Informal habitats and urban vulnerabilities. Ecosocial imaginaries between artistic and cultural practices

Abstract

This text tries to analyze some artistic and cultural practices carried out by and with ordinary people in so-called “informal” settlements, which are considered places of conflict, but also of life and of the future. It is not about offering a picturesque view of the marginal suburbs, nor is it about romanticizing the daily practices of the marginalized and oppressed by the need to provide a roof and a dignified life. On the contrary, the objective is to make visible the imaginative potential that these subjects possess to procure an adequate habitat for survival, generating, in addition, their own aesthetic expressions from mostly recycled materials. With this they highlight the existence of other knowledge related to daily experience that is essential for the social transformation and improvement of their communities, while at the same time being built as places of dissent, of feeling in a different way.

The framework in which this study is developed is the historical moment that we have had to live, whose hegemonic modern colonial capitalist gender civilizational model is characterized by an exacerbated persistence of extractivism, dispossession and exploitation of human and non-human life, with a greater incidence and repercussion in the global south. To put it into discussion, we will approach, from art history, visual culture studies and decolonial studies, to the ecosocial imaginaries proposed by the Guatemalan architect and urban planner, Teddy Cruz, the Slovenian artist and architect Marjetica Potrč, and the artistic collective interdisciplinary Learning Group.