Once I have expressed my interest in the line of work ‘Architectural Imaginaries’, I will present my proposal with the following contents: 01. TITLE & ABSTRACT 02. CONCEPT. OBJECTIVES. CONTROVERSIES. METHODOLOGY 03. KEYWORDS 04. STATE OF ART AND PHASES 05. TEST CASE 1: CA2M(MADRID)
Architecture is the narratological plot on which an inďŹ nite tangle of narrative aesthetic identities is woven.
Arts’ complicities in the polarization of the contemporar y space The bodies of a empowered racialized women’s group dancing in a contemporary art museum... Are they a narrative artwork? The previous question does not lead us to performing arts, it claims the use of artistic action as research tool. And it is that the happening limitations as resistance may be due to the aestheticization of elements taken from reality, ignoring the embodied narrative identities that they are spontaneously projecting onto space an ethics of sensuality, from a collective eroticism of being together If in an inclusive symmetry without intellectual supremacies, we critically analyze the semiotic and discursive field of the arts and architecture and their linguistic and speech relationship with the social marginalities that are polarized in the city, we will be in a position to unravel the tangle of stories that are organically intertwined on the narratological plot of the contemporary culture.
1
The field in which this research is located is that of Urban Sociology, the Sociology of Art and Cultural Studies, approached from a performative and narrative perspective. In this context, the aim is to analyze the ways in which contemporary arts discourse is actively involved in the poshuman complexity of the city.
2
It has been established as starting conditions for this work, the phenomenon of decentralization of art observed in various European cities that, by locating centers of contemporary creation in popular neighborhoods in the center and the suburbs, compromise the worlds of art in controversial processes such as gentrification and the crisis of suburban identity.
4 In this regard, we have begun studying the case of
Madrid. Contextualizing this research in the south of the city center, specifically in the so-called Arganzuela district, although the cultural circuits have been decentralized, according to the process exposed in the previous point, the worlds of art have been complicit in the depopulation of these traditional neighborhoods as ‘Lavapiés’, due among others, to the increase in the price of housing.
3
On the other hand, we have continued analyzing the southern metropolitan periphery, specifically the municipality of Móstoles, where in 2007 the regional government located the CA2M. This creative space is a contemporary art center with an important collection, which belongs to an international cluster of museums located in European working class outskirts, which would be the general framework for this PhD research, in order to study marginal narrative identities.
5
As a result, the popular classes progressively leave the city center and settle in the last peripheries and in the municipalities of the Southwest, which for their part, face the redefinition of their neighborhood identities, always at the limit of social vulnerability situations . 6 With these tensions between the arts and the social reality of European cities as a background, GYPSY GIRLS DANCE REGGAETON aims to give a provocative title to an investigation that projects an analytical gaze on the narrative identity aesthetics that emerged in the social melting pot of the sub-industrialized city , in which postcolonial immigration is generating an unquestionable cultural wealth, consequence of the interaction between stigmatized communities and the the low-income locals with the new inhabitants.
7 This is the scenario in which the CA2M is located in Madrid. But for its part, the contemporary art centers of the Parisian ‘banlieuses’, for example, they find aswell a social environment in deep redefinition, where the construction of hybrid identities between the locals and immigrats, mainly of African origin, highlight the delicate relationships between Elite Culture and Popular Culture. Here we return to the beginning, to vindicate performative research by ethnographic happenings, such as the occupation of a museum by dancing racialized women, to analyze how embodies and spaces are (re)narrated when they interact. 8 And these European contexts are intended to be explored with the aim of determining new generic paradigms, which allow us to intuit whether the new social dynamics will shape a clearer relationship between the people, the arts and, unquestionably, the market, than in previous historical situations.
9
To conclude, highlight that the aim is to analyze the narrative and narratological plots woven between te so-called ’Legitimized Culture’, ‘Popular Culture’ and ‘Commercial Culture’ that, embodied in the new urban aesthetics and feminities, on the one hand, and by the new spaces of creation of the periphery, on the other, they update unsolved discussions about the social responsibilities of art.
ABSTRACT
Reggaeton
C O N C E P T Narrative identities are aesthetic expressions materialized in the bodies that, mediated by the basis of their narratological context, build a collective erotica as a sensualist ethic of the image and the lived-told action. Creative life stories intertwine their haphazard extra-linguistic realities in the architectural space, configured according to a linguistic nature. With all of the above, the art of life as a process of identity construction, interacts with the discursive arts. In this way, it is possible to translate social dynamics in terms of artistic conflicts.
CONTROVERSIES Questioning the artificial limits that sectorize the concept of culture that often manifest inequalities and conflicts of interest, we have detected, as a controversial background for this work, that contem-
porary creation, inscribed in a commercial aggressiveness, faces exceptional responsibilities given that today, more than ever, the consequences of its complicities in social tensions are not strictly aesthetics.
OBJECTIVES The primary purpose of this work is to claim for sociology, urban planning and architecture, dynamics of an artistic nature. We propose to transcend the materialism associated with the production of space and the arts, in defense of a creation that is not necessarily productive, but expressed through a narrative performation of the embodied identity, which rests on the semiotic habitat in which we communicate with the otherness.
METODOLOGY The goal is to use a theoretical-practical analysis method that makes artistic action a means of ethnographic analysis, combined with regular sociological research tools. In accordance with performativity and narrativity theories, we understand identities as creative narratives embodied in constant construction, deconstruction and destruction. We consider that the hyper-identity polysemy that acts and behaves in space, must be contrasted from a happening dynamic, with the narratological and temporal semiotic structure that contains it.
