Graffiti archaeography : the poetics of engagement in Sydney's inner suburbs

This paper introduces a methodological framework in which the fragmented and differentiated material traces of graffiti and urban art production can be negotiated and interpreted. It expands on Michael Shanks's (1997, 2001) postulations, which explore the connections between photography and archaeology, as situated modalities that intervene and engage with the fragmented traces of past communicative practices in the present. This picturing of the archaeologists imagination, what Shanks has aptly coined 'archaeography? rests on the premise that photography and archaeology are reflexive mediations which can breathe new life into the re-articulation of socially constructed artefacts and poetisation of the urban experience. However, neither photography, archaeology or graffiti create transparent windows on the past; "the meaning is a dialogue ? always only partially understood, always an unequal exchange" (Hall 1997, p. 4). As such, the archaeographer becomes an active participant in the reproduction and dissemination of the counter visual rhetoric embedded in graffiti's trace. Drawing from the projects' expansive virtual image archive, readings from the researchers own visual, reflexive and empirical encounters in the unchartered and encoded territories of contemporary graffiti production in Sydney's inner suburbs will be considered.