WRITTEN BY FRANCESCA DEL BOCA

PHOTOGRAPHED BY FEDERICA COCCIRO

TRANSLATED BY FRANCESCA QUAGLIA

“Urban guerrilla is an attitude. Spam is an undesired message we get all of a sudden, without our permission, like the one we get in our email. The reason behind all this is, at the end, that of communicating something to others, inside of a shared and communal space: not just through posters, also through sculptures, installations, performances, embroidered flags, books, fanzines and wall paintings.”

“If artistic means are used to convey social messages, you triumph over the political manifesto, which is only a slogan, by blending social critique and poetry together. Something so rare and exceptional. Not to mention that we forgot how to get to know the other, how to get to know who’s different from us. Art and society have both frequently neglected certain minorities, diversities. We try to do the opposite in what we do, we try to take care of that category of people which have less voice like refugees, prisoners, or minors in communities.”

“In conclusion, if artists, philosophers and authentic intellectuals would run this crazy world we would be better off. But this utopia is as old as Platon, who knows if it will come true. Art can also be a vehicle of protest. Certainly not of actual change but it can trigger doubts and produce questions.”

Guerrilla Spam was born in Florence in 2010 as a non-authorized spontaneous action of billposting in urban spaces. Today they alternate this practice and interventions of wall painting, installations, actions, performances and workshops, both in Italy and abroad. They work in heterogeneous spaces, from occupations at modern and contemporary art museums, to schools, juvenile communities, jails and shelters; they always privilege the use of the urban public space as a collective space.

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