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Reggaeton
PHASE 1
01
02 03 04 05 06
Arts’ complicities in the polarization of the contemporar y space CONFLICTS
BETWEEN
THE
DISCOURSES
OF
ART
AND
PERIPHERAL
POPULAR
Móstoles, Alcorcón, Fuenlabrada, Leganés and Getafe define a conurbation located in the South of Madrid that concentrates almost a million inhabitants. During the 70s, these new cities received a massive migration from southern Spanish regions. Subsequently, with the arrival of Latin American, African and Eastern European citizens, these municipalities became significant cultural crossbreeding scenarios. In this context is Móstoles, a town where, in 2007, the regional government decided to locate the CA2M-CENTRO DE ARTE DOS DE MAYO museum with some 6000m2 of surface, to house an important collection of contemporary art. With a transversal spirit since its creation, it has become the headquarters of numerous cultural activities, with the intention of trespassing the conventional limits of the museum. This inclusive strategy means that the museum always has a projected look abroad, belonging to an international cluster made up of eight cultural organizations implemented in various residential peripheries, mostly European. The entities that make up this association together with CA2M are: OFFICE FOR ART, DESIGN AND THEORY (UTRECH-HOLANDA), CAC (BRETIGNY-FRANCE), LES LABORATOIRES D'AUBERVILLERS (PARIS-FRANCE), TENSKA KONSTHALL (STOCKHOLM-SWEDEN) ), THE SHOWROOM (LONDON-UNITED KINGDOM), THE ISRAELI CENTER FOR DIGITAL ART (HOLON-ISRAEL) and PARASITE MUSEUM FOR CONTEMPORARY ART (LJUBLJANA) After visiting the CA2M space and its urban context, we found an evident contrast between the museum's semiotic message and the population
spectrum of Móstoles, which brings together some 300,000 low-income inhabitants, whose original culture is far from museum's legitimized culture. Taking a first look at the CA2M's mediation strategies, we find that, although with unquestionable goodwill, it still maintains the compassionate gaze of a paternalistic cultural colonialism. CA2M does not carry out a two-way exchange between society and museum, but rather intends to popularize a purist aesthetic perception of oficial art. With this, the museum ignores the possibility of developing its own culture, for those who have been deprived of a cultural dignity. In that way, acts as an evangelizing mission that instinctively sets out to teach "how to look at art." On the other hand, within the heterogeneous population of this municipality and as in the rest of the European periphery, powerful aesthetic and musical movements unify large areas of youth; around new fashional, technological and behavioral codes. This is the case, for example, of the Spanish female TRAP artists phenomenon, based on a marginalized culture, which receives marked influences from the gypsy world of flamenco, which come into contact with the Latin world of reggaeton and the urban rhythms brought by immigration. In relation to the above, in 2010, the rumba style andalussian singer Canelita recorded a song that highlights these musical and cultural confluences. The title could not be more illustrative: LAS GITANAS BAILAN REGGAETON (GYPSY GIRLS DANCE REGGAETON) This starting point comes from the narratives of my
personal experiences. In this way, after a decade away from Madrid, when I returned I found a city where the popular culture of miscegenation and the new urban feminisms is in direct contact with contemporary art. In conclusion, we find a museum of contemporary art inserted in a powerful ecosystem of neighborhood culture, which throws up one of the many questions that this research intends to resolve: A group of gypsy women dancing reggaeton is a work of art? At the end of the day, this group of empowered women dancing sensual Caribbean rhythms are the embodiment of a centuries-old narration of cultural miscegenation. Let us emphasize that, in order to compose a flamenco rumba titled 'Gypsies girls dance reggaeton', the gypsy diaspora from India to Europe has been necessary, the development of flamenco music with Hispanic-Muslim and Hebrew influences, its contact with the tropical rhythms during the Spanish colonization of America and the reunion of the Latin, Gypsy and workers world in the Spanish working class peripheries. We are sure that this whole long story is not a masterpiece? Furthermore, in other European peripheries we find similar cases. For example, it will be fascinating to highlight the synergies that are being established between African immigration, the culture of the French working class and the center of contemporary creation Les laboratoires d'Aubervilliers'. So we propose to analyze the current synergies between artistic creation and new marginalized identities. V
One of Pierre Bourdieu's central ideas raises how the museum spaces carry out an action of discrimination, taking advantage of the feeling of cultural indignity that they provoke in the classes that do not handle the art code and, consequently, self-exclude and deny their heterodox original culture, denominated with the diffuse term of Popular Culture. There is a clear identification between this culture of people and the arts of life
that occur in the home space, and have necessarily feminine nature. This so-called women's culture, always symbolically displaced towards the rural and the peripheral, will be the field of action of animality-naturalness with which, historically, women have been related. Consequently, it is generally considered that popular culture has an oral transmission, it is exclusively passive, consumptive and feminine, and as a conse-
quence of the latter, it is shameful. At this stage, we carry out a detailed analysis of the way in which the conflict between categories of culture is approached through Cultural Studies, Gender Theory and, in general, from the prism of sociology and philosophy.
Starting from the Socratic concept of tekhne tou biou or art of life, many theorists have reached conclusions similar to those of Zygmunt Bauman. This thinker affirms that the world of artistic creation has been dissolved in reality, dematerializing the art that no longer needs visual works to exist. It is inevitable to recognize the vitalistic root of this theoretical construct. In fact it was Nietzsche himself who categorically defends life as an aesthetic manifestation. For his part, Michel Foucault invites us to perceive ourselves not only as works of art, but as political individuals capable of resisting through art itself. This combative power will be shared by authors such as Gilles Deleuze, who also
places art in the sphere of the collective, minor and popular. Other authors such as Jacques Rancière and Herbert Marcuse, influenced by Schiller's german idealism, gave aesthetics a liberating mission, defending the identification between art, work and production. The idea of the annihilation of art, known from Hegel's philosophy to the neodadaists and situationists experiences, does not imply its physical disappearance, but its incorporation into the set of everyday existence. In this way, the French sociologist Michel Maffesoli identifies a shared regular life aesthetics as a common emotion that leads us towards a social erotica, which trigges us to be
together.This theoretical support allows us to affirm that:
Following the main hypothesis, we have carried out an in-depth analysis of Cultural Studies and the worlds of art, which allows us to affirm that, when the dispossessed classes come into contact with the institutions of the Legitimate Culture of the elites, they suffer various mechanisms of exclusion. On the one hand, populist conservatism considers that the majority of society
rejects contemporary art, which is why it is redirected towards commercial culture. On the other hand, the organisms of the transgressive academicism, either produce the immediate exclusion of the classes that do not handle the encrypted codes of art, or approach them from an asymmetric position. Consequently, we can affirm that:
Cultural institutions keep popular aesthetics away from legitimized circles, leaving them exposed to the action of the market and the media, which will absorb and neutralize any expression that represents a certain degree of 'social dangerousness', establishing a direct connectivity
As a conclusion of the previous point, we can characterize the legitimized culture as a field of androcentric power identified with the civilizational rationalism, transmitted by the official means (printed-digital), and located in the public and social space of the urban. This culture occupies a centralized role and has an active and productive nature. On the other hand, popular culture has historically been relegated to the family circle of the domestic, confining it within the peripheral position of the natural, the animal and the feminine. With the intention of identifying this conflict in our
field of study, the following has been determined:
The feminine aesthetics of neighborhood culture (for example,TRAP) have been reduced to an inactive mainstream fashion product before representing a real social danger, by empowering groups of women with a combative attitude of gang ‘microfascism’. These groups of 'ratchets' (Sexualized working-class women dressed in provoca-
tive and extravagant clothes from luxury brands), represent an identity stigmatized by race, gender, origin and social class, strongly marked by stereotypes of complex bestialization, derived from Spanish anti-gypsyism, which invariably appears before any marginalized social spectrum, be it or not of gypsy ethnicity.
At the end of this research phase, the two hypotheses presented are collected. Starting from here, an empirical test that allows confronting these questions is proposed. We propose that the cultural and social synergy that is activated with popular music through the theme 'Gypsy girls dance reggaeton', means that this phenomenon should be considered without a doubt as an artistic manifestation that, in some way, should share space with legitimized visual arts. In connection with the theoretical development of this research, we have concluded that the genuine creative expression of the people is music and
dance, which is why we intend to organize in the CA2M Museum in Móstoles, a communicative event to generate a record, and use it as a source of ethnographic analysis, mainly through social media, from obtaining extrapolable conclusions. In collaboration with the museum and with feminist gypsy women's associations, we will propose that a group of 200 gypsy women dance reggaeton in the presence of the CA2M public, with a choreography that they themselves will define or improvise, and which will be the base material for the realization of an
Any aesthetic manifestation generated by society must be considered a work of art. In this way, it is necessary to awaken in the individual a creative consciousness, and an acknowledgment of his heterogeneous genuine culture, with the same dignity as the legitimate culture imposed by the elitized groups. In this way, all popular creation should become part of the institutional circuits of art.
audiovisual piece that will be distributed later. Through this action that conflicts different areas of culture, we intend to close this phase of the investigation by including empirical conclusions that help us to develop a methodology applicable to other European points of the research process. This first phase would take place in Madrid in the context of the Master in Architectural Communication in the ETSAM that I am undertaking, before continuing my research in Laussane, in the event that my application was accepted.
