<documenta X><blast> the image/the urban

Jordan Crandall (xaf@interport.net)
Thu, 07 Aug 1997 15:53:54 -0400

Peter Noller and Klaus Ronneberger write that "Pictures, stories, and
visions constitute urbanity as an imaginary object, thus holding the
fragmented space together. These ideologies or … 'myths of urbanity'
present an image of the city as a coherent unit, synthesizing the
diverse practices of the individuals and the collective, while at the
same time forming them." What is the "binding" that holds this
fragmented space, as well as its inhabiting subject, together? What is
the coherency formation that binds image and urban space, viewer and
inhabitant, subject and society?

It seems that we are witnessing the global triumph of both "the urban"
and "the image," fueled by rapid economic and technological advancement
across increasingly permeable borders. A pervasive media space, a
public space of images, surrounds everyday life and reproduces a
condition of the urban, as the urban becomes a mobile, interchangeable
condition that is reproducible everywhere. "Publicational" and "public"
become inter-convertible.

"The image" and "the urban" are embroiled in and viewed through the
scrims of networking technologies and their representations. They bound
and determine each other through the networked image, which helps to
mobilize, embody, and pace its viewer-inhabitant. The image opens up an
inhabitable space, as the viewing subject habitualizes its paces and
techniques. I wonder what field might be articulated here, and what its
historical precedents might be.

An urbanistic approach to the image would foreground these
dwelling-patterns; an imagistic approach to the urban would describe the
construction of the urban through representation. How could we describe
these hybrid coherencies of urbanity and image? In formations of
subject-surface-space-society?

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documenta X Kassel and http://www.documenta.de 1997
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