Contemporary cities operate as living archives, where layers of symbolic debris and artisanal resurgence reveal an ever-shifting negotiation of meaning. In this light, Avendaño’s reading of urban stickers in Madrid portrays them as visual palimpsests, once-functional adhesive media now rendered obsolete by the dominance of digital screens. Affixed to metal surfaces—mailboxes, pipes, shop shutters—these stickers outlive their original advertising purpose, becoming remnants of past commercial wars and unintended urban ornamentation. Their stratified presence, some torn and others artfully layered, now serves as a metaphor for a city that forgets and remembers simultaneously, where analogue traces challenge the totalising presence of screen-mediated interaction. Parallel to this urban sedimentation, Ocejo's ethnographic study of old trades in post-industrial economies highlights a contrasting trend: the symbolic elevation of manual labour. Barbers, butchers and bartenders—once low-prestige, working-class occupations—have been reframed by a professional, often white, middle-class as desirable, artisanal expressions of identity in the context of creative economies. This process of upscaling, where authenticity and performativity are commodified, shows how cities repurpose not only spaces but also the social value of labour. The juxtaposition of outdated advertising mediums and the revival of traditional crafts illustrates how cities negotiate both nostalgia and novelty, embedding aesthetic resistance into everyday encounters. Together, these elements chart a poetics of urban transformation where what is dismissed becomes decorative and what was once ordinary turns into curated cultural capital.
Avendaño, G. E. (2021). Pegatinas, palimpsesto y publicidad. URBS. Revista de Estudios Urbanos y Ciencias Sociales, 11(2)