“알파빌”(Alphaville)과 “따띠빌”(Tativille)

Alphaville and Tativille: Two kinds of Paris in 1960s

The Alphaville and the Tativille represent the two different perspectives on Paris which was transformed into an urban space by the hands of capitalist consumerism during the 1960s. The Alphaville, a movie directed by Jean Luc Godard(1965), depicts Paris as a kind of panopticon dystopia planned and controlled by the state and the capital. By contrast, the Tativille －which originally referred to the huge set for the movie Playtime directed by Jacques Tati(1967)－described Paris as an Utopia in which users would be able to play along and thereby make a meaning out of it. The two diametrically different understandings of the modern urban space Paris were actually put into experiment by the Internationale Situationniste in the 1960s. The activists of the Situationniste put forward the idea of spectacle in order to criticize the urban space placed at the disposal of the state and the capital. They moved on to come up with alternatives by experimenting the ideas such as ‘déive’, ‘psychogégraphie’, and ‘déournement’ and working towards the Unitary Urbanism. The perspective of the Situationniste as such was brought onto surface and into action in May 1968 when the movement took out to the streets, and resorting to occupation and setting up councils. Their resistant movement ultimately run into failure. However it should be noted that the theory and practice by the Situationniste showed a possibility yet to be realized with which users would be able to make a creative appropriation of urban space, running counter to the state and the capital’s will.