Image Making as Urban Practice
Considering the city as the network within which social life exists and flows; its image is created through the social actions and the production of physical environment. People’s means of interaction and communication have been changed from words to images (Postman, 1985). In such a society, urban growth and image making become simultaneous. Stephens (1998), on the other hand, considers word as the predominant means of mental transport that was replaced with image. As McGowan (2004) interprets a shift in the emphasis on the symbolic order towards the imaginary that occurs in correspondence with the alternation of primacy from word to image. By this emphasis on the image, architecture had faced transformations. As Tafuri indicates in his book ‘Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development’, “the proposals of the new urban ideology may be summed up as follows: architectural and super technological utopianism ; … prophecies of ”aesthetic societies”; and invitations to institute a championship of the imagination (Tafuri, 1976: 139). As the imaginary and empowerment of the image become fundamental in consumer culture, contemporary architecture becomes formal and more about aesthetics. In other words, architecture becomes a player in the process of image making within urban context; as seen in many contemporary metropolises. Cunningham (2005) draws on Tafuri by growing what he saw as the irretrievable descend in its socially transformative desires towards a ‘form without utopia to that of sublime uselessness’; and such uselessness has been massively in ideological use by the contemporary essentials of capital accumulation. Cunningham continues by calling the current drama of architecture as one of ‘spectacle andbrand image’ . Architecture cannot prevail over such relationships, but it can endorse a coherent consciousness of their conditions and promote a new understanding of what they produce as new forms of subjective experience .
The making of image is essential to sustaining the spectacle. However, production of space takes the form of image. Looking into Lefebvre, capitalist mode of production preserves itself through the production of space while urbanization is the primary extension of capitalism (Lefebvre, 1991). Thus, the image making by means of production of spaces in an urban scale becomes an urban practice to sustain the spectacle. As Debored (1992) describes, this is a society that is fundamentally based on the spectacle, which is the endless and perfect image of the dominant economic order; spectacle’s only purpose is to develop itself . On the other hand, he declares that spectacle is a social relationship between people, rather than being a collection of images; but this relationship is mediated by images. Thus, spatial logic of contemporary representations of the world incorporates with production of image; the new mediators and means of communication. So, mediation of those images through production of spaces presents a form of spectacle. The importance of spatial production in the contemporary time makes the spatial changes significant in the course of transformation in the image of the city. As Jameson (1984b) discusses, modern social formation is radically transformed and it has manifested the epochal transference from temporal to spatial. This transference is the cause of a new spatial logic of the world. Thus the urban practice becomes a cycle within which image is produced and spectacle is preserved. This indicates that contemporary society utilizes spaces in the city as mediators to experience spectacle. Cities like Dubai, London, Sydney and many other metropolises promoted spaces embodying festivity, leisure and entertainment as a part of the spectacle.