Abstract
This article explores the complex modes of experiencing the modern city that are engaging and disengaging by nature, which thus negates any simple ways of understanding what it means by 'the urban' in a Manichean comparison. What follows is an in-depth case study of Gordon Matta-Clark's 1976 film titled City Slivers. Influenced by the countercultural practices prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s, Matta-Clark produced a number of works roughly grouped together under the rubric of "building cuts." Among many others, City Slivers is distinctive among Matta-Clark's extensive cutting projects, in the sense that he actively utilizes film as a primary expressive medium and poetically reassembles fragmentary images of cityscape in order to bring forth an alternative urban scenario where the tension between institution-bound urbanization and dispersed daily urban practices is highlighted. Instead of simply being critical against the changing urban conditions of Manhattan in the 1970s, Matta-Clark aims to actively grasp ambivalent instances of urban life that are at once attractive and alienating, thereby excavating the subconscious terrain of contemporary urbanism that is prevalent but often dismissed over glamorous urban projects.