Deslegitimar, atualizar, vulgarizar: o desvio como método de transformação material, narrativa e performática de espacialidades urbanas

Abstract

This research develops a method of transforming urban space based on material, narrative, and performative modes of production. It turns to the concept of détournement (deviation), which considers the collective use of prefabricated elements in creating new spatial arrangements. Détournement emerged as an avant-garde artistic practice in the mid-twentieth century and became popular as a working method of the Letrist International and the Situationist International. The critical analysis is organized into three chapters: to disregard, to actualize, and to vulgarize. The two main theoretical frameworks are Karl Marx's critique of modern political economy, considering the conditions for the material production of space, and Sigmund Freud's investigations on subjective urban experiences, in light of the symbolic elaboration that operates through language. Buildings, urban territories, and objects are analyzed through deviant narratives that characterize their plasticity and insertion in contemporary social and cultural relations, including its digital representations. In each chapter, two cases are analyzed to discuss nuances related to the aesthetic, socio-territorial, and cultural conditions that cross the 21st century. Détournement is characterized as an (anti-) method that results in the disregard of private property and the spectacle of images through materiality, the narrative actualization of discontent through language, and the vulgarization of everyday life praxis through bodies that open themselves to new deviant transformative processes.