Urban sign. The polis furnished

Abstract

Just as the linguistic sign, defined by Saussure, is like a double-sided coin: significant + meaning, so the city can be defined by this dichotomy, that is, on the one hand is composed of matter and, second, to function or content. We travel the city as the baudelairean flâneur as untimely affiliates walkers to the Situationist International, and so we wear away the tread on the asphalt. Politics, associations and media are responsible for our public space is constantly bombarded by private interests with the consequent impact on the development of citizen relations in semi-privatized public space. The Art brings significant strategies of non-urban places and does so through the Public Art as artistic intervention appropriation of public space by the affirmation of ordinary citizens living there, i.e. by an art to the city and citizenship. Exploring the current state of the contemporary city gives us the framework to review part of urban artistic poetics emerged in recent decades.