Hardcore punk, graffiti writing, ultras, social centers, and protest movements are worlds that society tends to interpret as disorder, excess, or sometimes even a threat. Yet, each of these worlds has produced its own rules, recognizable languages, solidarity networks, and shared practices. In doing so, they have generated aesthetic, political, and ethical forms that are often more coherent and demanding than those of the mainstream context that rejected or suppressed them.
The exhibition features over two hundred documents, including photographs, posters, flyers, records, jerseys, scarves, stickers, and books. These materials document not only what these cultures did, but how they did it. Their common denominators are self-production, self-management, and a conscious choice to remain outside—often radically—the market and mainstream conformity.
Elia Mazzotti Gentili, Pietro Rivasi, and Gianmario Sannicola are members of the Urbaner scientific committee. As activists and cultural organizers, they have been operating for years within the field of urban cultures and dissent, spanning graffiti writing, self-production, ultras, and metropolitan counterculture.
Urbaner is a research platform dedicated to urban countercultures and subcultures, active since 2020 on the initiative of the Department of Culture of the Municipality of Modena. It was founded with the ambition of becoming a permanent study center and observatory for cultures born and raised within the urban space—such as graffiti writing and new muralism, punk-hardcore and hip-hop music, sports fandom, skateboarding, tattooing, self-production, and independent publishing. Through this mission, it places Modena at the center of a debate that is not only local, but national and international.