NARRATIVES K E Y W O R D S #PERIPHERY #MIGRATION #IMMIGRATION # MÓSTOLES # CA2M #CLUSTER # URBAN CONTEXT # O R I G I N A L C U LT U R E # L E G I T I M AT E D C U LT U R E #MEDIATION # C U LT U R A L C O L O N I A L I S M # PURE AESTHETICS # C U LT U R A L D I G N I T Y #FEMALE TRAP # MARGINALIZATION #REGGAETON #FLAMENCO # N E I G H B O R H O O D C U LT U R E #EXCLUSION # C U LT U R A L I N D I G N I T Y # C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S # P O P U L A R C U LT U R E # H E T E R O D O X C U LT U R E #TEKHNE TOU BIOU #THE DEATH OF ART #VITALISM #RESISTANCE IN ART #COLLECTIVE ART # NEODADAISM #SITUATIONISM # AESTHETICS AS ETHICS #CREATIVE CONSCIOUSNESS #INDOCTRINATION #WORLD OF ART # C O M M E R C I A L C U LT U R E #ACADEMICISM # ART CODES #CAPITALISM #NEUTRALIZATION # B R A N D C U LT U R E #DANGEROUSNESS SOCIAL # STIGMATIZATION #PRECARIATE #ANDROCENTRISM #CIVILIZED RATIONALISM # ACTIVE-PRODUCTIVE # FAMILIAR-DOMESTIC # PA S S I VE- CO N S U M PT I VE # FEMINIZATION #MICROPHASCISM GANG #POPULAR MUSIC # ANTI-HAPPENING #COMMUNICATION #ETHNOGRAPHY #SOCIAL NETWORKS # EMPIRICAL CONTRAST #RATCHETS #MAINSTREAM
Reggaeton
PHASE 2
01
Arts’ complicities in the polarization of the contemporar y space CONFLICTS
BETWEEN
Having studied the particular case of a contemporary art museum located on the outskirts of Madrid, we opened the field of study to the European level to analyze the cases of creative spaces belonging to the CA2M's international cluster. The intention is to detect concomitances between entities, which allow dissecting the relationships between the worlds of art and contemporary society. The objective of this study is to determine the means that allow the architectural space not only to take into account its linguistic-structural meaning. This consideration of architecture, on the one hand, only analyzes the semiotic dimension capable of producing meaning. Thus, by visually identifying the 'MUSEUM' sign, we assume a semantic context that performs symbolic mediation that allows us to interpret the actions and behaviors that occur in this space. On the other hand, there is a discursive-interpretive positioning focused on determining the syntactic tools that build the rational sense (accesses, facilities, program, structure, circulation ...) We have just briefly defined the narratological character of architecture, but what interests us is finding its narrative channels of expression. Thus, the creative spaces of the European peripheries are containers of art, but the social identities embodied in their context in a narrative way are also. In this sense, we try to determine the articulations between architectural semiotics, the discursive performativity of art and the narrative identity printed by the action of inhabiting. This set of creative spaces present very diverse natures, responding to both public and private efforts, and are located on European peripheries with urban and sociocultural fabrics with common features but, at the same time, great particularities in each case.The group has a certain willingness to create common synergies, so it has organized an international meeting in each of the centers and made a collective publication. However, the disparity of characteristics in each case makes it difficult to work together with greater visibility, determination and relevance. We have established the following categories:
FIRST PERIPHERY
THE
DISCOURSES
OF
ART
AND
03
K E Y W O R D S #RESIDENTIAL # EUROPEAN SCOPE #SYNERGIES #CONCOMITANCIES # PU B L I C- PR I VAT E M A N AG E -
This is the case of the TENSKA KONSTHALL (STOCKHOLM) corresponding to the functionalist suburbial paradigm of the Modern Movement.
METROPOLITAN PERIPHERY
To complete the previous study and verify if the CA2M´s cluster conclusions are objective, we have tried to detect other dynamics that include not only museums. In this sense, we are faced with a fragmented and scattered panorama, with a wide variety of scales. Thus, most of these agencies have a private association nature, which provides them particularly heterogeneous features. We have located numerous examples with different densities of relationships between them, with the administration and with the different markets. We find, among others, a constellation of spaces self-managed by groups of artists and small independent galleries.
#VISIBILITY #ART AND SOCIETY
04
#URBAN FABRIC #DENSITY # TY P O LO G Y-TO P O LO G Y # GENTRIFICATION
As a previous conclusion, we continue to observe a clear sobering attitude exercised by the transgressive spaces of art, although the trend becomes softer as the size of organizations decreases. Undoubtedly, reflection on the social function of art continues to be open and fully in force, making it necessary to redefine the perspectives intuited by the spaces of creation.
# TOURISTIFICATION #COLECTIVE OF ARTISTS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
# INDEPENDENT GALLERIES
SOCIOLOGY OF CULTURE Raymond Williams
#POLITICS #MARKET # SOCIAL FUNCTION OF ART #TECHNOLOGY
TENSKA KONSTHALL
# DIGITAL SOCIETY
Lee Baxandall ART AS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION M.H. Mitias
THE WORLDS OF ART Howard S. Becker
THE LOVE OF ART: THE EUROPEAN MUSEUMS THEIR PUBLIC Pierre Bourdieu & Alain Darbel
CULTURAL POPULISM Jim McGuigan THE NEED FOR ART E. Fischer
ARTISTIC EDUCATION CRAFTS Maria perhaps
THE POT OF APPEARANCES Michel Maffesoli
THE SHOWROOM CASCO
THOUSAND PLATEAUES. CAPITALISM AND SCHIZOPHRENIA Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari THE PUBLIC ANIMAL Manuel Delgado
AN ESSAY ON LIBERATION Herbert Marcuse
OF SEDUCTION Jean Baudrillard
EROS AND CIVILIZATION Herbert Marcuse THE LETTERS ABOUT AESTHETIC EDUCATION OF MAN Friedrich Schiller
Subsequent to the previous approaches, we can elaborate previous hypotheses in order to unify a strategy of approximation between Legitimate Culture and Neighborhood Culture. We propose that:
THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SENSITIVE Jacques Rancière
P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E.
CA2M
THE POPULAR ARTS Stuart Hall & Paddy Whannel MUSEUM AND POPULAR EDUCATION Cristina Delgado POPULAR CULTURE CULTURE Herbert Gans
AND
NOT
CHROMOPHOBIA David Batchelord
NIETZSCHE AND PHILOSOPHY Gilles Deleuze THE TRAGEDY'S ORIGIN Friedrich Nietzsche
LES LABORATOIRES D’AUBERVILLERS
ARE
AND
THE ZOO OF PHILOSOPHERS Armelle le Bras-Chopard
THE ART OF LIFE Zygmunt Bauman
CAC BRETIGNY
In correspondence with the hypotheses established in PHASE 1, if every aesthetic manifestation generated by society must be considered as a work of art, these original heterogeneous productions will depends on their social contexts and its relationship with the elitized culture.
