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T. Viderman:
"Mental production of meaning: discursive practices stirring the production of space in Vienna";
Talk: BECOMING LOCAL: Public space as an imaginary of alternative urban futures, ÖZYEĞİN UNIVERSITY, Istanbul, Turkey; 2013-11-20 - 2013-11-23.

A city´s spaces are embodiments of society´s imaginaries and material culture; they are intertwined through multiple dimensions of everyday life. A particular challenge set by this project is its aim to depict a genesis of the production of meaningful places as a strategic endeavour that engages with everyday life practices. The production of meaningful places receives major attention in the post-Fordist city, for such places deliver a promise of either enhancing social and cultural capital crucial for a city´s economic success or empowering alternative (insurgent) visions for urban futures. From the city-level policy definition to the local (performative or avant-garde) initiatives, various actors raise urban issues, create visions and contest offered solutions along these two strains. It is the main hypothesis of this project that their (strategic) efforts are largely directed at building ever closer entanglements between multiple domains of everyday life and scientific practices, thus blurring the line between the production of meaningful places through everyday life practices and the production of meaning as strategic endeavours towards shaping certain urbanities. In so doing, not only do they aim to proactively shape urban cultures, but they strive to appropriate both material and discursive space. In this interplay in which always new meanings and spaces worth appropriation are produced actors at various levels and operating at diverse scales engage with and are influenced by both global practices and local initiatives.

This research is empirically supported by the investigation of everyday life and cultural practices related to social innovation in Vienna, discussing and re-conceptualising spatial relations between spaces of everyday life and the strategic construction of meaning as a means of producing added value to space. The production of meaningful places is challenged by new rationales that abandon old imaginaries and strategically try to enhance the multiple immaterial layers of public spaces in the course of postFordist transformations.

mental production, meaning, becoming local, place