THE TOWN IN INTERMITTENCE

FESTIVAL TIME IN AN URBAN AGE

Abstract

The author presents a consideration of the festival as a potential coming together in the post-modern city, an opportunity to exchange ideas, present a common face when times, places, organizations and social mobility are changing fast, a moment of pause when there is great pressure on time and urgency dictates daily life, a vital break in the face of the erosion of great collective rhythms. It explores the festive event in time and space, both transient and cyclical, as a hybrib, fractal object extending itself, altering as to when it takes place, how long it lasts, how public it is and in its meaning and form. It is certain that the festival has many things to say, to the city, to geography and to urbanization; it is proposed to make of it a testing ground for a platform of urban innovation. The emphasis is on the transference of some of the outof-the-ordinary elements of the festival to daily urban life, of the exceptional to the humdrum, from festival times to planning the times and feelings that safeguard the city and those who live there.