I made the pilgrimage to Bilbao for the Gehry-designed Guggenheim Museum. My first trip to Paris was due to a fascination with Jean-Luc Godard, Chantal Ackerman and Serge Gainsbourg – I wanted to experience the city as Jean Seberg had. I get why cities define distinctiveness. I respect the incredibly arduous and thorough process of branding. So why do I have difficulty reconciling a city brand with a city experience? In his film Notebook on Cities and Clothes (1989),Wim Wenders questions the premise of identity, noting a disconnect between being defined by a place and, alternatively, participating in the self-definition of the site itself. ‘We are creating an image of ourselves’,Wenders narrates in the film’s opening. ‘We are attempting to resemble this image...Is that what we call identity? The accord between the image we have created of ourselves and ourselves?...We live in the cities.The cities live in us.’ 1
forget not the street
| urbanism colour by amery calvelli
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amery calvelli
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