NARRATIVES
MENT
Included in the large working class agglomerations in the metropolitan areas of Madrid and Paris, we find the CA2M (MADRID), with an urban configuration of high density housing blocks, the CAC (PARIS) located in a context of scattered residential buildings. and SLE LABORATOIRES D'AUBERVILLIERS (PARIS), located in a residential-industrial mixed land uses.
02
POPULAR
#COHESION
To this group belong THE SHOWROOM (LONDON), with a residential fabric with dispersed collective dwellings of different types and CASCO (UTRECHT), whose urban fabric is defined by alignments of low-rise buildings.
SECOND PROFILE
PERIPHERAL
HIGH
CULTURAL THEORY AND POPULAR CULTURE J. Storey RADICAL PERSPECTIVES IN THE ARTS
OF THE EVASION Emmanuel Lévinas MARGINALITY, ETHNICITY PENALTY IN THE NEOLIBERAL CITY Loïc Wacquant CONSUMING PASSIONS THE DINAMICS OF CULTURE Judith Williamson
AND
POPULAR
FEMINISM, CULTURAL STUDIES AND POPULAR CULTURE Joanne Hollows WRITINGS ON GYPSIES Antonio Gómez Alfaro GENDER AND POPULAR CULTURE Isabel Clúa
Reggaeton
Arts’ complicities in the polarization of the contemporar y space D E P O P U L A R I Z A T I O N
O F
T H E
C I T Y
C E N T E R
A N D
T H E
C R I S I S
O F
S U B U R B A N
I D E N T I T Y
M Ó S T O L E S
CA2M
EMPTYING OF THE POPULAR NEIGHBORHOODS’ LOCAL INHABITANTS
BIG MUNICIPALITIES IN THE SOUTH OF MADRID
In this research, the aim is to intuit the guidelines that will determine the relationships between contemporary art and the social processes that convulse the polarized post-industrial European cities. Far f rom being obsolete or outdated, the discourse that connects what is considered to be High Culture with the popular classes, is today more current than ever. The cause of this is due to the fact that the creative spaces themselves are contained in ambitious operations of the so-called urban regeneration, focused on the productive activation of old popular neighborhoods in the center of the cities. What is known as gentrification processes expel the original inhabitants of a certain area of the city, and instead locate there an intense apparatus that generates economic benefits based on tourism, leisure and real estate speculation. In fact, it must be called, as the urban sociologist aligned with Lefebvre proposes, Jean Pierre Garnier; DEPOPULARIZATION. Indeed, these urban operations involve the eviction of local inhabitants, as long as they cannot compete with the new profile, with greater purchasing power, that is planned to relocate in the area. Since this is usually unfeasible, these neighborhoods are gradually being filled with what J.P. Garnier calls intellectual petty bourgeoisie. These new settlers, as a result of the political concerns they usually have, are reassured by residing in what is euphemistically called Multicultural Neighborhoods ’. This is how these old popular areas are transformed into neo-Bohemian scenographies with a sonorous accompaniment of alternative art galleries, creative studios, vegan food stores, sustainable commerce and restaurant spaces, always set by the chord: healthy food, animal respect and recycling.
But the emptying of locals f rom the popular neighborhoods of the city center are not the result of spontaneous movements of the population, but rather respond to complex operations initiated by the government, in which, once the economic potentialities of an area have been detected, its urban fabric is resignified, implementing sports and cultural facilities, and carrying out ambitious operations to recover the public spaces, which are accompanied by a dizzying rise in rents and house prices. Consequently, the area renews its identity. Progressively, numerous contemporary creative spaces, both public and private, are located in the area. In addition, with a new social panorama, tourism companies invest in the area. In this way, new hotels which are adapted to the new demands are created. With the example of these transformations in the South of Madrid, we observe how, in addition to the political and economic agents that model the city, contemporary art assumes serious complicities in the process. In addition to the case of the city of Madrid, where the arts are leaving the center of gravity of the city, to establish supposed asymmetries of the south, which have even reached the metropolitan periphery, we propose to relate this case study, within an equivalent phenomena that have occurred in the European territory during the last decades. However, the process of depopulation of cities does not stop in the neighborhoods of the urban center. As in the case of Madrid and Paris, it extends to the peripheral working-class residential areas. These ‘banlieuse’, like the five big municipalities in the South of Madrid, activate their own process of physical and symbolic depopu-
lation. On the one hand, the new generations of inhabitants leave the centers erected in the demographic explosion of the seventies, and settle in urban areas that prioritize the semi-private space of the condominiums or completely private of the single-family residences. It is about adopting a lifestyle that atomizes the popular classes, which are still popular but, seduced by the bourgeois aesthetic of the condo with a security guard at the entrance, they do not recognize themselves as a group with common concerns and stop building relational networks in public spaces. These satellite sub-suburbs are supported by a redundant system of large leisure and consumption centers that, for their part, continue to liquidate the neighborhood´s identity, destroying trade in proximity. With these residential operations, the cultural identity of the working class on the southern outskirts of Madrid has become that of indebted citizens with a villa with a pool and several cars. In the same way, through a process of symbolic overhaul, all signs of collective identity of the popular class disappear, such as the owners' associations, unions, neighborhood cultural groups... and in their place appear university campuses and, as in the case that we are dealing with, new neighborhood centers of contemporary artistic production. In this way, these new cultural facilities arrive to the working-class suburbs built with basic quality housing, inhabited by a population of retired workers and new inhabitants, most of them racialized, marginalized and with few economic resources, who have been evicted f rom the city center.
Reggaeton
Arts’ complicities in the polarization of the contemporar y space SYNERGIC EXCHANGES BETWEEN LEGITIMATE , POPUL AR AND COMMERCIAL CULTURES WITH SUBCULTURES 05.PERIPHERAL C U L T U R E
06.ORIGINARY C U L T U R E
07.SUBCULTURE RATCHETS GIRLS
ANTI-GYPSISM FLAMENCO
HOST
MARGINALIZED
WORKING CLASS
01.02. CONTEMPORARY ACADEMICISM REINA SOFÍA 01.03. REACTIONARY POPULISM MUSEO DEL PRADO
01. LEGITIMIZED CULTURE
DIGITAL RATCHETS
03.MARKET ECONOMY
COLONIALISM
EXCLUSION
cultural indignity
NARRATIVE AESTHETICS
PATERNALISM FEMINIZED
ANDROCENTRIC RATIONAL CIVILIZED CENTRAL URBAN PUBLIC SPACE PRINTED-DIGITAL TRANSMISSION APOLLONIAN-PLASTIC ARTS SOCIAL ACTIVE-PRODUCTIVE ERUDITE CULTURE
D I G I T A L S U B CU LTU R E
GUEST
CULTURE
POST-INDUSTRIAL PRECARIATE MARGINALITY ETHNICITY PENALTY POST-MODERN URBANISM ADVANCED CAPITALISM
01.04 EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM
01.01. ACADEMICISM OF TRANSGRESSION CA2M
GAND MICROPHASCISM HYPERSEXUALIZATION AGGRESSIVE FEMINITY
RACIALIZATION REGGAETON
SOCIAL MEDIA
SENSUAL NATURAL-ANIMAL PERIPHERAL RURAL DOMESTIC SPACE ORAL TRANSMISSION DIONYSIAN-POPULAR MUSIC FAMILIAR PASSIVE-CONSUMPTIVE MUSIC-DANCE
MARKET MASS MEDIA
According to the extensive bibliography studied, since Arnold and Leavis began to pay attention to the so-called Popular Culture, intense intellectual work has been carried out around the field of Cultural Studies. These achieve their maximum development with the so-called Birmingham School, which begins its journey with R. Hoggart, R. Williams and E.P. Thomson, during the 50s and 60s of the 20th century. Subsequently, researchers such as Stuart Hall, Paddy Whannel and John Storey will continue the task of the founding fathers, but this time identified with later currents of thought, such as those adopted by the Frankfurt School, Structuralism or Neogramscianism. At the same time, we must emphasize that it is not possible to disassociate the analysis of cultural expressions f rom an attentive look at the implications that these have in feminisms theoretically constructed by Tania Modleski, Angela McRobbie, Laura Muluey and Judith Butler, among others. For their part, authors who brought poststructuralism, such as Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, together with the postmodern thought of J.F. Lyotard, J.Baudrillard and D.Hebdige, completed the contemporary background on Cultural Studies. Based on the theoretical base provided by the aforementioned authors, we have developed a detailed analysis of the different areas in which, in a more or less artificial way, we can ‘territorialize’ different manifestations of culture. First of all, it is essential to manifest the complexity of a positivist definition of the term ‘culture’. In fact, by culture we can understand, f rom the sublime selection of the best that man has produced, defended by Leavisism; to practically any manifestation of human existence.
