Contested Urban Rhythms: From the Industrial City to the Post-Industrial Urban Archipelago

Abstract

In industrial societies, dominant mechanic rhythmicalities were treated by critical thinkers and artists as forces of dehumanization and alienation. Organic rhythmicalities (bodily or cosmic ones) were alternatively explored in an effort to create a possible harmonious synthesis of nature and machine civilization. Rehumanizing the city-machine has, however, ceased to be a meaningful venture in post-industrial societies. Contemporary post-industrial cities are characterized by site-specific rhythms which create a multifaceted urban normality. Each urban enclave has its specific rules and rhythms of use, and is controlled through a localized ‘state of exception’ in which certain general laws and rights are suspended. Contesting contemporary rhythmicalities might thus mean contesting the rhythmicalities of exception which establish spatiotemporal separations and discriminations. Profiting from an ongoing discussion about the inventive tactics of the weak and the dispossessed, this paper focuses on the ‘squares movement’ in order to discover exemplary acts of such a possible ‘polyrhythmical’ resistance. In the occupied squares people have devised ways to escape the imposed normality of urban ‘enclavism’ in search of polyrhythmical spaces and practices of commoning.