Costanera Center as a Stage for the Performativities (of Power) of Resistance

This This paper deals with the relationship between place and power, shaped by theatricality. It concentrates in some corporeal and ephemeral acts which, consciously or unconsciously, use theatre elements to achieve certain performative eficacy. This, related to staging and excercising the power of resistance in Costanera Center shopping center, located in Santiago de Chile. The owner and representatives of this mall insist on presenting it as an icon of the city and of Chile. These acts show the possible distance and differences, especially due to inequality, between the "lived space" and "perceived space", and the "conceived space", in Lefebvre`s conception. As evidenced especially by the analysis of different acts staged in this place ("spaces of representation"), what is appreciated by many as a dream place, for others represents only frustration, disproportion, a discourse and a script that show the invisibility of their precarious and disposable lives.