Multifarious experiences of cities are brought forward in Copenhagen Architecture Festival (CAFx)’s impressive Film Mosaic—from life-affirming experiences of cities as potential, if not real, spaces of play, dance, social exchange and community-building, to claustrophobic experiences of trapped, suffocating life. To the authors of this short reflection essay, a series of films depicting the latter kind, have made a powerful impact. Filmmakers from countries as diverse as Azerbaijan, Georgia, Canada, Uruguay, Tunisia, United Kingdom and Spain offer artistic expressions of how persons in today’s urban life may be unable to thrive, to differentiate themselves, to find rootedness, calmness, sanity or safety.
Some of these films display experiences of sensual fragmentation and disconnection: disturbing visual and audial changes are registered merely as flickering light and buzzing noise. Others emphasize the emotional overpressure generated by city life, resulting in numbness and indifference, if not anger. Yet others present urban life as boxed life, materially and mentally. What does not fit into the little boxes—constructed on the basis of “sameness”, normalizing standards—is either eradicated as unlivable lifeform, or hidden under the surface. The message which seems to reappear, in the otherwise diverse depictions, is that the cities of today do not allow many of its inhabitants to live with the kind of agency that comes from inclusion in the larger community, nor to inhabit city spaces as spaces of belonging.
Boxed Life by Miranda Namicheishvili
