On the Screen
Unfixed Lifeworlds
MONICA LAMELA BLAZQUEZ
Analyzing Mexico City’s notorious street market “Tianguis de Tepito” through Google Maps’ different visualization styles reveals intriguing contradictions and inexplicable erasures, which are further exacerbated through the physical experience of the market. Google doesn’t seem to recognize the market as part of its fixed “real world,” portraying its presence in an ambiguous manner. Often erased from Tepito’s streets, the market’s existence can be traced through the trash left after its daily disassembly, or through the occasional empty skeletons of its structures, perpetuating former narratives of decadence and disorder.