Visual and non-visual agency in transformation of urban space. : On the semiotics of spatial governance
(2011) European Regional congress of Association of Visual Semiotics (IAVS)- Abstract
- When semiotics of architectural space turns from an interest in the visual revelation of a space “hidden” behind city plans or types of building facades, and focuses more on the socio-logical or narrato-logical interaction between humans, rules and matter, the subject of investigation (i.e. space) consequently turns more corporeal, more situation-based, and more political. In his philosophy of spatial production, Henri Lefebvre rendered a comprehensive and influential theorization about the ownership and transaction of space. He presented, at least, a quadruple of modalities as regards the taking over of space: 1) domination, as the exercised spatial exploitation ignorant to existing life forms and dictated by governmental needs; 2)... (More)
- When semiotics of architectural space turns from an interest in the visual revelation of a space “hidden” behind city plans or types of building facades, and focuses more on the socio-logical or narrato-logical interaction between humans, rules and matter, the subject of investigation (i.e. space) consequently turns more corporeal, more situation-based, and more political. In his philosophy of spatial production, Henri Lefebvre rendered a comprehensive and influential theorization about the ownership and transaction of space. He presented, at least, a quadruple of modalities as regards the taking over of space: 1) domination, as the exercised spatial exploitation ignorant to existing life forms and dictated by governmental needs; 2) appropriation, as the (corporeal or communal) assimilation of space with a possibility of constituting certain rules of your own; 3) diversion, as the rule-changing re-use of an obsolete, or vacant, space; 4) co-optation, as the strategic insertion of one space into another for the achievement of negotiational or revolutionary possibilities. These distinctions can be discussed, and disputed, from a space-semiotic point of view: no. 4 can for instance be seen as a version of no. 1, etc. But these four modalities still serve well as describing governmental spatial behaviour. Post-Greimasian theories of space, such as the semiotics of Hammad’s (continuing Greimas’ system of modalities and actants) or the material sociology of Latour’s (deviating from Greimas’s idea of invariant actantial type sets) can be seen as covering approximately the same basic philosophical idea as Lefebvre’s, in the sense that space is conjointly and continuously produced, not contained or a container per se. (This said, we should be aware that “semiotics” as well as “political constructions” have been disputed matters in parts of this discourse). An open re-reading of Lefebvre’s 4 spatial modalities – he never himself labelled them so – is here used to discuss governmental influence on space, especially in relation to the conflict between democratic ideals and the day-to-day development of urban space. It is here suggested that these modalities of the taking-over of space, when enriched with the semiotics of visual rhetoric, may serve as a theoretical basis for the rendering of contemporary trends in architecture and urban planning, where exploitation, densification, branding, and privatisation are part of the everyday governmental spatial practices, and where more sophisticated, time based, visual renderings are common goods. A semiotics of visual-operational space is here discussed in relation to an on-going case of transformation of a public square in Malmö, Sweden. In the current re-orientation of this square, explicit visualisations of buildings, plans and city parts, as well as the “silent” or “non-visual” policies, are the con-jointly effectuating forces in what can be described as the agency of governmental, hence emotively transformational, space.
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Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/e41c0775-4f4d-42df-87c9-e863b54fa03b
- author
- Sandin, Gunnar LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2011-09-27
- type
- Contribution to conference
- publication status
- published
- subject
- conference name
- European Regional congress of Association of Visual Semiotics (IAVS)
- conference location
- Lisbon, Portugal
- conference dates
- 2011-09-26 - 2011-09-28
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- e41c0775-4f4d-42df-87c9-e863b54fa03b
- date added to LUP
- 2021-05-26 10:44:56
- date last changed
- 2021-05-27 10:45:41
@misc{e41c0775-4f4d-42df-87c9-e863b54fa03b,
abstract = {{When semiotics of architectural space turns from an interest in the visual revelation of a space “hidden” behind city plans or types of building facades, and focuses more on the socio-logical or narrato-logical interaction between humans, rules and matter, the subject of investigation (i.e. space) consequently turns more corporeal, more situation-based, and more political. In his philosophy of spatial production, Henri Lefebvre rendered a comprehensive and influential theorization about the ownership and transaction of space. He presented, at least, a quadruple of modalities as regards the taking over of space: 1) domination, as the exercised spatial exploitation ignorant to existing life forms and dictated by governmental needs; 2) appropriation, as the (corporeal or communal) assimilation of space with a possibility of constituting certain rules of your own; 3) diversion, as the rule-changing re-use of an obsolete, or vacant, space; 4) co-optation, as the strategic insertion of one space into another for the achievement of negotiational or revolutionary possibilities. These distinctions can be discussed, and disputed, from a space-semiotic point of view: no. 4 can for instance be seen as a version of no. 1, etc. But these four modalities still serve well as describing governmental spatial behaviour. Post-Greimasian theories of space, such as the semiotics of Hammad’s (continuing Greimas’ system of modalities and actants) or the material sociology of Latour’s (deviating from Greimas’s idea of invariant actantial type sets) can be seen as covering approximately the same basic philosophical idea as Lefebvre’s, in the sense that space is conjointly and continuously produced, not contained or a container per se. (This said, we should be aware that “semiotics” as well as “political constructions” have been disputed matters in parts of this discourse). An open re-reading of Lefebvre’s 4 spatial modalities – he never himself labelled them so – is here used to discuss governmental influence on space, especially in relation to the conflict between democratic ideals and the day-to-day development of urban space. It is here suggested that these modalities of the taking-over of space, when enriched with the semiotics of visual rhetoric, may serve as a theoretical basis for the rendering of contemporary trends in architecture and urban planning, where exploitation, densification, branding, and privatisation are part of the everyday governmental spatial practices, and where more sophisticated, time based, visual renderings are common goods. A semiotics of visual-operational space is here discussed in relation to an on-going case of transformation of a public square in Malmö, Sweden. In the current re-orientation of this square, explicit visualisations of buildings, plans and city parts, as well as the “silent” or “non-visual” policies, are the con-jointly effectuating forces in what can be described as the agency of governmental, hence emotively transformational, space.<br/>}},
author = {{Sandin, Gunnar}},
language = {{eng}},
month = {{09}},
title = {{Visual and non-visual agency in transformation of urban space. : On the semiotics of spatial governance}},
year = {{2011}},
}