This chapter by Alexandra Duncan prompts deeper inquiry into site-specificity and the ways in which site––as a “problem-idea” (137)––situates and informs interpretations of the graffito. Through the transferral of image from one space to another, the potential meanings, interpretations and primary affective experience of viewing a graffito are transformed.
Duncan, in quoting Michael Glover for The Independent, highlights the important factors of street graffiti: its uncertainty, spontaneity, ephemerality, and urgency (130). These factors are not present when transferred to a gallery space. Duncan writes that “in a gallery context, the imagery remains static and unchanging” (130). Thus, through engaging in a close reading of an image’s situation in space––”smooth” or “striated” (135)––temporality and ephemerality transform the affective qualities of image interpretation.