El arte callejero como emergencia territorial. Las expresiones artísticas visuales callejeras en el espacio público como formas de resistencia y emancipación en los territorios urbanos.

Abstract

This work arises from an interest in visual street art, understood as graffiti or street art—an interest in this type of expression that has been gaining strength in the Latin American context, and particularly in Colombia, especially in the city of Bogotá, for over two decades. There, one can identify countless forms and characteristics that stand out for their expressive, creative, and aesthetic power. On the other hand, from the perspective of power and politics as framed by the Doctoral Program in Social Studies at the Universidad Distrital, there is a concern with territory and power, and with the possibilities of access that should exist for individuals in society to public space—a concern with the deprivation of territory that has long existed in Latin American cities, and with the "right to the city" that should be guaranteed to all citizens. This study is grounded in a critical perspective on the analysis of territory, understanding its direct relationship with power. In this regard, Badiou (2000, p. 22) asserts that “a political act also creates spaces: ‘I am going to turn this place into a political place,’ that is, I am going to transform a street, a factory, a university.” Thus, a political act creates time and space and transforms them through creation—as a production of space. The study sought to understand the dynamics that emerge from the intervention of public space through visual street art and how such interventions produce space within the territory. Within a space marked by boundaries, control, and institutionalization, the need arises to understand how responses to this context become creative forms of transformation within territories, and how these responses evolve into cultural expressions capable of altering the way the territory is institutionalized and reshaping the practices enacted upon it. The focus of this research lies in visual street art and its impact on territory, aiming to understand how these expressions generate transformations. For this reason, the study proposes to identify the characteristics of visual street art as emerging forms of resistance within territory, in order to understand their relationship with the creative capacity for cultural transformation in the construction of new territorialities and new forms of citizenship. In this way, the study seeks to connect the theoretical elements proposed by the Power, Politics, and Collective Subjects track of the Doctoral Program with the contingencies of territory and the ongoing discussions about peace and artistic expressions in these spaces—as a possibility for building new territorialities and new citizenships. The goal is to generate discussions that help identify the powerful features of visual street art and its potential to transform territory through power, institutional frameworks, and social dynamics—reshaping how such expressions are perceived.