Spatial practices and narratives

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 732-754 ◽  
Author(s):  
Óscar García Agustín ◽  
Félix J. Aguirre Díaz
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Fictional Narrative ◽  
Santiago De Chile ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global Movement

The Chilean students’ rebellion emerged in 2011 within the wave of global protests. Even though it is an organized movement, with roots in a specific historical context, it shares with the global movement the use of new media technologies, the appropriation of public spaces, and the concern for democracy and equality. The movement deploys flexible forms of organization and mobilization such as flash mobs, in the case analyzed in this article, the GenkiDama for Education. The students create a narrative based on the famous Manga series Dragon Ball Z to reframe the conflict between students and government. As Manga fans, they open up participation to other less politically defined identities. The flash mob moment works as a communicative event in which the narrative is put into place and strengthens a sense of community in the streets of Santiago de Chile. To analyze the connections between the fictional narrative of Manga and the use of the public space, we draw on Michel de Certeau’s theory on spatial practices and the function of stories and place/space. Spatial practices during the flash mob challenge the social and spatial order in order to represent a symbolic victory of the students over the political system.

Spatial practices and narratives

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 732-754
Author(s):  
Óscar García Agustín ◽  
Félix J. Aguirre Díaz
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Santiago De Chile ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global Movement

The Chilean students’ rebellion emerged in 2011 within the wave of global protests. Even though it is an organized movement, with roots in a specific historical context, it shares with the global movement the use of new media technologies, the appropriation of public spaces, and the concern for democracy and equality. The movement deploys flexible forms of organization and mobilization such as flash mobs, in the case analyzed in this article, the GenkiDama for Education. The students create a narrative based on the famous Manga series Dragon Ball Z to reframe the conflict between students and government. As Manga fans, they open up participation to other less politically defined identities. The flash mob moment works as a communicative event in which the narrative is put into place and strengthens a sense of community in the streets of Santiago de Chile. To analyze the connections between the fictional narrative of Manga and the use of the public space, we draw on Michel de Certeau’s theory on spatial practices and the function of stories and place/space. Spatial practices during the flash mob challenge the social and spatial order in order to represent a symbolic victory of the students over the political system.

scholarly journals Historicizing media, globalizing media research: infrastructures, publics, and everyday life

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-453 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Schroeder
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Research ◽  
The Cold War

AbstractVisions of media spanning the globe and connecting cultures have been around at least since the birth of telegraphy, yet they have always fallen short of realities. Nevertheless, with the internet, a global infrastructure has emerged, which, together with mobile and smartphones, has rapidly changed the media landscape. This far-reaching digital connectedness makes it increasingly clear that the main implications of media lie in the extent to which they reach into everyday life. This article puts this reach into historical context, arguing that, in the pre-modern period, geographically extensive media networks only extended to a small elite. With the modern print revolution, media reach became both more extensive and more intensive. Yet it was only in the late nineteenth century that media infrastructures penetrated more widely into everyday life. Apart from a comparative historical perspective, several social science disciplines can be brought to bear in order to understand the ever more globalizing reach of media infrastructures into everyday life, including its limits. To date, the vast bulk of media research is still concentrated on North America and Europe. Recently, however, media research has begun to track broader theoretical debates in the social sciences, and imported debates about globalization from anthropology, sociology, political science, and international relations. These globalizing processes of the media research agenda have been shaped by both political developments and changes in media, including the Cold War, decolonization, the development of the internet and other new media technologies, and the rise of populist leaders.

Illusions of Empowerment

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corinne Weisgerber
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Media ◽  
The Public ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Digital Democracy ◽  
Internet Users ◽  
Attention Economy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Media Systems

This article calls into question the social media empowerment narrative and the underlying idea that social media platforms are empowering everyday netizens to have their voices heard. The author argues that social media technologies may simply privilege only those Internet users who are new media savvy and have leisure time to participate in the so-called digital democracy. While social media systems might have lowered the entrance threshold for civic engagement, hurdles such as the growing competition in an attention economy, the odds of standing out amidst millions of other individual voices, knowledge of new media technologies required to achieve visibility, and time demands make the social media empowerment vision more difficult to attain than the architects of the empowerment ideology have made the public to believe.

