In Sight Out of Mind: A Critical Investigation of Golden State Imaginaries
Borrowing from the real estate and economic language of Silicon Valley, this project identifies four urban imaginaries that frame development and ecological change underlying the imaginary of the Golden State. These are the view, the valley, the entrepreneur, and the algorithm. Together these imaginaries place bodies into constructed systems that don’t necessarily advocate for them or for the kind of world that they want to inhabit. They also persist across history-shaping and strengthening the ecologies they produce. These are only a few of many active imaginaries that should be complicated in order to arrive at better understandings of place and lived experience in California.
This project is divided into three parts. The first explores the theoretical underpinnings of imaginaries and the criticality involved in complicating them. The second discusses the construction of terrain in California through the four urban imaginaries above as prototypes. It does this by outlining the investigative processes of
experiencing the terrain and
dissecting and redrawing lines, to
produce an annotated archive that begins to complicate these imaginaries by producing new ways to collectively read and reproduce space and place.
The third proposes a pathway forward to refine methods for collective analysis and production of imaginaries.
Through urban imaginaries, imagination ascribes power. A collective investigation re-asserts alternative narratives and with them, agency. It expands our capacity to recognize and understand shared experiences in order to come up with more equitable design proposals, rather than ones constrained by inequitable frameworks.
Designed as a printable booklet, a digital version can be viewed below or accessed as a pdf here.