In this case, we observe a process of manifest exclusion exercised by the worlds of contemporary art validated and, widely commercialized, by tourism and commercial promotion. We could speak of a kind of Contemporary Classicism strongly supported by private collecting, typical of contemporary art fairs. For their part, the museum spaces of this academicism, such as the Reina Sof ía in Madrid, have been actively introduced into the circuits of tourism and the promotion of what is considered worthy art, carried out by educational institutions.These spaces do not take risks with the artists they support, to ensure the presence of the international regular visitor. Although they incorporate mediation strategies, they often ignore the heterogeneous aesthetics of the periphery, without taking into account the interaction with possible marginalized audiences.
01.03. AESTHETIC REACTIONARY POPULISM
MAINSTREAM NEUTRALIZED PRODUCT
MASS CULTURE CONSUMER CULTURE BRAND CULTURE
FEDDBACK
02. POPULAR CULTURE
01.02. CONTEMPORARY ACADEMICISM
04.COMMERCIAL C U L T U R E
Apart f rom these important terminological issues, this diagram has attempted to outline the global mechanism that engages, f rom the so-called LEGITIMATED CULTURE, using the terms of Pierre Bourdieu, to the most inaccessible subcultural manifestations produced by the current POPULAR CULTURE.
01. LEGITIMIZED CULTURE
The legitimized culture favored by cultural institutions (museums, foundations, galleries ...) acts as a containment barrier for popular cultures, preventing their access to the elitized culture. In this way, they will be completely exposed, without any intellectual guarantee, to the joint action of deactivation-commodification, which the hegemonic economic systems exercise through their most effective organisms: the market and the mass media. The marginalization processes of the neighborhood culture identified are the following:
01.01. CULTURAL COLONIALISM OF ACADEMICISM OF TRANSGRESSION
Mainly exercised by the cultural organizations attached to the academicism of transgression (P. Bourdieu) that in the case of Madrid, could be represented by the CA2M, Matadero, the Casa Encendida and La Tabacalera; his approach to the popular classes, is undertaken f rom an indoctrinating paternalism, which activate 'cultural charity' campaings through workshops, seminars, conferences... These programs, consciously or unconsciously, insist on the idea that popular culture, although it is an appreciated reference, it is not fully legitimized.
At this point, we refer to the artistic conservatism defended by philosophers such as Ortega y Gasset, who have spread the idea that ‘the people’ plebiscitarily rejects contemporary art. Mediation with the so-called 'special publics' (retirees, schoolchildren, groups in danger of social exclusión…), the economic democratization of access to museums and the elimination of the symbolic aspects of a more conceptual art, incites the popular classes to accept , that the only way worthy of artistic expression is bourgeois figurative art.These ideas are consolidated with the promotion of classical naturalist artists, exalted for their technical virtuosity in representation. In this sense, governments meticulously outline the mythical figure of the national artist-genius (Velázquez, Goya, Murillo, Sorolla ...), who represents strong patriotic values, which extend the belief of the cultural superiority of a given nation. At the same time, the ideology of the divinized creator is internationally extended and capitalized as a symbolic asset of tourist exploitation, configuring the profile of the regular international tourist, led massively by the large tour operators. In this sense, the commercial process of art launched by countries such as Spain, Italy or France, favors that figurative art is closely related to popular culture. This argument is supported by the profitability of its economic exploitation. As a consequence of all the above, the feeling of cultural indignity of the popular classes is reinforced. Thus, they see in art an inaccessible world of exceptional creators, capable of performing unsurpassed technical feats. In this way, an ingenuous vision of art is cultivated, as an exercise in plastic mastery impossible to achieve. According to this argument, what makes art admirable is the complexity in the material realization of the works. In this way, contemporary works of art are still commonly equated with a child's awkward doodles. To finish we must say that, in connection with the academicist cultural networks, there are the socio-cultural neighborhood centers, which build the idea of ‘art lover’. This approach trivializes the creative potentialities of the individual, blurring them with the touching hobby of reproducing figurative works of art.
Reggaeton
Arts’ complicities in the polarization of the contemporar y space SYNERGIC EXCHANGES BETWEEN LEGITIMATE , POPUL AR AND COMMERCIAL CULTURES WITH SUBCULTURES 01.04. EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS
03-04. MARKET ECONOMY AND COMMERCIAL CULTURE
For its part, the regular teaching of art supports the legitimate culture of the elites, focusing on the masterpieces of the great figures of art. In this way, the working class student comes into contact with creation, f rom a mythological and esoteric vision of art. Thus, the creative nature of children and adolescents is ignored, and a classical culture is imposed that relegates the heterogeneous original culture to a secondary level. These genuine manifestations are abandoned in marginalized spaces, in amorphous, embryonic, vulnerable and unofficial conditions. Consequently, the popular classes themselves renounce, in a certain way, their traditional culture; condemning this to a 'non-conscious' condition, completely exposed to market aggressions.
