Instagramismo e a produção socioespacial: os imaginários das redes sociais e o Reinado de Itaúna

Abstract

The research investigates how visual culture and post-photographic production for social networks are influencing the construction of the symbolic field of society and space (imaginary) and how this is transferred to the physical space (built environment). Thus, this work deals with an “expanded field” between photography and architecture, as suggested by Mortimer (2015), as well as a hybrid digital field between the real and the imaginary, as suggested by Fontcuberta (2016). Its general objective is to study the aesthetization of everyday life as a practice in these media and to analyze the implications of their visual regime in the “expanding field”, while the specific objectives are: to understand post-photography, the functioning of social media, and aesthetic standards established by them; identify the principles and paradigms shared between post-photography and the built environment; analyze its implications in the professional architectural field; identify the transfer of aesthetic photographic patterns to the physical and imaginary space; and analyze its negative and positive social, political and cultural consequences. Although social media are meeting places for different photographic perspectives, the algorithms and the “regime of the visible” created by them limit the circulation of images that do not corroborate with their aesthetic standards, or even inhibit their production and publication in them. This artificial intelligence contributes to the growing homogenization of the field of aesthetics, the production of increasingly photogenic spaces and a model of behavior that conditions the action and the vision of individuals due to the instagramable images at the beginning, middle and end of their experiences. Lev Manovich calls this aesthetic movement that emerged in the 2010s Instagramism. Despite social networks establishing a dominant aesthetic pattern, they also allow everyone with access to these tools to register and publish their daily lives and realities even if they do not belong to hegemonic ideals. The case study of the Reinado of Itaúna inserts another perspective on the subject, making the plot more complex by incorporating issues of visibility, representativeness and indemnity narratives. This work was developed from a method with an exploratory objective and with an overlap of an ethnographic work and a thought by constellations of cases and images as research tools. Therefore, there was no intention to reach a closed and generalized conclusion, but to understand the formation of a phenomenon and raise questions. And as the phenomenon debated happens in the present moment, the understanding of how these technologies affect the production of the built space allows individuals greater freedom in its use, architects to rethink their performance in relation to Instagramism and the possibility of resistance strategies and gaining visibility for socio-spatialities against hegemonic to the aesthetic pattern of social networks.