This conference aims at exploring how experiences of visuality, spectatorship, and citizenship converged in the cities of the Hispanic world between 1870 and 1930. In an influential article, Jo Labanyi (2005) argued that the process of construction of the Spanish citizen in the 19th century was concomitant with the construction of an audience for historical painting. Drawing on this idea, the conference presents a series of contributions that analyse, from different disciplines, how life and movement in the city contributed, around 1900, to the construction of experiences of citizenship and of spectatorship. The conference also draws on the contributions of authors such as Fried (1967) or Rebentisch (2011) to the theory of the installation art in order to understand the city as an immersive space in which spectators/citizens contribute, with their movement and their practices, to build the environment to which they belong. We are particularly interested in urban experiences connected to visuality, emotions, and senses because following Benedict Anderson (1983) and Elizabeth Edwards (2012), we understand that these are crucial to the construction of modern imaginaries.
Presentations explore different cities in the Hispanic world, such as Barcelona, Madrid, Lima, and Cuzco, and focus on topics such as national imaginaries, tourism, photography, entertainment, science and popular technologies, and other sensory practices. Presentations pay attention to the experiences of different social groups, such as anarchists and the lower classes, thus avoiding a bourgeois-centered approach. Methodologically, the conference takes a multidisciplinary perspective, with contributions from the fields of art history and visual studies, contemporary history, geography, history of science, and literary studies.
Convenors: Lucila Mallart & Núria F. Rius