Methodology
The process to reveal an imagined city
The three methodological parts of an imagined city
Principle: The imagined city precedes the physical city in the ways of inhabiting it.
Investigating the imagined city from Armando Silva’s methodology involves three parts that are developed gradually, in the progressive order noted below and all intertwined with each other:
I
Arithmetic part: it consists of the application of a basic survey designed for citizens, who answer according to their knowledge of the city. The survey is also designed to learn about the citizens projections of their desires and feelings regarding the city they inhabit. It is not a survey of consumption or qualification of people but of social expressions, in many cases spontaneous. When data is grouped by what we call “citizens’ points of view”, we can derive or glean “sketches of collective perceptions”.
II
Visual, audiovisual, and digital part. In this second level, the researchers begin to imagine the city shown in audiovisual productions, some of which are derived from the results of the arithmetic research while others are born without going through the numerical part.
For the results that emerge from the arithmetic part, “perception surveys” are produced that will reflect the “citizen iconography” from the collective emblems that will be built based on the answers received. Thus, we cross a line in the surveys and those common themes that exceed 50% of coincidences will be understood as “identity emblems”. In turn, the answers will be crossed by determining point of view (gender, age, socioeconomic level) and, again, those who obtain 50% of coincidences will be understood as “emblems by dominant point of view” (for example, a sketch of danger perception can be only from the point of view of women or only for the popular class or only for young people… etc.). From the identification of these citizen emblems, the audiovisual teams will create “urban files” by folders.
In addition, each team will create archives of images, videos, sounds, etc. that are not born in the statistics, but are contributions of each group of the imagined city, who in their knowledge and feeling of their city decide that a certain fact or object is a factor of citizen identity and capture them, be it a street, a shop window, a monument, a memory, etc. all of this is understood as “creation of urban archives” that the author of this methodology inspired in the deconstructive and psychoanalytic tradition of archives and social memories.
III
Creative part. In this last instance, the research teams deploy not only the documentative part, but the creative one as well. Here the coordination of each imagined city stimulates the team members to create as contemporary artists do, not to produce art, but to recreate imaginaries that have been previously located in parts I and II. Thus, it is a matter of creating with photos, with videos, with intervention in objects of social significance in the city, such as making a one-minute video to be projected in a subway or sharing through local media some characteristic, sounds, images, curves of perception, of the city in particular. In the imaginaries page cited below you can see already-created instances of this, such as “how to eat a sausage” on the streets of Caracas, etc. This third part follows the strategies of public art, of contemporary art, of interventions in public space by social collectives.
Where can you get information about this methodology?
You can find it in several publications, books, essays, videos by the author and his international teams.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ARMANDO SILVA AS AUTHOR AND EDITOR FOR METHODOLOGIES OF URBAN IMAGINARIES
1986 grafiti. Una ciudad imaginada (Bogotá: Tercer Mundo Editores)
1992: Imaginarios urbanos Bogotá y Sao Paulo, cultura y comunicación urbana en América Latina (Bogotá: Tercer Mundo Editores)
1987: Punto de vista ciudadano, Instituto Caro y Cuervo (traducción del francés original, 1986 EHESS, París)
1992 imaginarios urbanos Bogotá y Sao Paulo, cultura y comunicación urbana en América Latina (Bogotá: Tercer Mundo Editores)
1996 The Family Photo Album: The Image of Ourselves (Irvine: UMI, 1996)
Urban Imaginaries From Latin America. Documenta 11 (Kassel: Documenta I Museum Friedericianum-Veranstaltungs GmbH, I Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz Publishers, 2003
2003 Bogotá imaginada (Taurus, 2003).
2004 polvos de ciudad (Bogotá: Sociedad Cultural La Balsa, 2005)
2005 metodología: Imaginarios urbanos: hacia el desarrollo de un urbanismo desde los ciudadanos. Metodología (Bogotá: Convenio Andrés Bello 2004)
2008 Imaginarios urbanos en América Latina: urbanismos ciudadanos (edición trilingüe con inglés y Catalán), Fundación Antoni Tapies, Barcelona
2013-2016 IMAGINARIOS: asombro social, editado por varios países: Bogotá: Externado en Colombia; Sur en Argentina; SESC, SENAC, USPI de Brasil; CIESPAL, Ecuador; UAS en México.
2017. La mierda y el amor, Roca editores (Novela)
2019: La bella durmiente 2.0, Roca Editores (Novela)
2023 una novela sin ficción: 471 días con el virus, experiencia trasmedia de lo que sucedió en la pandemia durante los años 2020- 2021 (novela y crónica de medios)
Books from the "imagined cities" collection that used Armando Silva's methodology and were edited by him.
- Bogotá imaginada, 2003
- Barcelona imaginada, F erran Escoda, Alfaguara 2004 (Bilingüe español y catalán)
- Santiago imaginado, C. Ossa y N. Richard, Alfaguara 2004
- Montevideo imaginada, Luciano Álvarez, Christa Huber, Taurus, 2004
- Quito imaginado, M. Aguirre, F Carrión, E. Kingman, Taurus, 2005
- Sao Paulo imaginada, L. Rebollo, de Lemos, C, Freire, Capaguana, J Batista, M. Bertoli, L. Magalhaes, Taurus, 2006 ( edición bilingüe con portugués)
- La paz imaginada, Carlos Villagómez, Taurus, 2007
- Buenos Aires imaginada, Mónica Lacarrieu, Verónica Pallini, Secretaria de Cultura de la Presidencia de la Republica, Argentina, 2007
- Pereira imaginada, O Lucia Bedoya Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira,2011
- Lima imaginada, Javier Protzel, Universidad de lima, 2011
- Porto alegra imaginada, N Jakes, V Morigi, L de Oliveira. Observatorio Grafico, 2012 (En portugués)
- Sevilla imaginada, Pedro Romero, Almuzara, 2012
- Armenia imaginada P Felipe Díaz, A José Vélez, UTC. 2014
- Ibagué imaginada, A. Lopera, C Santana, Nydia Molano, T Hernández, Y. Martínez, Universidad de Ibagué, 20019
Links to urban imaginaries theory: essays, interviews, virtual exhibits, videos of imagined cities. All of them used as methodological references.
Ensayos en español, inglés y francés
- Topofilia, México
- Mac Gill, Canadá, abril del 2017-04-12. Ensayo de Silva en inglés
- L’apparition de Bogota (2017, francés)
De la cité rêvée à la ville réelle - Dic 16/ 22 China bienal
- De qué color es usted. Imaginarios, 2020
Sobre arte contemporáneo
- En Youtube, armando silva, Cátedra Carlon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S114wjNAEx0 - ABCCA Brasil nov 13 del 20 (portugués)
- Derrida y el Arte, 2020
Some interviews in Spanish and English
- Documenta 2002 Stewart Martin (inglés)
- Bienal de Viena Hubert Klumbert
- entrevista de Paula Vera, 2018
- La bella como arte por Sophia Rodriguez- Pouget
- Entrevista, Felipe Aliaga ( Dic, 2019)