Urban co-authorship: conflicts between body and image-city

Abstract

The object of study in the present paper is the co-authorship of city, that is, the comprehension about how certain beings/groups create new cities through the reversal of the use previously imagined for them. This use is proposed by capital, and creates “image-cities”, which are commodified and control the spontaneity of the citizens' body. This body finds themselves constantly prevented from appropriating such "image-cities". As the uses of the city are reverted, a conflict is created between the city and the body, which generates the idea of urban co-authorship. In this sense, being a co-author means to respond to inequality through one's collaboration in the construction of the city, by actively participating with one's own body as an instrument of resistance. In this paper, such conflict is being approached from the concepts of spectacle and image, in opposition to the concept of urban bodygraphies (Jacques, 2009), which brings us to the co-authorship based on ways of doing (Certeau, 2014) and communization (Harvey, 2014).