Andrea Maturana or the erotics of urban space

Abstract

Andrea Maturana's collection of short stories constructs the urban space through the erotic drawing of its inhabitants, and disassociates itself from traditionally conclusive plots to become a mere sketch of circumstances in contemporary living. Each story projects itself onto the collection in order to configure a demystified eroticism, alien to the organizing principles of social ethics, underlining the power of desire as a creative force. The city appears as a map of fortuitous relations where the anonymity of the dis/encounter is negotiated, and legitimacy codes are challenged, making of all inhabitants both potential spying and spied-upon subjects. By questioning the narrative pillars, this writing transforms urban space into a metaphor of the repressive social conscience, time into a radically subjective measure, and the individual into a subject striving to find a balance between the instinctive and the institutional.