City and Culture

And it’s presence in the Visual Arts

Florence Gouvrit-Montano
Department of Arts
The Ohio State University
http://gouvrit.org
2010
Situationist map
• “In societies dominated by modern conditions of
production, life is presented as an immense accumulation
of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has
receded into a representation [...] The spectacle is not a
collection of images; it is a social relation between people
that is mediated by images”. Guy Debord, The Society of
the Spectacle , 1967

• The International Situationist (group of international

intellectuals and revolutionaries led by Guy Debord,
1957-1972)

• Method “The derive” or drift

 One of the basic situationist practices is the dérive [literally:
“drifting”], a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances.
Dérives involve playful-constructive behavior and awareness of
psychogeographical effects, and are thus quite different from the
classic notions of journey or stroll.

In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop

their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other
usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be
drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find
there. Chance is a less important factor in this activity than one
might think: from a dérive point of view cities have
psychogeographical contours, with constant currents, fixed points
and vortexes that strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain
zones.
--Guy Debord
 "There was the pedestrian who wedged himself into
the crowd, but there was also the flâneur who
demanded elbow room and was unwilling to forego
the life of the gentleman of leisure. His leisurely
appearance as a personality is his protest against the
division of labour which makes people into specialists.
it was also his protest against their industriousness.
Around 1840 it was briefly fashionable to take turtles
for a walk in the arcades. the flâneurs liked to have the
turtles set the pace for them."

-- Walter Benjamin
"...I spend a lot of time walking around the city...
The initial concept for a project often emerges during a walk.
As an artist, my position is akin to that of a passer-by
constantly trying to situate myself in a moving environment.

My work is a succession of notes and guides.

The invention of a language goes together with the invention
of a city. Each of my interventions is another fragment of the
story that I am inventing, of the city that I am mapping."

(Francis Alÿs, Mexico City 1993)

Francis Alys, the last clown
Alex Rivera
• Alex Rivera is a New York based digital media artist and
filmmaker.

• His work is based on: the globalization of information through

the internet, and the globalization of families, and communities,
through mass migration.

• Film: Why Cybraceros? (5 min. 1997) parody film based on

California Grower's Council, titled Why Braceros? This film was
used by the Grower's Council to defend the use of braceros, or
temporary Mexican farmhands.

• Film: Sleep Dealer, (2009) Sci-fi, narrative film that presents

under a dystopian setting issues of immigration, labor, water
rights, and the nature of sustainable development.
>

Buttermilk Bottom (1995) and

Voices of Renewal(2000)
collective
Gentrify!, 2008
Geraldine Juarez
Out From Under the King George Hotel
(2000)
Homeless Vehicle Project (1988-89)
Krzysztof Wodiczko
(P)LOT (2004)
Michael Rakowitz
Urban Nomad Shelter (2004)
Electroland
 PARK(ing) Day (2005)
REBAR collective
(2009: 700 parks, 140 cities, 21 countries, 6 continents)