Urban ima(r)ginary: aesthetics and politics in practices and collective representations of visual producers in contemporary metropolises

Abstract

This postdoctoral project aims to scrutinize the actions and relationships that have been developed by a variety of actors dedicated to practices of visual intervention politically oriented in different territories, usually located in major metropolitan centers. I will seek, during the research, to understand the range of possibilities responsible for modulating the engagement of these individuals around collective associations (or "coletivos") aimed at initiatives of visualization and strengthening of alternative imaginaries to those commonly played by the media or by the hegemonic "official voices" linked to public institutions regarding the interpretation of social/symbolic meanings of urban borders and its political developments. Through ethnographic reconstruction of relationships networks, interventions and the personal trajectories of the agents surveyed, I intend to point to the way in which, in recent years, we are faced with the deepening of a true narrative and iconographic battle over the meaning of the category "city ".