From the Periphery to the Paraphery. New logics on recording and representation in the transfer of centuries

The revisionist response to the crisis of modernity (historicism, “turning back”, reconstruction and evocation, mannerist eclecticism, etc.) marked most of the postmodern urban cultures of the late twentieth century. In the face of the diverse figurative expressions – emphatically “stylistic” or gently “calligraphic” – of this retroactive vision which saw in the evocation of a referential centre (ideally civic, cohesive, and harmonious) its main reference, the critical reaction – favoured during a good part of the nineteen-eighties by certain theoretical positions – would be to return to the basis of modern production – more contemporary (abstract, objective, technical) – accepted in all its “dry and hard radicalism”. In this context it is possible to interpretate the interest, manifested in the eighties, for a “new” expressive landscape: the landscape of the periphery (the “suburb”, the “crown” of the “broken” city, its crust more or less cracked) as “alternative scenario” (Mateo 1987). The explosion of the cities, manifested with all its evidence in the nineties and the irruption of the new digital technologies in the beginnings of this century have expressed new challenges for our urban environments but, also, new lectures and interpretations for the term “periphery” understood with other conceptual keys. Approaches and interpretations that have also be recorded, expressed and communicated with different (and renovated) models, formats and logics of analysis and formulation.