week 4 baldwin

In talking about “The influence of Non-places in the Concept of Latin America” Navas starts out connecting the ideas of ‘think global, act local’ related to geographic and political differences as they relate to appropriation and technology. Navas touches onto the ideas of Augé’ on non-space. I particularly enjoy the idea of Las Vegas being the simulacra of the world -- I’d like to relate this to the book I’m reading currently Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne:

These new buildings may not be beautiful. They may not even be utoptian, as some architectural scholars and theories of modernism might have hoped, but they are cheap, functional, and they don’t remind people of anything that went before... The new generations will shrug off the weight of countless millennia and symbolically declare themselves free. (pg 79, Bicycle Diaries, Byrne)

Next Navas emails the historical idea of non-places to himself elevating the internet as a place that can also contain non-places to introduce and inform the reader on his curatorial practice and further expand upon the idea of non-place.

Navas then goes into the geopolitical differences, and glocality, and discusses the intent behind his curatorial practice -- “Transitio_MX, Maquilápolis is included to expose the production that goes behind the realization of non-places, and to reflect on how the industry of the maquiladoras supports the global economy.” Maquilapolis opens with a display of borders between Mexico and the U.S. and folding back in non place I think back to Byrne’s ideas that these kind of spaces, both the city structure and these workplaces can take on a the identity of “spaces that need not be visited, but named” as Augé describes non-place.

I feel that corporations have taken on a sense of non-place and this is to their benefit. It takes a spectacle of the yes men, or other mature hacks, to change these spaces into something new that the lens of society can then look at as something new and old as well, but able to scrutinize.
The text is strong in that it clearly lays out it’s idea of non-place juxtaposed to a curatorial practice but I feel that the segments could be tightened up some. I think the ubiquity of non places can lead to difficult space to navigate in and Navas curates works nicely out of it.