A few thoughts, especially in light of Jordan's more recent post of
Margaret Morse's quote from "Ontology of Everyday Distracton"...
>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?
Put in the context of the public 'legibility' of the image and the
urban,
these implications, in fact, reveal themselves as potentially
obstructive
for a 'activist inhabitation' of urbanism. It is important to read
Noller
and Ronneberger closely: these "pictures, stories and visions" hold the
space of the urban together, but via their conceptuality; they
specifically
do not target "photographs, novels, and images," their commodified
counterparts. There is an important difference here between, for
example, the tourist snapshot and the postcard. (For the sake of
length, I
will only suggest the relevance of Derrida's text on the later.) The
former is a personal representation of a vision, which often serve to
miniaturize a panorama for a family back home to see. (Critically, the
word "picture" is more appropriate than "image" in this case.) The
latter
is a purchasable, often doctored photograph which serves to represent a
city for millions of people; the same 'vision' is sent home by many.
("Image" is here the proper label.) This is the fundamental difference
between image as a conceptual entity (as is used by
Noller/Ronnenberger) and image as a physical commodity.
>... 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.
But images of our urbanities are certainly created. Even the street
light
banner presents an image of 'city neighborhood.' Yet there are two
problems I have with presenting these images on a level of critical
analysis with the urban. First, if the city is in fact bound together
with
such ephemeral representations as stories and visions, I would argue
that
the commodity representations (the image) serve not to bind together the
urban but to fragment it across a vast network of urbanisms. The idea
of
city is promulgated (both the 'good' and 'bad' of cities) by making them
the same. (And here I refer primarily to the American city.) I can
travel
from one city to another and know that if I look for the banners that
say
'whatever district' I am most likely near a yuppie cafe. Likewise,
unkept
streets with tall brick apartments tell me I am most likely not near a
cafe
of any sort. This trans-urban image is, in fact, running parallel to
the
developments of urbanism, attempting to (like most other media
representations) stamp out the true visions and stories of the city. By
advertising cultural diversity only when it is profitable, for example,
cities continue to project an image of the commodified other (domestic
imperialism, one might suggest) while mainting the traditional
dichotomy of the corporate/the other. These 'real' mechanisms of urban
development are suppressed in the interchangable, trans-urban "media
space." "Publicational" and "public" become inter-convertible only to
the upper/middle class corporate subject. To the other, the
"publicational" is in fact eradicating their "public."
One might also want to look a bit deeper into the issue of the image as
representation. Barbara Maria Stafford (there's a hyphen in there
somewhere) proposes that in fact, we have denigrated the status of the
image as communication for that of textual representations. The image,
with our cultural bias toward the visual, serves as a draw to become
more invested in 'literary' representations. I'm not, as an everyday
consumer, so interested in a particular shopping center's hyperbolic
advertisement imagery as I am to find out that it has "over 450
specialty
stores," "14 theaters," "25 rides and attractions," and "over 20,000"
parking spaces." (This is on the top of my mind, as I'm currently
living
at the Mall of America on a research project.) The image is in fact
abused as a gimmick to attract rather than meaningfully communicate.
(Stafford's point.)
>
>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?
So where would these take us? To imply that the image can be studied
through the language of class politics, cultural diversity, and
corporate
control may sound tempting, but in the end it seems to suggest that the
urban is no greater than the image. And to suggest that the urban can
be
analyzed with a language of the image is to directly make this
reduction.
I do think that the 'hybrid coherencies' represent an interesting aspect
of
this development, but it is important to assert the fundamental
differences between the mechanisms of the image and those of urban.
The urban of course offers its inhabitants the politics and operations
of
physical space; the image, those of a controlled two-dimensional
spatialness.
brian lonsway
......................................................................
j erik jonsson distinguished visiting assistant professor.
rensselaer architecture.
lonsway@rpi.edu.
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