Spaces of the representation and spaces of the presence

 2016

CONTESTED_CITIES INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS, AXIS 5: URBANS ALTERNATIVES (WPCC-165526)

PEDRO CORTÉS NIEVES

This research aims to study the influence of architecture, in its material dimension and in its potential of organizing behaviors and practices related to the political scenario that configures the contemporary city. For that purpose, we will focus on the study of political representation spaces, their organization and functions, and in the spaces of presence, especially on their potential for urban transformation.

On the basis of the study of the “Congress of Deputies” in Madrid, we will analyze the spatial factors in the representational strategies used by contemporary Western governments. This process will allow generating a fictitious framework of political consensus, which limits the possibilities of diversity in the public space, transforming users into spectators of urban life. To reverse this situation, we will analyze the techniques used by Brecht in his epic theater and introduce them in this case study. This method will set the parameters to recover the spectators’ political capacity from their participation, in the world of the sensitive and in their relationship with the quotidian democracy.

The German playwright defends a space constituted and generated through collective actions in front of the fiction of the classical theater, as the only condition of possibility. This process of (re) construction of a common space, recovers the capacity to change isolated actions and bringing back the presence to any political actor; it is a possibility to reformulate the conditions of the urban space.

The fiction mechanism will lay the foundations of a space-based politics of presence, where spectators emerge as an active part in the production of the space. The considered invisible will turn visible, reassessing the space policies in what we call “space of the presence.”

The space of presence is understood as areas of social and spatial conflict, capable of overcoming current policies of consensus. It allows the rise of participation micro-policies in the production of space.

 

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