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Yesterday marked a national moment of silence for the police violence that continues to ravage primarily communities of color in the United States. In the wake of the undue force that cut short the lives of Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and countless more #Ferguson has become a quilting point for ongoing frustration, sadness, and…

Moose Hall Theater Company, based out of Inwood Park in upper Manhattan, is in their final week of performances of Eugène Ionesco’s “The Rhinoceros.” The absurdist play, written in 1959 (nine years between the famous student protests of 1968), offers an allegory about social transformation, immanent violence, homogeneity, and failed or flattened aspirations. The play is…

Vhils’ solo show at the Electricity Museum in Lisboa, “Dissection/Disseção,” was a fascinating exploration of creative destruction and the humanization and dehumanization of public space. The show, which explores a variety of mediums and scales, moving from the three-by-five centimeter snapshot to the half-city-block square construction, offers an exegesis on the urban as a space…

Crowd waiting to start off the festival. 7.19. Photo Credit: Caitlin Bruce MOS France is held annually in Perpignan, the south of France. Organized by a duo of Paris based graffiti artists, Astro and Kanos, and a team of around fifteen artists and friends located in Perpignan, along with several local and national partners, MOS…

I am in Perpignan this week to do field work at the international Meeting of Styles festival, starting tonight, at Casa Musicale. One of my interlocutors, rapper and graffiti artist Demon, enabled me to make contact with the festival organizers, Astro and Kanos, and has allowed me to follow some of his cross-cultural exchanges via…

As many know, Pussy Riot, a now-famous punk performance group from Russia, was launched into the international spotlight after their Punk Prayer performance at Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow. The group was incarcerated and later sentenced to three years of prison for their “blasphemy.” Their cause, articulated as a critique of Putin’s human rights…

Quay near the docks. Photo Credit: Caitlin Bruce I am staying in Belfast for three days, mostly drawn to its rich history of conflict murals, but also pleased to be in a smaller-sized city with slower rhythms and less density. It is a beautiful city, on the water but also close to some green mountains….

There is an organization called“Alternative London,” that offers guided tours of London’s East End  that are themed along the lines of history, public art, and so forth, attempting to offer just what their title implies, an “alternative” view of London. I took one of their tours, which focused on street art, and, following my ethnographic…

I made my landing in London last Thursday, and chose to stay in Shoreditch, a residential and commercial district on the East side of London. Wanting to be in close proximity to street art and graffiti art, I used a google search to guide my AirBnB room investigation, which resulted in a spot near to…

I am spending (spending an interesting term because if implies monetary expenditure, true, in this case, but also the unfolding of time) the next four weeks traveling around Western Europe, visiting major cities and visiting graffiti and street art sites. These two limit points for my itinerary, to which I can add Berlin and London…