Objects, Aesthetic, and Public Space Experience: An Exploration of the Informal Work in Bogotá’s Metropolitan Area

Abstract

Informal work is a common phenomenon in Latin America, due to social problems like unemployment, migration (Venezuelan diaspora), and poverty. It’s frequent to find it in two municipalities located in Bogota´s metropolitan area: Funza and Mosquera. Some people use the public space to sell goods and services, to provide artistic shows, or to circulate with different selling artifacts across the street. This has an impact on the phenomenological and aesthetic experience of the city.

This article studies the role of informal work objects in the aesthetic experience and the public space meaning in those places. The theoretical foundation is based on a materialistic and pragmatic semiotic approach, it is grounded mainly on the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce and Actor-network theory. Through that academic lens, public space is relational space, made of chains of interactions between humans and not humans. It also has a critical approach, based on the Walter Benjamin’s perspectives of the city.

A descriptive methodology is applied here. It is located in the hermeneutical paradigm, close to the ethnographical method. Some of the instruments used are cartographies, participant observation, visual analysis procedures and in-depth interviews.