VIRGENCICA, VIRGENCICA!: WAYS OF LIFE THAT RESIST AND PERSIST DESPITE THE HOMOGENISING THRUST OF MODERN ARCHITECTURE

Abstract

This article aims to propose a critical analysis of the process of urban regeneration that involved the construction of the emergency residential complex called La Virgencica, through an artistic practice, as an alternative methodology to generate relevant knowledge about inhabiting practices. This methodology makes possible to delve into reflections on the processes of spatial normalisation, but above all to think about practices of resistance to these processes of regularisation: from care of the links that makes the existence of a community possible to the different ways of appropriating space that can go beyond the architectural apparatuses. Although all production of urban space is closely linked to specific ways of disciplining forms of life, we are interested in attending to the critical potential of those forms of life that are not subject to their modes of standardisation. We consider that artistic research has a particular capacity to recover the memory of place and to think about the ways in which methodologies can be developed to insubordinately inhabit the segregating forms of the present.