Sensitive education experience in three shopping centres in Medellín; an experimentation with contemporary art

Abstract

This article emerges from a reflection on some experiments with contemporary art in three shopping centres in Medellín, the aim of which was to stress the possibilities of the education of the sensitive that take place in these centres. This reflection was inscribed in the qualitative method, through research based on the arts, allowing two artistic actions to be deployed: firstly, some stays of sensitive participation, a stroll, nesting; and secondly, in space, an experiment with a rolling display case, a provocation or invitation to visitors to interact. The results of the experiments with art showed the need to question the forms of education of the sensitive, which take place in shopping centres, and the impact on people's lives, on the formation of consumer networks and on the socio-economic practices of the city. In this paper, the ways of sensitive education that the spaces of shopping centres produce on bodies, and the modes of subjectivation that are deployed, are vindicated.

study proceeded through stays of sensitive participation and five performative actions, especially the action, on hold, theoretically and epistemologically sustained from the perspective of Arts-Based Research. One of the work axes of the research was directed to perceive what happens inside the mall, its effects and affections on the bodies as a multiform artifice, configured through the interaction between architectural design, forms, materialities and marketing strategies to attract, contain and retain visitors. The present article focuses its attention on the experience of being in space, perceiving relations and aspirations of power, economic and socio-cultural; in other words, they educate the sensibilities and subjectivities of others, according to the culture of consumption.