La No-Ciutat
2016
La No-Ciutat (The Non-City) is an artistic research (BA thesis) on the relationship between the individual and the city. Its main objective is to understand what type of social space the city is and how it influences its inhabitants, and vice verse. At the same time, it involves the development of an artistic practice that allows me to conceive and experience the researched city, Barcelona, supposedly familiar, in a different way than the already known. Both processes aim to bring me closer to an awareness of the urban space, in particular transitional public spaces, their visible and hidden codes, and their influence.
This project was presented and granted with honors at EINA University School of Design and Art of Barcelona. It was supervised by Artur Muñoz and evaluated by the tribunal formed by Enric Font, Artur Muñoz and Lluís Nacenta.
This project was presented and granted with honors at EINA University School of Design and Art of Barcelona. It was supervised by Artur Muñoz and evaluated by the tribunal formed by Enric Font, Artur Muñoz and Lluís Nacenta.
Given that technology has transformed the relationship we establish between space and time and limits the sensory contact with our immediate surroundings, I aim to recover my most instinctive relationship with the space through the practice of drawing. I think that the exercise of drawing is a way to recover the sensory dimension of urban life, because it forces me to establish a close, committed and real contact with the urban space, in my opinion much more than other means linked to technology such as photography or video. I aim to present and defend the practice of drawing as a functional and valuable tool of scientific observation, exploration and documentation.
Henri Lafebvre conceived the city as a place where we find a complex set of infrastructures and where a considerably large population lives. On the other hand, he claimed that what is urban is not the city, but the practices that never cease to travel through it and fill it with journeys (Delgado, 2007: 11)1. These journeys and unceasing practices will ultimately become the subject on focus throughout this research and, consequently, what I will aim to express through the drawing.
The social antropologist Manuel Delgado, main reference of my thesis, introduces me to the key concept of the ‘non-place’ and, by extension, of the ‘non-city’, which does not refer to something contrary or hidden from the city itself, but to that same thing that forms it and at the same time dissolves it. The non-city is “a perpetual undoing of what has already been done and an incessant remaking of what we have just seen disintegrate before our eyes. It is constantly pierced by beings –the passers-by– who try to accommodate themselves as best they can to their absence of place. Each of them responds to the figure of the ‘quidam’, someone who passes by and who only exists insofar as he passes by; unknown; no one in general; everyone in particular” (Delgado, 2007: 62-63)1.
Based on Delgado’s definition of the non-city, I assume that the fact of observing and drawing the urban environment implies simultaneously the creation of the non-city itself. That is to say, the action of drawing the space is also one of the possible ways of traversing it, living it and, as Delgado claims, “an experience of placelessness that implies making a journey”. But instead of a physical journey, it is here a mental journey, transmitted and interpreted by the hand that draws. It will be during this thesis project when I associate for the first time clearly, the notions of non-place and non-city with values of possibility and for the creation of the urban experience, an association that already Duvignaud and De Certeau defended (Delgado, 2007: 61)1.
This project consists of research into art, in other words, a case study as research as it is a reflection on the action and there is no distance between the researcher and their artistic practice. However, it is also research into art because it has the intention of extracting valid conclusions about the artistic practice from a theoretical distance, which involves a fundamental separation between the researcher and the object of the research (in this case, the city and specifically the urban space). The common characteristics of this type of research are reflection and interpretation (Borgdorff, 2006)2.
Bibliography:
1. DELGADO, Manuel. 2007. Sociedades Movedizas: Pasos Hacia Una Antropología De Las Calles. Editorial Anagrama. Barcelona.
2. BORGDORFF, Henk. 2006. The Debate On Research In The Arts. Bergen National Academy of the Arts. Bergen.
3. BERGER, John. (1973). Ways of Seeing. British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books. London.
4. BERGER, John. (2011). Berger on Drawing. Editorial Gustavo Gili, SL. Barcelona.
5. BRIDGE, Gary; WATSON, Sophie. (2002). A Companion to the City. Blackwell Publishing. Padstow.
6. CARRERA , Judit. (2015). Geografía De Los Sentidos. El País. Catalonien.
7. DEBORD, Guy. (2002). Guy Debord and the Situationist Internationale. Traduït i editat per Thomas Y. Levin. MIT Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London.
8. DEBORD, Guy. (1955). Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography. Les Lèvres Nues. #6. Paris.
9. DEBORD, Guy. (1958). Theory of the Derive. Internationale Situationniste. #2. Paris.
10. GUAYABERO, Òscar. (2014). TRAÇ, El Dibuix Com Eina De Coneixement. Dossier de premsa. Barcelona.
11. MANTILLA, Gilda; CHAVES, Raimond. (2009). Dibujando América. Artist's book for the 2nd Triennial Poli/Gràfica of San Juan: Latin America and the Caribbean; organized by the Puerto Rican Institute of Culture.
12. PARK, Robert E.; BURGESS, Ernest W.; MCKENZIE, Roderick D. (1925). The City. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago and London.
13. PEREC, Georges. (1992). Tentative d’Épuisement d’Un Lieu Parisien. Beatriz Viterbo Editora. Rosario.
14. PLANT, Sadie. (1992). The Most Radical Gesture: The Situationist International In A Postmodern Age. Routledge. London; New York.
Audiovisual:
15. STEINBERG, Saul. (1967). Talks. Documentary.
Digital Referents:
16. Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana <http://www.enciclopedia.cat> [01/05/2016].
17. Gran Enciclopèdia Catalana, <http://www.enciclopedia.cat> [01/08/2016].
18. MANTILLA, Gilda; CHAVES, Raimond. (2009). Dibujando América. <http://www.dibujandoamerica.net> [10/06/2016].