The shop window as a political loudspeaker. Between the commodification of the gaze and resistance

Abstract

Due to its highly mediatic character and its centrality in the urban space, the intervened shop window functions as a device complicit in the economy of attention, halfway between an instrument of ideological expression and a form of cultural and social resistance. By examining cases such as the suffragette protests, the Kristallnacht, the propaganda strategies of authoritarian regimes and the actions of environmental movements, the numerous episodes of shop window attacks or manipulations can be analyzed around two distinct behaviors in relation to this device: one, of concealment; the other, of exhibition. This study aims to determine whether these actions subvert the shop window’s mercantile function or ultimately reinforce it. Although seemingly opposite, they represent two sides of the same coin.