Buenos aires and the aesthetics of defamiliarization

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 I have later found that I am not the only one to get confused by the map of Buenos Aires. I was quite amused to read this correction in the New York Times: ‘Correction: March 13, 2000, Monday A Critic's Notebook article in Weekend on March 3 about the exhibition “Buenos Aires 1910: Memories of the World to Come,” [...] misstated the location of the Plata River port in Buenos Aires. It is on the east side of the city, not in the southwest corner.’ The writer obviously looked at a map similar to the one that I have described and forgot to look at the orientation axis. 2 This difference between the orientation of a city map versus one of a larger area is marked, in Spanish, by the different words used to connote each. A schematic two-dimensional map of a building, neighbourhood, or city is a plano, whereas a geographical representation of the earth or a portion of it is called a mapa. These divisions can seem arbitrary and having to do with size merely, but it is my experience that they signify different conventions, and that a plano can often schematise places of interest in a city differently from their placement on a world map. In an age of Google Earth, where we can zoom in from the view of the entire continent to a particular building, this change in orientation is more disturbing. 3 See http://www.postmedia.net/alys/zocalo.htm. 4 See http://www.findelmundo.com.ar/psonora/index.htm. 5 See http://www.irational.org/heath/london/. Bunting has also made art pieces that trace the alphabet on journeys in London (Underground Movement, 1994) and a guide to the best rubbish bins in London (Corporate Skip Raider's Manual, 1996). 6 Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus. Capitalism and Schizophrenia, translated by Brain Massumi (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota, 1987), 21. 7 , ‘Incidental Music,’ in Jorge Macchi: Incidental Music (Colchester: University of Essex exhibit catalog, 1998), 10. 8 Jorge Macchi, personal interview, 19 September 2005. All translations mine unless otherwise noted. 9 Walter Benjamin Benjamin, Walter. 1986. “Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia”. In Reflections, Translated by Edmund Jephcott Edited by: Demetz, Peter. 177–92. New York: Schocken. [Google Scholar], ‘Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia’ in Reflections, translated by Edmund Jephcott, edited by Peter Demetz (Schocken, New York, 1986), 179. 10 Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro Pérez-Barreiro, Gabriel. 1998. “Artist in Transit”. In Jorge Macchi: Incidental Music, 5–8. Colchester: University of Essex exhibit catalog. [Google Scholar], ‘Artist in Transit,’ in Jorge Macchi: Incidental Music (Colchester: University of Essex exhibit catalog, 1998), 7. 11 See, for instance, several analyses of a pedestrian's movement through a plaza in Richard Sennet, The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of Cities (New York Alfred A. Knopf, 1990). 12 All quotations from Macchi are taken from my interview with him, unless otherwise stated. 13 Michel De Certeau De Certeau, Michel. 1984. “Reading as Poaching”. In The Practice of Everyday Life, Translated by Steven F. Rendall 165–76. Berkeley: University of California Press. [Google Scholar], ‘Reading as Poaching.’ The Practice of Everyday Life, translated by Steven F. Rendall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 165–176. 14 Walter Benjamin Benjamin, Walter. 1986. “Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia”. In Reflections, Translated by Edmund Jephcott Edited by: Demetz, Peter. 177–92. New York: Schocken. [Google Scholar], ‘A Berlin Chronicle,’ in Reflections, translated by Edmund Jephcott, edited by Peter Demetz (Schocken, New York, 1986), 5. 15 See, for instance, Néstor García Canclini, Consumers and Citizens: Globalization and Multicultural Conflicts. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001). 16 See Jorge E. Hardoy's discussion of the partial application of European urban theory and practice to Latin American urban design in his ‘Theory and Practice of Urban Planning in Europe, 1850–1930,’ in Rethinking the Latin American City, edited by Richard Morse and Jorge E. Hardoy (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1992), 20–49. 17 Jorge Luis Borges Borges, Jorge Luis. 1990. “El Sur”. In Ficciones, 195–204. Madrid: Alianza Editorial. [Google Scholar], ‘Death and the Compass,’ in Labyrinths, edited by Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby (London, Penguin, 2000), 229. 18 Elena Oliveras, 'Jorge Macchi: Tracks of a Walker in the Global City, Art Nexus 57 (Jun 2005), http://www.artnexus.com/servlet/NewsDetail?documentid = 15012. 19 How were the incomes and savings of the middle classes growing in the 90's if not, as Alejandro Kaufman says, by being ‘constituted on the back of extreme violence, in the form of exclusion, genocide and pauperization?’ [María Moreno Moreno, María. 2002. Interview with Alejandro Kaufman. Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 11(2): 137–42. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar], ‘Interview with Alejandro Kaufman,’ Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 11.2 (2002), 138–9]. 20 María Moreno Moreno, María. 2002. Interview with Horacio González. Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 11(2): 143–9. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar], ‘Interview with Horacio González,’ Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 11.2 (2002), 148. 21 See Roman Jakobson's Jakobson, Roman. 1962. “Shifters, Verbal Categories, and the Russian Verb (1957)”. In Selected Writings, vol 2, The Hague: Mouton. [Google Scholar] development of the concept of the personal pronoun (‘I’ and ‘you’) as well as the words ‘here’ and ‘now’ as shifters because they can only be understood by reference to the context in which they are uttered. 22 For a refreshing series of essays and photographs on cartography and the placement of the self in a subjective location, see Katharine Harmon, You are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004

Cartography · Geography · Geometry · Orientation (vector space · Zoom · History · Latin American Literature Studies · Music History and Culture · Geology

• A thousand plateaus

  Félix Guattari, Gilles Deleuze•A thousand plateaus•1987

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• Interview with Horacio González

  María Moreno Parra, María Moreno•Journal of Latin American…•2002

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• Interview with Alejandro Kaufman

  María Moreno Parra, María Moreno•Journal of Latin American…•2002

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