on the street: the design of urban space and its experience
20:15: Closing thoughts

? dr. Mitja Velikonja is a lecturer and researcher on the Faculty for social sciences in Ljubljana. He’s reasearching the sociological aspects of culture and contemporary religious-nationalistic political mythologies, especially central european and south slavic ones.This year he published the book Post-Socialist Political Graffiti in the Balkans and Central Europe at the publishing house Routledge.

? Beja Protner is a doctoral student of social anthropology at University of Cambridge. Between the years 2012 and 2017 was engaged with the Kurdish question, memories of political violence, question of citizenship and anthropology of hope, affect and emotion in Turkey. Currently she researches the emotional geography of exile, movement and placement in space among political refugees in Turkey and Greece.

? dr. Nina Perger is a sociologist, social pedagogue and activist. On the theoretical plane she focuses on queer theories and sexuality but she’s also concerned with gender studies and feminist theories being involved for a long time as a feminist queer activist in the non-governmental and youth work sphere. She’s currently working as a researcher at the Center for social psychology and as an assistant at the Department of Sociology (Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana).

? Mankica Kranjec is a photographer and journalist of the younger generation. She always tries to uncover new worlds and that which is concealed to the eyes of many while also infusing her photographic projects with something different and universal. She’s finishing her master’s degree in the Faculty of Social Sciences where she’s researching the gender problematics in the graffiti subculture putting at the forefront especially women artists. Last year she prepared an artistic project in New York titled “Išče se grafitarka?”, her photographs were displayed in a solo exhibition in Brooklyn.

? Božidar Zrinski is a curator at the International Centre of Graphic Arts. He organized a good amount of group and solo exhibitions, one of them being Grafitarji (2004), Street Art (2006) and 29. Graphic Biennale (2009) which contained a number of street art projects.

? dr. Blaž Bajič is a postdoctoral researcher on the project SENSOTRA at University of Eastern Finland. As an outside collaborator he contributes also to the department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the Faculty of Arts.

? Sandi Abram is a PhD researcher at the University of Eastern Finland and founder of Alternative Ljubljana.

✅ Entrance free.