Collective Stories about Unofficial Living-Arts Spaces: Metaphorized Tensions

Conflict as a spatial “atmosphere” becomes apparent in the configuration and implementation of cultural policy, either for constricting utopias or excluding several sectors in the design of the group of actions that constitute the cultural policy of every cultural institution. In Mexico City, there is an increasing demand for dialogue between unofficial cultural spaces and the authorities to build cultural-policy actions regarding the nature of such spaces. The silence of these authorities, however, seems to be the constant. Encouraged by this context, the Observatory of Cultural Policy of the Autonomous University of Mexico City decided to conduct a research that would lead to the identification of the “atmospheres” that derive from the dialectic interactions that occur between these spaces and the authorities. This article summarizes the strategy that required the use of multidisciplinary languages to integrate the individual narrative of each one of the spaces—identified in two different municipalities—into collective stories. These stories built symbolic spaces that were captured by a territory through temperatures.