Difficult neighborhoods. Representative spaces and neglected areas on the example of Tomsk

Abstract

The article concerns bottom-up creative acts oriented toward the transformation of urban space. Objects that are the result of these activities represent something that can be called alternative urban aesthetics. Basing on the results of research conducted in Siberian Tomsk, as well as photographic material collected as part of research projects such as “Invisible City”, the author tries to prove that the described phenomena in the urban iconosphere have a global character. The “invisible” activities of the city's inhabitants are spontaneous forms of creative activity. These are traces of being and inhabitation left by the very people who create urban space. The residents who are the active actors, not only modifying but also creating the surrounding space. Importantly, these practices have material implications, thus affecting the appearance, organization and dominant aesthetics of cities. The “invisibles” are often assigned to the spheres of kitsch and bad taste because they quite strongly break the established and valid canons. However, paradoxically, alternative aesthetics have their own internal canon, too. As its basic principles, we can identify re / upcycling, independent construction of objects, avoiding abstractness, and referring to animal and plant shapes not necessarily known from the surroundings, as well as an unusual community of forms that cannot be denied in its global character. From 2015 the author has participated in a research project called “Visual organizations of urban space: behaviors, interpretations, historical and cultural perspectives. Comparative analysis of the iconosphere and its relations to the ways of life of Russian Tomsk and Polish Wroclaw inhabitants”. Tomsk turned out to be extremely abundant in “invisibility”. In almost every courtyard, whether adjacent to modernist blocks of the Soviet period (the so-called big slab, that is large panel system-building), or to unique, wooden single- and multi-family houses, the author has found examples of spontaneous creative activity by residents. Tomsk's residents transform unnecessary objects or materials into installations whose primary function is to “tame” and “embellish” the nearest - often dehumanized - space, as well as work to solve everyday problems and shortages. Bricoleur-like minds and hands are then transforming rubbish and fragmented objects into emancipating entities. Invisible objects introduce familiarity and mark the presence of the creators / residents who, by adopting an active attitude, thus decide about the image of those city fragments. These creative acts “give” their power back to them and the objects produced in this way are characterized by a very special position in the entire universe of objects.