Caracas, the city as performance

Abstract

ABSTRACTDrawing on the painfully complicated political situation in Venezuela and inspired by José Ignacio Cabrujas’ vision of Caracas as the city of ‘in the meantime’, this article describes a long tradition of architectural transformation as political spectacle, juxtaposing Caracas’ public image as told by the government against examples of protests, bold site-specific gestures and street actions, presenting citizens as creators of a counter-spectacle that reveals the city’s deeper identity. The idea of Venezuela’s double reality was echoed in Venezuela’s national pavilion during the Prague Quadrennial (PQ) where photographs from several Venezuelan productions coexisted with an effigy representing a bleeding, recently shot body of a student protestor. The article focuses on urban gestures such as the Torre de David (Tower of David), the world’s tallest vertical slum which housed more than 700 families for years in the city’s financial district; and two city protestors, Franklin Brito and Comet Man, middle-aged Venezuelans fighting for their rights through visible street action, and how their acts impact society from a different point of view. Caracas, the city as performance, interrogates what is true and what is fiction in the second most violent city in the world.