Culture&Territories#3

CeiED | CULTURE & TERRITORY
402
the concept of public space is understanding its structure in the evolution of
contemporary society. Reflecting on public space implies thinking space as a resource,
a product, a social, political and symbolic practice, a place which serves citizens,
and where they gather to express a public opinion – the sphere of public power
(Habermas, 1984: 111). This reflection assumes the urban space as the new art,
as the praxis and poiesis of the city – the art of living in the city as work of art
(Lefebvre, 2001: 134). The city is thus understood as a public space project, since
this is inevitably work produced according to certain interests and which then
becomes a product intended for the consumption of those who will appropriate it,
i.e., a product at the service of its user (Lefebvre, 1973). The social, political and
economic context provides a setting for the project and takes hold of the meanings
and aspirations of the space which contains (hi)story(ies). Public space encompasses
the historical moment, but this does not always coincide with a single historical
period, as can be seen in the streets, squares or parks; these overlap and linger in time.
In line with the praxis and poiesis of space, Lefebvrerefers to the programmed space,
framing institutional actors and political action, so that the aesthetics of space enters
competitive and comparative between the large cities and the affirmation of
territoriality, nearly always along composition principles of the urban space. The
historicist meaning has lost its prominence before the new urbanization processes;
new space identities have arisen, including the very concept of location, as Castells
(1996) puts it, in the network society a new spatiality has emerged, in which a predominance
of space-fluxover space-location can be observed, resulting in changes to its
form, function and meaning. In other words, the locations-in -movement gradually take
over and modify the locations-on-land, and the public space is the first receptor of
this free interaction. Still, one must not forget that underlying any and all public spaces
there is a conceptual root which contains in itself the prime location of communication,
of coming together with social and cultural diversity, a space of democracy
and free use (Habermas, 1984).
TRANSDUCTION INTO PUBLIC SPACE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF
INTERCULTURAL MEDIATION
The trilogy of space experienced from the vision of indigenous peoples – the
biolocal, the ethnolocal and the dislocal, seems to address the trilogy which Lefebvre
sets forth of social space – the perceived, the conceived and the lived. The perceived
comes about from a territorial configuration; the conceived gathers that territoriality
and adds cultural life; and the lived which, starting from social relations, enlivens it.
The ideal theoretical notion is that one can move between these moments without
the “user” losing him/herself; hence transduction 2 , according to Lefebvre (2001: 151),
isunderstood as theact of reflection on the possibility of the imagined object
and emerges as a premise for “rigour in the invention and knowledge in utopia”.