A place like all others: Picturing global capital in urban space

Abstract

This practice-led thesis addresses the representation of urban space within the context of globalised economies and increased capital flows between nations. Drawing on ethnographic practices, interviews taken from the field-sites - the Docklands in Dublin and Pasila in Helsinki - were combined with still and moving images to investigate how new urban spaces are framed through images and controlled by the camera. The thesis examines how these visual techniques are deployed in the processes of making urban spaces more globalised. The thesis comprises of five chapters, an introduction and a conclusion. Chapter One builds up a theoretical framework with an analysis of the photograph and how it is deployed in the production of urban space. Examining the role of both commercial and 'fine art' photographs in the geographical imagination, there is an investigation of how they create abstractions that draw space towards the realm of the commodity. In Chapter Three, the rationale, methodology and methods used while working in the field-sites of the Docklands and Pasila are outlined and discussed. There is an examination of reflexivity in forming a body of knowledge regarding the subject of how space is visualised through the processes within capitalism that lead it become globalised. Chapter Four builds up a picture of both field-sites, outlining the properties of globalised space and demonstrating how meaning is not drawn from the local but from various forms of capital that aims to deterritorialise/ reterritorialise urban space. Finally, Chapter Five outlines how the practice-led work gestures towards a modem urban space that is constructed under the rules of a financialised market for property, asking what types of places we construct in urban space. It concludes with an argument, in relation to the body of practical work, for the renouncement of the single image as a path to understanding the ontological properties of the photograph and, instead, to reflect upon how meaning is produced through the body of work as an entirety.