The Matrix of Urban Media: Text, Subtext, Pretext, Context

The Matrix of Urban Media:

Text, Subtext, Pretext, Context

Reference:

Latour, B., Hermant E., and Reed, P. 2004. Paris: Invisible City. Accessed online at http://www.bruno-latour.fr/virtual/EN/index.html.

Paul Valéry’s quote at the start of Friedrick A. Kittler's article “The City Is a Medium" is instructive. His rhetorical ponderance at the end of the quote gestures toward “a society for the domestic distribution of sensory reality.” I would assert, though, that the dreaming shouldn't be just for the philosophers, or poets, or essayists for that matter (no offense, Paul).

As we enter week 3, I continue to contemplate on how a city (or place) tastes, smells, sounds, feels, looks - and how it acts. Since both Kittler and Larkin focuses on the urban space (‘the city’ and Kano in Northern Nigeria), I searched for something that speaks to both the city as a medium (Kittler) and the media that comes together (or apart - such as in the case of closed down cinemas or the ‘unstable objects’) to create a place (Larkin). The multifaceted expressions of ‘media' as a channel and as matrix of infrastructure and communications can complicate the way that urban space has often be conceived and analyzed. For these reasons, I chose Bruno Latour's brilliant project on “Paris: Invisible City" (http://www.bruno-latour.fr/virtual/EN/index.html). The Project further fuels my thoughts on how to ‘read' a city: its texts, sub-texts, contexts, and also pretexts.

“Paris: Invisible City” is an online project launched in 2004 and was included in Airs de Paris Exhibition, Centre Pompidou. Bruno Latour provides the Text, Emilie Hermant the photos, and Patricia Reed the screen design. Of the Project, Latour writes:

Paris, the City of Light, so open to the gaze of artists and tourists, so often photographed, the subject of so many glossy books, that we tend to forget the problems of thousands of engineers, technicians, civil servants, inhabitants and shopkeepers in making it visible. The aim of this sociological opera is to wander through the city, in texts and images, exploring some of the reasons why it cannot be captured at a glance. Our photographic exploration takes us first to places usually hidden from passers-by, in which the countless techniques making Parisians' lives possible are elaborated (water services, police force, ring road: various "oligopticons" from which the city is seen in its entirety). This helps us to grasp the importance of ordinary objects, starting with the street furniture constituting part of inhabitants' daily environment and enabling them to move about in the city without losing their way. It also makes us attentive to practical problems posed by the coexistence of such large numbers of people on such a small surface area.”

As I ‘enter’ the invisible city via the online interface, I was literally entering Paris as a medium, through a medium. Going through the various plans and sections, the text accompanying the image strikes me as both a form of historicization, but also of condemnation: that we often ignore much of what holds the city together, and commit the act of historical amnesia. We fail to see the city in its entirety and its multifarious contexts. Excavating the ‘invisible’ layers and processes in a city's making and existence reveal how power structure is both dominating and negotiated. When we recognize the texts and sub-texts - and even pretexts - in a city, we come closer to knowing the life of the city as social practices and much more (Larkin). Latour’s concluding thoughts on the Invisible City offer an important way to engage with the city:

We suddenly notice that if we spoke of Paris, the Invisible City, it was, essentially not simply to combine social theory with a photographic inquiry, but to give back, in a little beauty, some of the lavish splendour that the City of Light has in store. Paris scan, Paris can.

In that spirit, I ask: As ethnographers, how do we give back to the cities we study or traverse? Which “little beauty" can be had when we eagerly struggle to re/produce our encounter and gaze of these cities? If a city scan, a city can - how do we scan it? And can we?