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Vest Pocket Utopias: The City and the Theatre of Dreams

The project would consist of a lecture and discussion with accompanying images presenting ongoing research and design based in a situationist/ phenomenological/ psychogeographic reading of the mythic city. The presentation will explore how ‘fictions’ become organizers for everyday life in an urban environment. Through an understanding of these constructs, I will show how theory can inform representation from collage to ‘cutting drawings’, and how new paradigms for the design of urban spaces may be generated from these methods. A city as a realm of the imagination, a theatre of dreams, might be fashioned amidst the brick and mortar of what we have already, allowing citizens to become people of action and invention rather than drones addicted to leisure and consumption. The great task ahead in urban design is the acceptance and celebration of the city as it is and the identification and utilization of those traits that make it so. Included in this goal should be an understanding of the ways individuals comprehend their urban environment and how design can incorporate this understanding into the creation of spaces that further the common good.
*Lecture accompanies a show of drawings and collages opening at Wild Colonial on May 13th.

artist

Tim Waterman

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