Abstract

In many countries, urban renewal, as tied to the rhetoric of sustainability, has led to proposals to “green” the city. When tied to a development logic, the complexity of urban places become reduced to two-dimensional mappings of absolute space: lots, peoples, and landscapes are classified as blighted and threatening to the body politic. In this article, I focus on creative visual practices that challenge such a model of urbanization and provide alternative spatial imaginaries of the city. I examine two artistic interventions in Bogotá: Prometheus, a collaboration with former residents of El Cartucho and the artistic collaborative Mapa Teatro from 2001–2003; and Auras Anónimas (Anonymous Auras) by Beatriz González, unveiled in 2009. Both projects animate the messy complexities of place in a city marked by violence, where any historical narrative and hegemonic vision of urbanism is subject to question and doubt.