urban undercurrents

Urban Undercurrents explored sensuous encounters in and with the city with the understanding that particular smells, sounds, visions, textures and tastes mark cities as sensory environments that cultivate hedonism, pleasure, imagination and desire. Taking the city as sensory site, the event engaged the corporeal poetics (and politics) of being in the city. Participating artists considered both the routine and the ritualistic in their search for those things that may not be clearly visible, yet palpably register as experience in the city.

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As part of the event, Juan Betancurth and Todd Shalom of conceptual walks organization, Elastic City offered their walk, 4ever 21. The event also included a number of installations and performances. These included tarot readings by Adeola Enigbokan. These readings enacted a method for feeling out resonances (in a manner analogous to the way emergency first responders might search for vital signs) between urban spaces and the affective experiences that relate people to these spaces (think for example of Cléo’s tarot reading in Agnès Varda’s Cléo de 5 à 7). Mariana Luna presented her multimedia installation, Ventanas, a meditation on voyeurism, presence, and absence. The installation imagined windows as an interface to reflect on the ways cities manifest in layers and can act as mirrors of the social and the perceptual. Xavi Acarín presented a series of images capturing the haunted qualities and subtle violence of urban space. David Peppas provided live music and shared 16mm found footage. The event also engaged participants in Jennie Kaufman’s interactive game that explored urban experience via various registers—the imaginative, the corporeal, the sensorial, and the aspirational. I planned and organized this event.