Eighteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Through historical periods, the modes of existence of human collectives changed and so did their perception, which is organised and conditioned through the mediums in which it exists, including architecture. Architecture has provided space to the public realm to translate their ideas into their geography and develop collective consciousness. People try to understand and participate in the political ‘reality’ but the reality itself is remade through the architectural spaces and maps created by State. Architecture is a ‘gentle hand’ that prompts the civil body to follow ‘instructions’ implicit in the architectural message. Meanings are extracted from the space in the capacity of mental concepts that exist in personal or socially constructed schemas. People must be distracted from their habits in order to introduce novel schemas and perceptions. Art offers this distraction. This paper investigates the use of architecture by the sovereign State as a tool for governmentality, for the construction of collective consciousness of the citizen body and further analyses vandalism through graffiti as a way of rebellion, a transgression against the borders that have been built in our collective consciousness through architecture. This paper brings attention to some subtle tools utilised in politics that are not considered during major discourses like the process of creation of the ‘people’ and how the citizens participate politically.