With all of the above, if we return to the object of study that we propose, which is the interaction between neighborhood cultures and art that take place in those peripheral urban contexts in which centers of artistic production have been established, we can understand how, what P. Bourdieu calls HETEROGENEOUS AESTHETICS is profitable, neutralized and swallowed by the market economy. Unfortunately, the peripheral resistance that J. Hollows glimpsed hopefully in the fundamentally feminine popular culture, becomes part of a complex multi-articulated machinery that establishes an intense relational flow between contemporary urban aesthetics and the various ramifications of the market like the fashion one . In this way, when a strong identity element of the popular classes becomes visible, the third vector of the neutralization of neighborhood aesthetics is activated. We are talking about the mainstream media, intensely reinforced by recent social media, which establish a powerful axis of action among the televised world, which promotes a culture of collective narcissistic hedonism and the popular character as histrionic mockery; and the digital identities spread on the social media. In this way, the media encourage markets to greedily appropriate the emerging expressions of peripheral aesthetics, regurgitating the same cultural reality, but metabolized as a mercantile product, of the commercial brand culture. Consequently, what is produced for the popular classes, which is what they supposedly demand, are ‘mainstream’ substitutes synthesized f rom creative manifestations, devaluing what could have constituted a scenario of identity and resistance. This blocking process is accurately described by Dick Hebdige who, making mention of Volosinov, states that the deactivation process that takes place is semiotic in the sense that, when an aesthetic style is generalized, the mythology of the sign loses its power because it ceases to represent a community , and it becomes one more market trend, necessarily ephemeral, and accessible to anyone.
02. POPULAR CULTURE The controversies involved in delineating the limits of the so-called Popular Culture go through intense ideological considerations that reveal the way in which the processes of industrialization and urbanization have erased these perimeters. Therefore, under the polysemy of the terms "culture" and "popular", the market economy has woven a dense tangle of inaccuracies between what belongs to the traditions of the working class and, therefore, is produced by itself for itself; and the cultural consumer products typical of the so-called COMMERCIAL CULTURE, which are generated by the large entertainment industries. As we said, the complexity of the relationships between people's own culture and commercial entertainment (television, commercial cinema, series, romantic narrative, fiction… etc) has generated an infinite number of positions that, in most cases , lose perspective of the set of synergies that represents the contemporary cultural reality. In any case, whatever the popular culture is , it is considered hierarchically below the so-called "High Culture". Consequently, this culture of oral transmission, family and domestic, has been categorized within the sensual, animal and natural and, consequently, the feminine. Therefore, it is very interesting to study what the various feminisms have understood by popular culture. On the one hand, a certain type of feminist trend opts for a romantic notion of the popular, considered as a culture of traditional feminine skills, which has been overshadowed by the active-productive androcentric culture. However, this discourse based on ancestral roots unleashes a populist nostalgia supported by the petty bourgeoisie, which leads to the fetishization and exoticization of this type of popular and feminine cultural productions. Second, some feminisms consider the notion of popular culture as an inventory of things for women who are supposed to meet their needs. This argument leads to an intense binary brand of gender, which leads to the segregation of cultural areas stigmatized as ‘feminine garbage’ and identified with popular culture (soap operas, social commentaries, gossip magazines ...). Along with the above observations, Joanne Hollows builds on Stuart Hall's approaches to identifying female popular culture as a powerful space for political resistance. However, the idea of femininity is represented by several power relationships, which privilege the conception of middle-class white femininity over other feminities that are considered socially dangerous and are basically represented by racialized women and low-income white women.
05-06. PERIPHERAL CULTURE AND ORIGINARY CULTURE As a consequence of the depopulation of the center of European cities, of which the art world is complicit; the large concentrations of the suburbs, the so-called 'banlieuse' in France, are becoming spaces in which, what we could call PERIPHERAL CULTURE of workers settled during the decades of the 60s-70s of the 20th century, come into contact with ORIGINARY CULTURES f rom post-colonial migratory flows. In turn, the so-called 'red belts' of European cities such as Paris and Madrid, have experienced recent waves of growth, generating satellite urbanizations, which attract new generations who are looking for a way of life with a bourgeois aesthetic, in single-family homes with pool or private condos. Consequently, the centers of these working-class municipalities become highly vulnerable areas in which a very old native working population coexists with immigrants and the low-income local population, expelled f rom other parts of the city, where rents are impossible to assume. This is the immediate habitat of the cultural organisms that, like the CA2M in Móstoles, settle in the old European banlieuses, and come into contact with a mixed cultural reality, in many cases, multiple marginalized.
07. SUB-CULTURE AND DIGITAL SUB-CULTURE A consequence of the interaction described in the previous point, is the proliferation of numerous neighborhood subcultures in Europe with interesting equivalences that can be highlighted to define the possibility of a common genetics of the working-class culture in Europe. With this, starting f rom D. Hebdige's theories regarding the postwar London subcultures outlined in contrast to Jamaican immigration; it is an exciting task to reveal whether cultural interaction in the nowadays European suburbs is a consequence of the exchanges present in all social coexistence or if, on the contrary, they respond to a true and deep hybridization. However, these new aesthetics are in no way comparable with other urban cultures of the past such as punks, for whom the occupation of public spaces was essential. Currently, we could speak of digital subcultures, which would be those that, without having a large presence in the physical world, massively colonize the digital space through social media. In conclusion, the scenario shared by the worlds of contemporary art in the periphery and its soci-ocultural contexts, promise fascinating horizons of creation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
C U LT U R A L T H E O R Y & P O P U L A R C U LT U R E (F.R.LEAVIS)
C U LT U R A L T H E O R Y A N D P O P U L A R C U LT U R E (JOHN STOREY)
C U LT U R E & E N V I R O N M E N T (LEAVIS & THOMSO )
S U B C U LT U R E . M E A N I N G O F S T Y L E (DICK HEBDIGE)
THE USES OF LITERACY (ROBERT HOGGART)
WATCHING DALL AS (IEN ANG)
THE LONG REVOLUTION C U LT U R E I S S O M E T H I N G O R D I NARY KEYWORDS S O C I O L O G Y O F C U LT U R E ( R AYM O N D WI L L I A M S )
LOVING WITH A VENGEANCE (TANIA MODLESKI)
MAKING OF THE ENGLISH WORKINGCLASS (E.P. THOMSON) THE POPULAR ARTS ( S TUA R T H A L L & PA D DY WH A N NEL) C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S . T H E O R Y , POLITICS AND PRACTICE (L AWRENCE GROSSBERG)( MYTHOLOGIES ROLAND BARTHES CINEMA AND MUSIC ABOUT POPULAR MUSIC (T.W. ADORNO ) THE WORK OF ART IN THE TIME OF TECHNICAL REPRODUCTIBILITY ( W A LT E R B E N J A M I N ) HEGEMONY, INTELLECTUALS AND THE STATE (ANTONIO GRAMSCI)
FEMALE DESIRE (ROSALIND COWART) S T A R G A Z I N G : H O L LY W O O D & FEMALE SPECTATORSHIP (JACKIE STACEY ) VISUAL PLEASURE & NARRATIVE CINEMA (LAURA MULUEY) INSIDE WOMEN’S MAGAZINES (JANICE WINSHIP) READING WOMEN’S MAGAZINES (JOKE HERMES) GENDER TROUBLE (JUDITH BUTLER) THE POST-MODERN CONDITION ( J E A N - F R A N Ç O I S LY O T A R D ) CRITICISM OF THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE CENTURY (JEAN BAUDRILLARD) UNDERSTANDING POPUL AR C U LT U R E READING THE POPULAR T E L E V I S I O N C U LT U R E (J.FISKE)
The content presented below is a complementary ďŹ nal annex. It will enunciate a series of brief quotes, with which to trace the theoretical foundations that allow us to resume the tradition of thought that revolves around the idea of aesthetics of existence, which is the backbone of this work.
