The festival Calle Libre dealt with urban art and contemporary forms of graffiti and street art. The intention behind inviting artists from Latin American countries to join the local scene was to provide a cross-section of the global movement and contemporary trends of this art form and put them forward for discussion. The festival offered an opportunity to explore, document, and reflect the artistic and cultural strategies used by graffiti and street artists. The event highlighted the potential of installations, urban interventions, and performative approaches for individual and collective processes of identity formation.

Street art has long since established itself as a genre within the discourse of contemporary art in public space. Its artists and groups of artists rely on a wide range of materials, media, techniques, and methods. Different forms of art—painting, sculpture, experimental design, installations, music, interpretative and performance art—overlap. The innovative and critically reflexive decontextualization of well-known graphic elements, images, signs, symbols, and texts provides a foundation for thwarting existing patterns of thinking, putting objects in a new context of meaning, and defamiliarizing or questioning the reception of traditional views.

The festival was accompanied by an exhibition at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, a panel discussion, and an evening event. Three workshops with the artists Fefe Talavera (BR), Marina Zumi (AR), and Shed (AT) were held in the context of the project.