Contesting neoliberal urbanization

• Contesting NeoliberalismBeyond Mapping Today many intelligent exhibitions map the city with the help of advanced mapping techniques mediating all kinds of surprizing and problematic facts. The problem with many of these exhibitions on the city is that they celebrate nothing but the collection; the archive of fascinating urban data. They bring complex heterogeneous elements together in a collection, whereby all the parts exist next to each other without any ideological or hierarchical distinction. Those collections are an attempt at charting the details of our collective world and its history without judgement. The Venice Architecture Biennale “Cities. Architecture and Society” (2006) curated by Richard Burdett, mapping and showing the city1, is such a recent example. The equality of all the parts - universal statements, economic facts, demographic data, photographs, advertising, film, architecture, journalism, interviews, etc. testifies to such a permissive heterogeneity. The new global order of late-capitalism was left unquestioned, as an almost divine institution whose authority derived from the mere fact of its existence. This and other kinds of collections are not capable of inciting a debate that unlocks a secret, neither do they offer resistance. Nor does it deal critically with the chance that new relations arise between the different parts. No position is assumed – the political correct questions at the end of the Venice exhibition on the City proof this – the arrangement of the material is not based on a particular thought or way of political acting. There is no direction conducted from a chosen point of view, nothing could be more boring, further from our human condition than an exhibition which represents just results, trying to describe what a city is with generic questions in green at the end of the exhibition. The problem with the passion for the real in many exhibitions and research is not that it takes the extremes of our reality as a topic of research, but that it is a fake passion whose ruthless pursuit for the real behind appearances is the ultimate datascape to avoid confronting the real. Instead of repeating the present infinitely, or as postmodernist used to say: “the present plus more options”, we need to develop new agenda’s in the face of the urgencies the city has to confront. The mass produced individual took precedence over any idea of community in our market driven society. The power of the market led inexorably towards a passive and atomised society where the citoyen turned over into a client.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Arkitektur (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Architecture (hsv//eng)

Keyword

urbanism

Power

Architecture

Globalization

Neoliberalism

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kap (subject category)