Mobility in urban social events: Towards organizational transvergence

Abstract

The paper explores the emergence of territories that are constituted through spontaneous assembling of self-organized communities resulting in what we term urban social events. A concrete event is employed, namely Embros, an open occupation of an abandoned public building in the center of Athens, to highlight the dynamics that make urban social events transformative urban phenomena. By focusing upon the entangled mobilities of diverse agents, we explain how through differential, dis-continual assembling and creative collaborations, such urban social interactions institute unbounded and immanent modes of organizing. The paper contributes to organizational territoriality studies proposing that urban social events are mobile entanglements that institute practices of creative transactions with formal or informal communities. By doing that, it places the Arts, creativity and community participation at the center of transformative organizing.

Keywords:

• assembling
• territories
• transvergence
• urban

Notes

1. For an extensive discussion on assemblages, literature includes Deleuze and Guattari (1987), Latour (2005), DeLanda (2006), McCann (2011), and McFarlane (2011).

2. From Novak (1992, 1999, 2001) term ‘transvergence’.

3. See also, Alexandria, Egypt where artists and intellectuals have started their sit-in at the state-run Beram El-Tonsy theater in June 2013; The Curry Vavart collective in Paris established in 2004. It transforms abandoned buildings into performance spaces, workshops, co-operative kitchens and shared allotments. Also, more than 30 social centers in Madrid are occupying entire buildings, organizing concerts, theater shows or plan demonstrations (e.g. Casablanca, Patio Maravilas, Kairos).

4. From limen, Latin word for threshold (Turner 1969).