theWorkshop Week#49 - Fictional City

<Fictional City> W e e k #49 - A r t i c l e _001 - Story - Project - f o o d c u lt u r e

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and the

4th

fictional city

week_49

Article_001

2016

<FICTIONAL CITY>

STORY

PROJECT

From the word “fictional city”, you might imagine Italo Calvino and Jonathan Swift, or sometimes Franz Kafka and Jorge Luis Borges. In general, a city as the stage of story is more or less fictional.

The city created by one author is not the only case of the fictional city though. For instance, psycho-geography of Situationists or delirious New York of Rem Koolhaas, even if they are described by a certain group or author, could be regarded as fictional cities of collective imagination, in the

1st type of fictional city: Story Illustration by J.J. Grandville for the 1856 edition of “Gulliver’s Travels”

by Jonathan Swift

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2nd type of fictional city: Project “The City of the Captive Globe” Rem Koolhaas, OMA

DATABASE sense that those cities are the representatives of ideologies behind.

Originally, every “project” on the city is destined to be the representative of the collective imagination of the society, regardless of their creativity.

When we call contemporary city as fictional, there is no mediation of imagination by individuals or groups. The fictionality of the contemporary city is driven by the lack of imagination and collective standardization.

What does this mean?

3rd type of fictional city: Database Operation screen of “Ingress” (source: Game Guide (https://game-guide.fr))

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week_49

Article_001

2016

FOOD CULTURE AND THE 4TH FICTIONAL CITY A contemporary city is a chaos, where every information is stacked on one physical platform.

system and cataloged in the name of â&#x20AC;&#x153;usercustomizationâ&#x20AC;?.

This is the 3rd type of fictional city.

In another word, it is a hardware to store enormous amount of database.

Users get innumerable stories by choosing and combining any information in this database, but not through their subjectivity nor imagination. The creation of stories is now outsourced to economic-driven

Furthermore, this type of cities are context-less and floating. Once people are captivated, no one there tries to call for genius loci, like novelists in 19th century, nor fights for the place-ness against global capitalism, like a few artists or activists.

Food culture has been strongly related with place and human body through the process of production, distribution, and consumption.

But the more it is fundamental for human lives, the more it is operated in a systematic way.

As a result, food issues including cultures from them are being absorbed into the contemporary fictionality, not sufficiently exhibiting their power to intervene in the real. Here we

need to establish a sanctuary, which is also fictional as a miniature of the city, but generates real culture inside.

This sanctuary is the 4th type of fictional city. It utilizes the database, represents the society by strong subjectivity, and becomes a platform of the reality. Through this platform, food is directly reconnected to place and body, leading to new culture.

Conceptual image of the 4th fictional city (It could be found somewhere inside the 3rd, touching also 1st and 2nd.)

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Copyright Š 2016 theWorkshop

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