Trump’s Aesthetic, Spatial and Architectural Dramalities

Authors

  • Sophie Suma Université de Strasbourg - INSA

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7480/footprint.15.2.5394

Abstract

This article hypothesises that while drama is primarily a television genre, its operation also appears in the way Trump mediates his political activities. By observing some of the media objects and events staged by Trump, such as his escalator descents from Trump Tower, the popularisation of Trump’s Border Wall, the attempt to institutionalise the executive order entitled ‘Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again’, and the transgression of national symbolic spaces embodied by the 4 July 2019 show at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, it will be a matter of questioning the architectural politics conducted by Trump. Then to see in what way the Trumpian dramatisation participates in a populist architectural strategy.

Author Biography

Sophie Suma, Université de Strasbourg - INSA

Sophie Suma is a contractual lecturer in The Cultural History of Architecture and the City at the Institut national des sciences appliquées de Strasbourg. She holds a PhD in Visual Arts and Architecture. Her research focuses on the construction of identity and social representations in an architectural and urban context, which she studies from the perspective of visual culture. She is an associate researcher at ACCRA (UR 3402). She is co-founder and co-coordinator of the Visual Cultures Research Group (ACCRA) since 2018 (culturesvisuelles.org), and co-founder and co-coordinator of the Archifictions research project (ACCRA-AMUP) since 2020 (archifictions.org). She is the author of the books Designathon: L'architecte et l'architecture participative à la télévision (L’Harmattan, 2020), and Que font les architectes à la télévision? (Éditions 205, 2021).

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Published

2022-05-31

Issue

Vol. 15 No. 2 (2021): Issue # 29 | Autumn/ Winter 2021 |The Architecture of Populism: Media, Politics and Aesthetics

Section

Review article

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Copyright (c) 2022 Sophie Suma

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