The City as Text and Pretext. From Metropolitan Aesthetics to Contemporary Artistic Practices

Abstract

The title already evokes a reading of the city’s de velopment over the last century. The inrush of the metropolis, under a successful though n ot always effective age of majority, at the beginning of the 20 th century, and the need or modern willingness to tac kle it from different epistemic environments (anthropology, sociol ogy, history, aesthetics, architecture…) made it the text which the different textures refin ed, those of a modernity that started to sadly and progressively lose its initial agitated a nd experimental metropolitan condition in favor of a more functional, rational, as well as co ld and impersonal profile. Thus, in the last three decades, besides the postmodern contestation of the city's urban reduction, the contemporary artistic practices, with their gestures, have been keeping the city text as a pretext text. The city has been invoked again to reactivate , when not to initiate, discourse and aesthetic reflections that go beyond the strict artist ic action and condition. The political potential, which travelled throughout the 20 th century from anthropology and sociology, is brought back to life, but with an appeal to a multi disciplinary plot typical of the 21 st century, which never loses sight of the complicated balance between the monumental sovereignty and the libertarian attitude of the happening´s res istance (Veyne). Proof of that is the double rearmament of the artis tic meaning from both the action poetics and the aesthetic reception. The doing of T unick or Bansky ―just to cite two young languages and artists― for their, for lack of a better word, plastic practice and their giving back to the city the lost porosity aft er the patina’s order and the rationality of the International Style (Bahnam, Le Corbusier .) Artistic practices that visually boost the ephemeral condition of men and the city, inserting a discontinuity and fragmentation more in harmony with the imaginary of the art ―liquid (Bauman), shadow (Perniola), complot (Baudrillard)...―. Pract ices, finally, which are also related and recuperate the metropolis-text (Benjamin, S immel, Grosz) reopening reflec-