The image sees the city: four moments in the relationship between image and city

• Grant number: 23/05514-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: November 01, 2023
• End date: April 30, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Cinema
• Principal Investigator: Cecilia Antakly de Mello
• Grantee: Miguel Antunes Ramos
• Host Institution: Escola de Comunicações e Artes (ECA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project seeks to reflect on different forms of relationship between image and city, inquiring about the consequences, for the urban space, of its transformation into image. From representation to register, from production to control; we propose a historical course that seeks to better frame the present, based on the hypothesis that we are currently witnessing a modification in the way in which the image sees the city. In the course proposed here, we will focus on four distinct moments. First, the representation paradigm - a study of the gesture of mapping a city, starting with the discussion of the map as a representation of a space. Next, the realist paradigm, which seeks to reflect on indexicality in the photographic and cinematographic image. Thirdly, we will discuss the post-modern turn, and Jean Baudrillard's formulation in which, since the world has become an image, the image would precede the real and then produce it. Finally, we will address the contemporary and its immense profusion of operative images, as well as the new mapping of the world produced by the so-called 'surveillance capitalism' (ZUBOFF, 2020), and we will ask ourselves if it is possible to say that we are facing a paradigm shift in the relationship between image and city, where, more than representing, registering or producing, the images would control the city. (AU)