1.1.Michel Foucault and the arts of life. Tekhne tou biou If the 21st century still trembles shaken by the bio-political concepts worked by Michel Foucaul t, even more powerful were his last contributions that made him return to classic cynicism, armed by a robust marrow of vitalist substance and a solidly aesthetic structure. Sample of the above is the following quote: “What surprises me is the fact that in our society art has become something that concerns only matter, not individuals or life, that art is a specialty made only for experts, by artists. Why couldn't everyone make their life a work of art? Why can this lamp or this house be an object of art, but not my life?” When Foucault returns to cynical thought, the aesthetic socratism of existence awaited him with a delicate concept: Épiméleia heautous. Taking care of yourself. These rules, fundamentally oriented towards ethics as a reflexive gymnastic of f reedom, allow attaining ataraxia or absence of regrets, acquiring the mastery of arche, which is the ability to f ree oneself f rom dark passions. And in the journey towards stoics and epicureans that Foucault initiates, we realize that the artistic experience of the world that he offers us, makes us perceive ourselves not only as works of art, but as political individuals capable of resisting within art itself. In this way, the French thinker defines the concept of image-simulacrum as those figurations of anti-Platonic origin that, by chance, surprise us in the supermarket or prying on the smartphone. Foucault read these bursts of everyday life in mechanized serigraphies of pop art, in photography... in the new serial reproduction mechanisms, which had become part of the techniques of the visual arts. This sort of visions offered an emancipatory potential that traced streets in which infinity of f ree images began to flow. With this, Foucault distances himself f rom all purist and self-referential artistic production, to affirm the filth of images f rom the street . Consequently, art connects with life, and it is stripped of all particularity. In this way it is installed in the subject as a powerful source of truth to combat power.
1.2.Gilles Deleuze and art as resistance But if Foucault's philosophical construct was articulated by an artistic conception of existence, no less was that of his contemporary Gilles Deleuze, who shared with him the hope of finding in art a weapon of political emancipation.
Deleuze exposes in his work how disciplinary societies had given way to a new being f reedf rom panoptism, but confined between the words of order f rom communication. Deleuze's deep distrust of the media is the epicenter of his divergence f rom Foucault's aesthetics. Deleuze intuited that the hybridization between art and life would produce an undifferentiation whereby art would become a strategy of capitalist control. In Deleuze, artistic creation obtains the capacity of resistance against the system of its differentiation with respect to the language of everyday life commodified by capitalism.
ZONE3 L.WACQUANT J.G.AYALA
G.DELEUZE
A.NEHAMAS
M.FOUCAULT
P.HADOT
G.PULIDO
ZONE 1
Finally, it should be noted that the Deleuzian conception of art always places it in the collective, minor and popular sphere. It is "a thing of the people", installed in the peripheral marginality of the resistance.
J.BUTLER
I.C.GINES
F.NIETZSCHE Z.BAUMAN
E.P.THOMSON
R.FELSKI
A.MCROBBIE
T.MODLESKI
R.HOGGART
1.3.Nietzsche and his tragic vision of art Walking tricked by Deleuze's acrobatic elegance and Foucault’s roundness, we reach the roars of the fierce Nietzsche, which make us tremble with his eruption of untamed theories. Zarathustra yells f rom the cave: "What it is legitimate for us to suppose of ourselves, is that [...] we are images and artistic projections and that we have our supreme dignity in signifying works of art, because only as an aesthetic phenomenon the world and existence are eternally justified." For Nietzsche, the substrate of art is essentially tragic. That is why his aesthetic vitalism is based on the vision of Attic tragedy, as an artifice created to make existence bearable by sublimating it as a spectacle In the tragedy, Nietzsche detects the confluence of the Dionysian, where the eternally changing accepts all the accidents of fatality and leads to the fusion of the individual into the collective; but also of the Apollonian, which comes to be the visual dimension of art objectified in appearance. In this way, the outburst of Dionysus can be formalized in infinite personifications of Apollo. The philosopher cautions that these two opposing creative impulses occur not only in tragedy, but also in popular song. With the above, there is, as in Foucault and Deleuze, a connectivity between the arts and the people. In general, Nietzsche gives a tragic nature to all art. Thus, all life as a work of art will be a tragedy exposed to the unwavering evolution of chance. Tragedy is not found in the beauty and appearance of what is conventionally understood as art, it is found in the Dionysian annihilation of individuality transcending perceptible things to reach eternity and universality. In conclusion, we could affirm that song and popular culture are manifestations of the tragic. Therefore, contradicting Nietzsche himself, the tragedy does not die with the socratism staged
S.HALL
B.FRIEDAN
R.WILLIAMS
J.HOLLOWS L.F.RAKOW
LEVI-STRAUSS J.DERRIDA F.SAUSSURRE
K.MARX
ZONE 2 by Euripides, but is perpetuated by the popular manifestations of art.
1.4.Socrates and his ‘Epiméleia heautou’ Before coming to the never written words of Socrates, we must go through the passion with which Nietzsche accuses his philosophy of being the seed of Euripides' theater, which ended the Attic tragedy. In these dramatizations, which underlie the idea that only the understandable can be beautiful, the art of tragedy finds its end, overcome by logical reason. From this moment, according to Nietzsche, the Socratic culture takes over the West, which will recognize as its only ideal the theoretical-rational human being who works in the service of science. But despite his fiery criticism, Nietzsche ends up considering Socrates as a musician and an artist of life, in which a creative vitality looms, tempered by the serenity of the philosopher who does not lose himself in his instincts and passions. Thus, Socrates is consistent with the idea that knowledge is not possible without praxis, to establish the measure of the world; f rom which
it is concluded that Socratic thought is clearly artistic.
1.5.Pierre Hadot, Alexander Nehamas and the philosophical art of life. After nourishing ourselves with the wisdom of Socratism, we reached the peak of this work where the essential figures of Western thought, embodied in the Epicureans and Stoics (Seneca, Marco Aurelio and Epícteto) are found. The art of life, practiced through the spiritual exercises and philosophizing of these eternal figures is studied in the works of Pierre Hadot, Foucault's successor at the Collège de France, and in parallel, by Alexander Nehamas. Hadot raises a philosophy as modus vivendi, which places us at the epicenter of life itself. The French philosopher, influenced by his wife who was an expert in Seneca, takes f rom the Latin philosopher the notions of self-culture and aesthetics of existence, also assumed by Foucault. Consequently, he defines Socrates as the great artist of life, and he elevates Greco-Roman philosophy to the category of integral art for existence. Finally, it is very remarkable in Hadot how the consequences of a creative-philosophical life are extrapolated to the social plane, establishing interesting concomitances with the socio-political conception of the aesthetics of life, discussed by Foucault. For his part, for Nehamas the ethics of self-care generates a new art of living. According to him, we cannot speak of the art of living in absolute terms, since there is no single art of life but The Arts of Living.