Urban Design as a Form of Agonistic Democratic Expression

2019 ◽  
pp. 120633121986126
Author(s):  
José Francisco Vergara-Perucich
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Spatial Practices ◽  
The Public ◽  
Design Practices ◽  
Santiago De Chile ◽  
Agonistic Democracy ◽  
Democratic System

This article reflects on the potential of urban design to contribute to spatializing the theory of agonistic democracy grounding this reflection by three specific urban practices that have emerged from cracks in the democratic system under neoliberalism: a protest, a community-developed square, and an artistic intervention in the public space. The analysis of these practices valorizes the role of urban design as a potential methodology for contesting the consensus of democracy from the very praxis of shaping urban spaces illustrating how urban design practices can contribute to democratizing society. “How do urban design practices contribute to the discussion of democracy under neoliberalism?” The spatial practices analyzed were observed in three different neoliberal cities: marches in Santiago de Chile, an informal public space in Madrid’s downtown, and an artistic intervention near Euston in London. Finally, the article constructs an agenda for a democratic contestation using urban design resulted from these explorations of spaces of dissensus.

The hunger striker: a case for embodied visuality

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bishnupriya Ghosh
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Iconic Image ◽  
Popular Movements ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Formal Operations ◽  
New Media Technologies

‘Image operations’ immediately evokes the rich scholarship on new media technologies, be they satellite or drone images. Their shadow occludes another mode of image mobilisation: the formation of popular movements against state and corporate hegemonies. At the centre of such mobilisation lies an ‘embodied visuality’, harnessing spectatorial senses to the image and forging collectivity among those held in its thrall. A theory of embodied visuality indexes the social power of the image, a power perhaps most potent in the icon. Focusing on one kind of iconic image, visceral and sensuous, this chapter considers the image operations of the hunger striker in forging the popular. It looks at the anti-governmental campaign launched in the name of Irom Sharmila, the iron lady of Manipur, and asks: What is the nature of Sharmila’s appeal? Can we argue it has something to do with the formal operations of the image or its specific historical materiality? Can its operation be generalized beyond the historical context of Manipur?

Disruptive Fixation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christo Sims
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
New Media ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Complex Processes ◽  
Middle Schoolers ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Media ◽  
Class Divisions ◽  
Conventional Type

In New York City in 2009, a new kind of public school opened its doors to its inaugural class of middle schoolers. Conceived by a team of game designers and progressive educational reformers and backed by prominent philanthropic foundations, it promised to reinvent the classroom for the digital age. This book documents the life of the school from its planning stages to the graduation of its first eighth-grade class. It is the account of how this “school for digital kids,” heralded as a model of tech-driven educational reform, reverted to a more conventional type of schooling with rote learning, an emphasis on discipline, and traditional hierarchies of authority. Troubling gender and racialized class divisions also emerged. The book shows how the philanthropic possibilities of new media technologies are repeatedly idealized even though actual interventions routinely fall short of the desired outcomes. It traces the complex processes by which idealistic tech-reform perennially takes root, unsettles the worlds into which it intervenes, and eventually stabilizes in ways that remake and extend many of the social predicaments reformers hope to fix. It offers a nuanced look at the roles that powerful elites, experts, the media, and the intended beneficiaries of reform—in this case, the students and their parents—play in perpetuating the cycle. The book offers a timely examination of techno-philanthropism and the yearnings and dilemmas it seeks to address, revealing what failed interventions do manage to accomplish—and for whom.

Early Debates

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Llano
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Domestic Space ◽  
Limited Resources ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Conduct Manuals ◽  
The Public ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
The Social ◽  
Undeserving Poor

This chapter provides an account of how organilleros elicited public anger because their activity did not fit into any of the social aid categories that had been in place since the late eighteenth century. Social aid in Spain relied on a clear-cut distinction between deserving and undeserving poor in order to rationalize the distribution of limited resources and reduce mendicancy on the streets. Organilleros could not, strictly speaking, be considered idle, since they played music, but their activity required no specific skills and was regarded with suspicion as a surrogate form of begging. The in-betweenness of the organillero caused further anger as it challenged attempts to establish a neat distinction between public and private spaces. On one hand, organillo music penetrated the domestic space, which conduct manuals of the nineteenth century configured as female; on the other, it brought women into the public space, which those manuals configured as male.

scholarly journals Poetic Examination of Spatial Experience: Suprematist Composition No. 1, Black on Grey by Kristina Leko

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-176
Author(s):  
Katarina Rukavina
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Virtual Space ◽  
Spatial Experience ◽  
The Public ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
The Social ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
Art Intervention ◽  
The City

The paper analyses the concept of space in contemporary art on the example of Suprematist Composition No. 1, Black on Grey by Kristina Leko from 2008. Referring to Malevich’s suprematism, in December 2008 Leko initiated a project of art intervention in Ban Jelačić Square in Zagreb, where she intended to cover in black all commercials, advertisements, signs and names of various companies. This poetic intervention, as the artist calls it, was intended to prompt people to relativise material goods in the pre-Christmas period. However, despite the authorisation obtained from the city authorities, the companies concerned refused to remove their respective advertisements, be it for only for 24 hours, so this project has never been realised. The project, however, does exist in the virtual space, which is also public, and continues to act in the form of documentation. The non-feasibility of the intervention, or rather its invisibility on Jelačić Square, makes visible or directly indicates the ordering of the powers and the constellation of values in the social sphere, thus raising new questions. Indeed, in this way it actually enters the public space, sensitising and expanding it at the same time.

