City as a stream of sense. An exploration through aesthetic research practices

Abstract

This exposition presents an approach to urban research whose main features consist in addressing the city as a not yet objectified process of the emergence of sense, and in inquiring into this flow through particular aesthetic research practices. It has been realized in two iterations: City as a thin line by the sea_Merihaka / Sompasaari and Exploring signlessness: an essay on the proto-phenomenal city. This exposition presents the conceptual framework of this approach, short descriptions and the scores of the aesthetic research practices that were activated in these iterations, and the artifacts they generated. I believe that this approach addresses a fundamental dimension of the city—its most intimate enactment through the silent interaction between bodies and their urban surroundings—and as such is complementary to all other varieties of urban research. In this sense, the exposition aims to facilitate the incorporation of this approach into an ecology of urban research. The research presented through this exposition results from the convergence of my current research project—The Sense of Common Self—and the project within which this Special Issue has been generated.