#16
POWERS OF EXCURSIONS

Recent increase of significance of events and experiences for urban planning and economic development has coincided with the multiplication of agents, tools and aims of storytelling about city. This way phenomenon of excursion has opened horizons for re-thinking the issues of economic growth, political communities and social engagement and for re-framing them in specifically urban context. Should we assume that the boom of excursions and guides implies destruction of prevalent monopolies of meaning making and hence challenges dominant rules of valorization of city environment? Or vice a versa does it reinforce prevalent meaning making monopolies by translating formerly underrepresented stances and communities into conventional form? Is it by chance that today enhanced performativity of urban and regional space dramatically coincides also with spectacular entrepreneurial militarization and hybrid warfare?

Such questions make excursion a perfect case for defining relations between visual and narrative elements of newly emerging modes of power and for discussing reasonable degrees of city’s transparency and performativity.