scholarly journals El Patrimonio cultural inmaterial de la Plaza Baquedano en Santiago de Chile = The Intangible Cultural Heritage of Plaza Baquedano in Santiago de Chile

2018 ◽  
pp. 74
Author(s):  
Karina Orozco Salinas
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Public Space ◽  
El Paso ◽  
Intangible Cultural Heritage ◽  
The Public ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Santiago De Chile ◽  
Open Discussion ◽  
The City ◽  
Over Time

ResumenEsta investigación parte de la necesidad de poner el foco en los espacios públicos identitarios, en los cuales la constante congregación espontánea y masiva de la ciudadanía, ha construido un patrimonio cultural inmaterial en ellos, a la hora de celebrar colectivamente en la ciudad. Desde este enfoque, se aborda el caso de la Plaza Baquedano en Santiago de Chile, mediante una metodología propia que contrarresta fuentes secundarias, principalmente periodísticas, con fuentes empíricas. Por lo que seaplican encuestas y entrevistas, con el fin de comprender el fenómeno desde el contexto urbano, social, celebración y patrimonio del lugar. Asimismo, lograr la perspectiva interna y externa del estudio de caso.Los resultados obtenidos confirman la existencia del patrimonio inmaterial y el carácter de identidad, que se ha generado con el paso del tiempo en este espacio público y, tanto la visión interna como la externa, consideran que debería ser catalogado como patrimonio cultural del país. Sin  embargo, esta mención no ha sido otorgada por alguno de los  instrumentos vinculantes en Chile. Por lo cual es una discusión abierta,ya que en la opinión de expertos consultados la complejidad de otorgar una figura de protección inmovilizaría el dinamismo que ha constituido a este lugar como tal.AbstractThis research departs from the need to focus in the public identitary spaces, in which the constant congregation spontaneous and massive of citizenship, has built an intangible cultural heritage in them, when it comes to celebrating collectively in the city. From this approach, is addressed the case of Plaza Baquedano in Santiago de Chile, through our methodology that combine secondary sources, mainly journalistic, with empirical sources. So that, surveys and interviews are applied in order to understand thephenomenon from the urban, social, celebration and heritage context’s.In addition, to achieve internal and external perspective of the case. The results collated confirm the existence of heritage and the identity character, which has been generated over time in this public space and both vision internal and external, consider that it should be cataloged as country’s cultural heritage. However, this mention has not been granted by some of the binding instruments in Chile. Therefore it is an open discussion, since in the opinion of the experts consulted the complexity of granting a protection figure would immobilize the dynamism that has built this place as such.

scholarly journals Nuevos usos espaciales en las estaciones ferroviarias de alta velocidad/New space use of high speed railway stations

2018 ◽  
pp. 86-105
Author(s):  
Carlos Hugo Soria Caceres
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
High Speed ◽  
Main Function ◽  
High Speed Rail ◽  
Railway Stations ◽  
The Public ◽  
Palabras Clave ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Space

RESUMENLas infraestructuras de transporte presentes sobre el territorio condicionan las relaciones sociales y de comunicación de muchos espacios. Grandes estaciones, puertos o aeropuertos se presentan como ejes de centralidad sobre los que se distribuyen flujos de mercancías y personas, configurando a su vez el diseño y la funcionalidad de las ciudades. Hoy en día, con el avance producido en sectores como el ferrocarril de alta velocidad, las estaciones han transformado su función principal de nudo de intercambio, proyectándose como nuevos espacios comerciales y de negocio. En este artículo se analiza este nuevo fenómeno de transformación espacial y social vinculado a la alta velocidad ferroviaria, focalizando su ámbito en España. Se desgrana a su vez el papel de las comunidades sociales, políticas y empresariales para la ciudad y el espacio público presentes en las nuevas estaciones de ferroviarias. Palabras clave: ferrocarril; espacio público; urbanismo. ABSTRACTThis work aims to discuss the transport infrastructures presents on the territory and the conditions to the social and communication relations of many spaces. Large stations, ports or airports are presented as axes of centrality on which flows of goods and people are distributed, configuring in turn the design and functionality of cities. Nowadays, with the advance produced in sectors such as high-speed rail, the stations have transformed their main function as an exchange hub, projecting themselves as new commercial and business spaces. This article analyzes this new phenomenon of spatial and social transformation linked to high-speed rail, focusing its scope in Spain. At the same time, the role of the social, political and business communities for the city and the public space present in the new railway stations.Keywords: railroad; public space; urbanism.

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