In this article, ethnographic research developed within the graffiti community of Lisbon is the starting point for a reflection regarding the social condition of the young members of this community. The graffiti writers live between two social and cultural universes, building complex strategies to manage identity and everyday life. Graffiti represents for many young people a ground for struggle and transgression, a chance to reject the law and hegemonic normatives, an arena where they experiment excitement, risk, heroic conduct and sometimes painful sanctions. In a security-prone society, danger becomes a space for freedom, where young writers challenge the limits of life and normative boundaries. This is often why there is a feeling of release and autonomy and of escaping the disciplinary control of social norms and worldly habits. This is why the nature of their exploits appears to be endowed with greatness and heroism.

Urban Art is gradually assuming an increasingly significant role in the development of a city’s character, something which is often promoted by public institutions. This has been strongly instigated by the rhetoric of creative cities, present in the strategies for the urban development of many cities in recent years. The rising appreciation of this artistic movement and the recognition of the cultural and symbolic role it currently plays are accompanied by a growing offer of tourism services in this field, namely, through dozens of tours operated by multiple entities. The literature has, in fact, been paying some attention to this phenomenon of touristification of Urban Art. In this article, we draw on qualitative empirical material from an ongoing research project on Urban Art in the city of Lisbon. We consider the touristification of Urban Art in Lisbon to be a recent and still ongoing process involving several social actors with specific perspectives, strategies, actions and representations. We have concluded that there is currently a combination of social and economic factors favourable to the development of this process of touristification. This could not have happened without (a) a number of institutional initiatives, (b) local entrepreneurship ventures and (c) the development of a narrative shared by the different agents.

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Neste artigo, centramo-nos sobre um formato de comunicação tipicamente urbano, o graffiti, examinando algumas das alterações que se registaram nos últimos anos, como consequência da grande expansão das tecnologias e plataformas digitais de comunicação. Tendo por base uma análise do graffiti existente na área metropolitana de Lisboa, procuramos desvendar outras facetas desta prática cultural que, atualmente, não vive exclusivamente da cidade e dos seus suportes comunicacionais, passando a estar cada vez mais presente no mundo virtual. A internet e a democratização do acesso a tecnologias digitais de registo em imagem (telemóveis, câmaras fotográficas e de vídeo), facultaram aos jovens que fazem graffiti novas ferramentas para alcançarem o almejado espaço de visibilidade que procuram, inaugurando novos formatos de comunicação e alargando o campo dos destinatários desta linguagem visual. Argumentamos que este processo está em consonância com a cultura visual contemporânea, que faz a síntese entre uma crescente globalização, digitalização e hibridização das iconografias e linguagens visuais. A pixelização dos muros refere-se, precisamente, a esta gradual transição do graffiti das paredes urbanas para as múltiplas telas e redes eletrônicas, deste modo alterando a forma como esta atividade se produz e se dissemina, sendo actualmente dirigida a um público cada vez mais vasto.

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