The Balcony

The sixth chapter of ‘The Promise of Ruin(s)’ turns to the conceptual remains of the Nature/Culture divide, which became, since the Enlightenment, the dominant framework for understanding our relationship with the environment, justifying its commercialization, and defending a historicity focused on the development of human civilization and its hub: the city. Through works that challenge the conventions of genres typically associated with faithful representations of reality, these artists transform urban areas shaped by neoliberal structures—where such contradictions manifest most intensely—into sites of inquiry.