The Eternal Lateness. Reflection on the Moment of Observation of the Dynamic Objects: The Example of Urban Projects and Representation of the City
We can describe some objects as dynamic: they evolve and their actors with them for we are studying them. These objects are influenced by a multitude of temporalities, which implicates to consider them in their full complexity. However, our scientific approaches and practices constraints require us to “freeze” our objects in a state, to make “cuts”, to stop our observations, to choose a short time t to observe them. Doing that is proceeding to a simplification of reality and the choices made directly affect the content of the research and the validity of the results. From the example of a research concerned with representations of the contemporary city entered through the mediation of urban projects, this paper proposes a reflection on the determination of the most suitable time to observe a dynamic object and the consequences of this choices on search results that the researcher is able to produce.