Envisioning atmospheres of spectacle and activism. Utopia and critical urbanism instruments for the reclamation of the fragmented territories of the WALL and the MALL

Abstract

Woundedlands are places of crisis of the civic sphere where architecture contributes to escalate the agency of forces that annihilate associative, differential and commoning processes. They are exemplary expression of the destructive capacity of contemporary technology to increase control, abstraction and exclusion. This paper addresses two salient Woundedland types: the WALL and the MALL. The WALL—a harsh boundary displacing and negating access to the stranger—epitomizes the increasing instances of unmovable and unforgiving socio-spatial divides. The heavily armed Korean Demilitarized Zone is chosen as an egregious walling example. The MALL—a supreme urban embodiment of digitally enhanced urban de-commoning and homogenizing forces—typifies the postconsumerist spectacular production of implanted and exogenous pseudo-civic centralities. The heterotopic metropolitan centre of Sylvia Park—the main malled centre in New Zealand—is selected as a representative instance of the dissociative enclaves of spectacle. Two major phenomena characterize the spatial production of these Woundedlands: pervasive translocalization—the diffusing mobilization of territorialization patterns—and multiassociative transduction—the iterative production of combinant and immersive metastable spatialities. This paper presents design proposition sets that address these phenomena and reimagine these Woundedlands as productive utopias: Wonderlands of reappropriated and (re)creational spatialities. These are cultural responses to the contemporary mode of production, challenging and transmuting its alienating apparatuses. They recast symbols of geopolitical and mercantile warfare into possible analogue worlds with a rich mix of instrumentalities that support existing counterforces. They have metastable spatialities that affirm the emerging forms of communing, relationality and differentiation of the digitally augmented social networks. The propositions contribute to a better cultural understanding of the current spatial paradigm. Alternative discursive frameworks of coordinated narratives with scenario-based and context-specific sign-value articulations support tightly crafted chains of recoded elements that leverage on the agency of desire. Allegorical fabulatory proses envision (extra)ordinary commoning machines for pluralism, justice and jouissance affirm the value and necessity of utopia.