Leiden University Student Repository

Stutz, Siri (2025)

Silent Agitators in the City: Housing Protest Stickers and Urban Surface Dialogue in The Hague

Bachelor thesis | Kunstgeschiedenis (BA)

This thesis studies housing protest stickers in The Hague as a form of urban political expression. Drawing on visual and spatial analysis of sticker placement and interaction, it argues that the qualities of the sticker allow for a unique form of protest. These stickers are small, silent expressions of dissent accessible to all who wish to scratch, rip, or place their own stickers on the same everyday public surfaces. It traces the development of protest stickers to their now widespread usage from their roots in the 1910s before the advent of pressure-sensitive adhesive. Three main case studies of stickers in the city center of The Hague are used to draw out key characteristics of the protest sticker placed on a public surface, namely stickers placed to comment on one another, the temporal and spatial specificity of stickers, and the legal repercussions of an anonymous medium.

Protest stickers

housing crisis

public space

urban semiotics

The Hague

Author

Stutz, Siri

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Arts, Media and Society

Supervisors

S. M. Lauritano

ECTS Credits

10

Language

en