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known as public space. So to be human in our new
world means to be moving. Our private and public
sphere is more and more established in flux, less
depending on the dominance of one specific localized
place. That’s why we live in a very fragmented patchwork
cityscape which “harmonizes” everything with
everything, and it does not matter if it is either homogeneous
or heterotopic.
To Renew from Within
The heterogeneous nature of the And and its effects
are not necessarily predictable, which means that a
wide range of both positive and negative outcomes can
be generated through development without attributing
these to a metanarrative, or requiring that we solely see
imposition at play. At the same time, though, such
ensembles operate to achieve overall effects thereby
serving a dominant strategic function within our corporate
global world. The paradigm of difference, fluidity
and hybridity within The Society of the And – so celebrated
by contemporary advocates of emancipation –,
is today very much part of the colonization strategies of
corporate globalism too.
Although the urban, capitalist, and modern everyday is
pushing towards increased homogeneity in daily life,
the irreconcilable disjunctions born in the And full of
anachronistic interstices still make it impossible to
think of modernization as only negative. Nothing is ever
fully coherent in The Society of the And: its cultures are
always partial and full of hybrid formations. Michel de
Certeau’s work confirmed the impossibility of a full colonization
of everyday life by late capitalism and
stressed that potential alternatives are always available,
since individuals and institutions arrange
resources and choose methods through particular creative
arrangements. Instead of searching for a position
outside The Society of the And it is better to enter the
terrain of the And and confront its homegenizing and
heterogenizing flows in all its global complexity.
In this And condition old values, strategies and instruments
no longer work. Property developers, architects,
artists, corporations, the media, lawyers, scientists and
multinationals are all devising new spaces and images
in order to give a lead to this new reality. A vacuum has
been created in which an unprecedented degree of
innovation has a chance of success because nobody
knows what the appropriate response to this situation
really is. Research, analysis and experiment bottom-up
are (is)being promoted by almost all the parties that
have a stake in this artificial landscape of The Society of
the And. The point is to reformulate in the midst of economical
correctness, the collapse of national democracy,
and how the network society, where the mega-city
with its new middle-class identity is the dominant
force, driven by profit and competition, full of individual
and collective transformations and fragmentation, with
an abundance of luxury, leisure, comfort and virtuality,
could be a place of sociality, adventure, suspense, different
differences, without becoming a heterogeneous
space were nothing matters any more or a totalitarian
state.
Looking beyond the cliché
When we start looking with the eye of the And we surpass
dualistic thinking, looking for those instances that
renew society from within. Preferable are works that
operate with and within The Society of the And; that sets
a collective and public agenda in direct communication
with modernization. The victimology of
critical theory leaves no room for plausible
readings capable of completing a
project in the mundane context of the
everyday including that of alienation
and commodification. Estrangement
must not be thought of as something to
overcome, but as a position from within
which new horizons can open. What
counts are the creative stammerings
within The Society of the And, as
opposed to conforming and dominants
forms of use. The And is, according to
Gilles Deleuze, “neither the one nor the
other, it is always between the two, it is
the boundary, there is always a boundary,
a vanishing trace or flow, only we
don’t see it, because it is scarcely visible.
And yet it is along this vanishing
trace that things happen, developments
are made, revolutions are
sketched out.” As spacemakers, we
should capitalize on the liberating
moments within The Society of the And.
It should be a desire for truth that masters
the multiplicity of sensations while
constructing a new notion of the public
against the neo-liberal mechanisms of
privitization that accompany the project
of globalization.
With the photos of The Society of the
And, I try to show that we are experiencing
a new modernity that we have
not yet learned to look at, although it is
becoming true in our everyday lives.
The challenge is not only to illustrate
and understand how much our reality is
changing, and which origins have been
lost or even deleted, but also to invite
the viewer to start traveling, to become
a detective, to start to look beyond the
first impression of each photo. With
this travelogue of images, the viewer is
challenged to carry out a montage. A
dialogue full of ambiguities, contradictions
and positions will come into
being. While the viewer is invited to
look to the facts, s / he starts to see
beyond the stereotypical, beyond the
world of stupifying banality, routine and
mechanical reproduction. The format of
the images is chosen that you not only
decode, and decipher what you “read”
(as in the television news); no, you are
also invited to see the free play, the
unfinished pieces, the juxtapositions,
gaps and openings within The Society
of the And. The challenge is to extract a
genuine image from The Society of the
And, free the image from any prior program,
outside point of view, and fixed
gaze, to release ourselves from the suffocation
of the cliché.
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