METROPOLITAN MONTAGES:

[Re]presenting and Intervening in the Everyday City

Abstract

"Metropolitan Montages: Representing and Intervening in the Everyday City”1 explores the use of photographic and filmic techniques as well as empirical observation as alternative modes to represent and intervene within everyday public spaces. Through working in-between the digitalization of images, sound, and software, and the analog operations of cutting, pasting and splicing, montage images and movies are created to [re]present lived experiences of the everyday city. Through these [re]presentations, ideas of possible interventions within the everyday city are proposed through new composite montages and movies. Whether driving, walking, or riding, our lived experiences of the everyday city are increasingly difficult to [re]describe or [re]present in a lucid, articulate manner. Furthermore, montage images of proposed interventions provide a more visceral understanding of how an intervention may potentially transform a space into place through multiple possibilities of inhabitation. Photographic and filmic montage techniques afford an objectivity, as well as subjectivity, both of which are ideal when representing the paradoxical, surreal, and sublime nature of the everyday. These fleeting moments of attempting to find the extraordinary out of the ordinary are ways of understanding, developing empathy, and coming to terms with our evolving globalized everyday landscape.