THINKERS’ DISTRIC
ZONE 1. PHILOSOPHY
1.6.Zygmunt Bauman and the art of creating an identity Without the thanks that, in my opinion, Zygmunt Bauman should have made towards Foucault and Nietzsche in their formulation of life as art; he recovers the vitalist precept of the tekhne tou biou, and reaches particularly interesting conclusions. Overcoming the statism of the 'project de vie' of Sartrian existentialism, which established an unshakable existential trajectory, Bauman intuits that the contemporary world does not allow to have a single vital objective, but on the contrary, all existence is understood today as a process of adding sections directed by transient motivational vectors. As Foucault defined contemporary art by denying all established art, Zygmunt Bauman argues that the space of the arts has been dematerialized by identification with reality. The product of the art of life will be the construction of an identity always ‘in statu nascendi’. This generative process obtains its raw material f rom the identification mechanisms, which allow the individual to approach some groups of people and reject others. At this point, a wide field of analysis is opened in which authors such as James House, François Cubet, Gianni Vattimo, James Côté, Michael Berzonsky or Michel Maffesoli, among others, provide valuable clues regarding identity. To conclude, we must highlight Bauman's allusion to Loïc Wacquant, who has defined the con-
ZONE4
cept of ‘precariat’ to refer to stigmatized social groups that have to build their identity on the hostile stereotypes built by the elites. In this regard, the nuances of this theorist are essential to determine the conditions of cultural exclusion suffered by sectors of the population whose cultural code is not normative.
1.7.Judith Butler and life as performance Contextualized within the theoretical line of Zygmunt Bauman in which the existential work of art is affirmed as the composition of an identity, we find the valuable reflections on the theory of performativity carried out by Judith Butler. This author fully deals with gender issues, affirming that this is a naturalized construction integrated within a system of hegemonic heterosexuality. She presents gender-identity in terms of performativity. For this, Butler starts f rom Foucault's approaches that establish that there are no biological bodies, but culturally constructed bodies; mediated, among other factors, by language. It is relevant to study the interesting intersections that can be established between the present author and the aesthetic theories of the construction of contemporary identity.
ZONE 2. CULTURAL STUDIES Directed by the previous approaches that point to the idea of artistic existence, it is inevitable not to encounter an exciting question: If individual identity can be shaped as an artistic project, what defines the social body as an art-beings multitude? If we also take into account that several authors consider that these works of the art of life, come f rom the popular; It is essential to analyze the contributions of the Cultural Studies started during the first sixties in the so-called Birmingham School, which developed its research work f rom two well differentiated paradigms:
2.1.Culturalist paradigm R. Williams, R. Hoggart and E.P. Thomson
C.DELGADO
P.BOURDIEU
J.WILLIAMSON
H.ARENDT
ROUSSEAU
MONTAIGNE
Cultural studies appears with the intention of revising Marxist postulates, which understand culture as part of an ideological superstructure reflecting an economic base. Faced with this approach, other theorists such as Althusser, Gramsci and other authors of The Frankfurt School also reacted. Initially, they vindicated the popular culture of the working class as opposed to that of the wealthy classes, understanding the cultural confrontation as a particular manifestation of the working cause. The Birmingham International Center for Cultural Studies was founded by R. Hoggart, R. Williams and E.P. Thomson, authors of essential texts such as Culture and Society, The Long Revolution, The Uses of Literacy or Making of the English Working Class.
2.2.Structuralist paradigm Stuart Hall At the end of the sixties, the Birmingham International Center for Cultural Studies was redirected ideologically and methodologically by the hand of Stuart Hall, who assumed the emergence of the consumer society and the media, and incorporated them into his research. S. Hall established a close dialogue with the most advanced social theory of its time: Structuralism. This paradigm shift marked the transition f rom a humanism based on literary studies to structuralism inspired by psychoanalysis and Marxist social theory. Structuralist ideas are inspired by the linguistic theories elaborated by the Swiss Ferdinand de Saussurre and the semiotic theories of Roland Barthes, to apply the syntagmatic mechanisms of language to other fields of knowledge. The capital figure of the movement was Levi-Strauss, who leads one of the most important theories of the last century regarding the construction of meaning. According to structuralism, culture is linked to institutional means. Consequently, the central point of Cultural Studies at this time will be to determine how culture becomes merchandise. Once the structuralist stage is over, the Cultural Studies abandon Marxist approaches, and approach methodological humanism again, given the influence of Baudrillard, Lyotard and Derrida.
ZONE 3. FEMINISMS AND CULTURAL STUDIES Coinciding in part with the spread of currents of structuralist thought, the first waves of feminist theory occurred. Although the areas of f riction between Cultural Studies and Gender Studies have never been well lubricated, the relevance that feminist claims suppose for the study of culture and its territories of exclusion, is unquestionable. Given the tensions between ‘High Culture’ and ‘Low Culture’, feminists worked with special dedication, highlighting the obvious contradictions between popular culture and women. Like Gilles Deleuze, first wave gender studies begin to reflect on the mass consumer culture and the role it gave to the female role. In this particular, the analysis of women's magazines will be the key piece of feminist research, with opposing views in this regard. We refer to Betty Friedan, who will denounce the implications of popular culture in constricting women. For her part, Angela McRobbie assumes mass culture as a space of feminist resistance. At this time, the relevance of women as a great consumer of communication is revealed. Later, the visions of thinkers such as Lana R. Rakow appeared, who developed a meticulous study on the links between culture and women. In the first place, Lana R. Rakow analyzes the image that popular culture has produced of women, and defends the feminine productions carried out by these means. On the other hand, it analyzes the feminine consumption of popular culture, thus gathering enough theoretical mate-
rial to formulate a Feminist Cultural Theory. Equally significant were the conclusions of the studies by Judith Williamson, which elucidates the identification between what is considered natural and feminine, and consequently, between the world of culture and masculinity. In this way, women are associated with the reproductive world so they are confined in the home space, and separated f rom any possibility of intellectual growth. For her part, Tania Modleski qualifies these appreciations, asserting that popular culture has been feminized to revile it. In any case, popular culture has incorporated the feminist perspective, producing new gender meanings, such as Girl Power.
ZONE 4. SOCIOLOGY OF ART Although this last area will focus on the analysis of the social implications of art, we will try to identify how the hegemonic system diversifies the narratives of cultural exclusion as scenarios of marginality. One of the spaces where it is assimilated that there is an official culture that is normative and dignified, and another of a more intimate, inconsequential and, finally, despicable nature, are the educational ones. This unacceptable facet of academic training processes has already begun to be analyzed by classical thinkers such as Montaigne and Rousseau, who, in their day, describe rigid educational methods based on memorization, which completely exclude the sources of popular wisdom. Currently, the contributions made by Paulo Freire, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault and Hanna Arendt are remarkable. It is dizzying to affirm it emphatically, but one of the most significant areas of exclusion in our society is museums. Somehow, these have become the border territories between normalized culture and popular culture. There are numerous social groups that will never go to a museum because they consider that the world that exists there is completely alien to their needs, interests and capacities. In this direction, we have an extensive theoretical elaboration. Thus, central points such as the processes of exclusion and their political connotations that take place in these spaces are studied. At the same time, the strategies adopted to implement inclusive cultural mediation are analyzed. We can establish three large groups of researchers of great relevance in the border territories between art and sociology. Firstly, highlighting his work in exclusion studies we have the following: B.MacMahon & Quin, A. Mouchtouris, T. Bennet, P. Bourdieu, P. Rasse, M. Castells and N. Heinich. Second, these authors worked on issues related to power and politics: M. Foucault, T. Clark and C. Duncan. And Finally, the mediation systems will be discussed by: M. Proterydes, J. Davalon, S. MacDonald and C. Delgado.
