Re-sensing Las Vegas: aesthetic entrepreneurship and local urban culture

Abstract

Cities are dense, sensory environments that provide various stimuli that require interpretation and representation. The embodied sensuous lived experience of urban life, however, is much more dynamic and fluid than any one representation can encompass. A conflict often emerges between the dominant image of a city and what actually happens in it. As such, this creates a tension about a city’s ‘sense of place.’ I employ the notion of ‘aesthetic entrepreneurship’ to designate the practices of certain individuals who seek to create new senses of place in the face of opposition or in times of social crisis. I explore the ways aesthetic entrepreneurs have used sensory knowledge to create alternative narratives and images of Las Vegas after the economic crash of 2008. Each of the aesthetic entrepreneurs discussed here has actively sought to develop a new sense of place for a city popularly defined by its dominant neon imagery.