Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the spatiality of trainwriting using an ethnogeographic approach. Through ethnographic fieldwork and mobile methods, it uncovers the circulatory territories and infrageopolitics of this practice, offering a unique methodology to understand sociospatial dynamics in urbanization

Paper long abstract:

Graffiti has become a significant part of city life worldwide, often regarded as one of the most visible expressions of global urban culture. Paradoxically, in some places, such as on the static and mobile surfaces of urban infrastructure along railway lines, its presence often goes unnoticed, like cigarette butts scattered along station platforms. From an ethnogeographic perspective, the transgressive graffiti on trains (trainwriting) at the core of this paper is far from ordinary. By tracking the ephemeral inscriptions left by trainwriters and connecting places as in a game of dots, the ghost trail of their off-route trajectories reveals the rhythmic movements of a ‘heretical dance’ shaped within the underground arenas of public urban life.

Based on multisited fieldwork conducted between 2010 and 2015 as part of my PhD research, this paper examines a group of trainwriters based in Switzerland but networked across Europe. It describes the conceptual approach and mobile methods used to uncover the choreography of graffiti trainwriting and map the 'infrageopolitics' (Tadorian, 2021) that underpin it. More importantly, it introduces an original methodological approach that provides a deeper understanding of the socio-spatial dynamics specific to contemporary urbanisation, particularly the production of social spaces under circulatory conditions—what I term “translocational social spaces.”