Embedding Self-Expression

The different mechanisms used by citizens to adapt and personalize the urban space include stickers, painting, graffiti, or outside decorative objects. Most of these practices are currently deemed of vandalism and pursued by the city by means of municipal commissions, street cleaners and regulations. It seems like the city wants to create a constantly clean, pristine, <<90 degrees>> urban outlook that does not represent the inhabitants it hosts. After eliminating these ways of expression, new visual motifs are instead imposed over the area by the municipality. Some of these include decorative tiles present in different points of the neighborhood, or plaques which speak about the street names. The project appropriates these institutionalized forms and techniques and changes their contents to support the aforementioned actions of the citizen in order to heighten their value, institutionalize them and give them permanence and authority. Ignacio would like to change this and decided to document these ‘unwanted’ expressions in the city. He hopes to find new ways to (legally) integrate it into our spaces.