Course Overview

The course explores the aesthetics and ethics of urban writing, public lettering, and various textual forms that rely upon urban spaces and surfaces: graffiti, commemorative inscriptions, signage, advertising, and text-based public art. It examines the ways in which languages, cultures, spatial ideologies and histories intercede and interplay in the making and re-configuring of urban texts. It looks as well at interpretive strategies and discourses of endorsement and containment of textual experiences and practices. The historical and theoretical reflections are linked to case studies and examples taken from the contemporary art and media, graphic design and street art that explore the relationship of letters, text and language to place, architecture and urban landscape.

The course incorporates trans-disciplinary methodologies and theoretical questions that are crucial for probing urban semiotic landscapes, representations of cities in media texts, as well as the spatial and dynamic dimensions of everyday urban texts. Much emphasis will be placed on the multimodality of textual and spatial practices and forms of presentation of knowledge and on trans-disciplinary methods for investigating texts in specific urban contexts. In their projects, students will creatively engage with urban texts by exploring theories and concepts as well as examining and interpreting textual artefacts, written forms, language signs, images, spatial practices, media representations and discourses.