Street art, heritage and affective atmospheres

Abstract

During the last decade, street art has received increased attention within heritage studies. However, current heritage research has not sufficiently explored street art’s crucial relationships with everyday life and change, as well as its performative, sensuous and atmospheric components. In this paper, I apply the notion of affective atmosphere within more-than-representational theory, heritage and urban studies, to conceptualise street art as a sensuous, ephemeral, political and embodied heritage experience of everyday life. My investigation of street art and affective atmospheres is further based on my improvised everyday practices of sensing, feeling, observing, walking and photographing in the streets of Oslo. Engaging with theory and praxis, I explore the compositional and multi-sensual aspects of street art and affective urban atmospheres, including sound, colour, movement, social hybridity and power. My analysis highlights that the experience of street art heritage involves more than simply embodied encounters with artworks, as it also integrates urban atmospheres and smooth and striated worlds. The research thus contributes practical and theoretical knowledge of street art, heritage and affective atmospheres within street art and urban and heritage studies.