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Bitácora Etnográfica
- Autómata Urbano (2013)
In the economy of space-time, movement through the city is considered a sunk cost. At the end of the day, the accumulation of minutes spent traveling from point A to point B seems like pure waste. When routine approaches time, it is called a schedule; however, when time brushes against routine, it is accused of abusing its power.
For the so-called urban automaton, crossing the city’s entrails is no different from circulating along its epidermal streets. The imperfections of the metropolitan grid are worth more for their contingency than for the discomfort they produce. Moreover, incidental sound undergoes the reform of personal taste, privatizing public space at the cost of its soundtrack.
Once the mechanisms of movement have been internalized, the urban core is reduced to its conditions of mobility. Yet if transit is a rite of passage, transportation is the liminal state: it is the animistic possibility of the urban automaton. It is then that the machine becomes sentient and space surpasses its temporal function. This is not a matter of slowing down; the means can become an end in itself when the unfolding of one’s surroundings ceases to be accidental and becomes a driving force.
When the urban automaton is animated, it becomes, above all, an observer. Referential figures evolve into details that appeal to sensitivity. Lights are no longer instructions; stripped of their imperative tone, they give rise to compositions of color. Streets and their names mark the rhythms of a cartographic poetry. The city, at last, regains its capacity to astonish us.