Chronotopia: A Festival for a Pluralist Public Realm

Abstract

As cities continue to densify and are driven by late capitalist motivations, the public realm is shrinking. In areas of the urban realm where privatization has historically made its marks, an exploration of permanent and ephemeral public interventions is examined from a narrative perspective to give agency to the community and the individuals. The narrative develops while connected to time and space. This thesis seeks to explore the potentialities of those stories and their abilities to shape space. Using both bus transportation and concepts of montage to build an argument for transfer, exchange and juxtaposition of the multiple publics that exist, this project proposes an event marked in time and space that will reveal the possibilities of the future of public space. The framework of the carnivalesque simultaneously gives agency to the people and subverts the privatization of public spaces. Chronotopia reestablishes the public realm not as a space of consumption, but rather of renewal.