Angels to the sun in the metaverse era

Lights, cameras and cities in Christmas

Abstract

This article brings together a series of reflections that emerged as a result of the vision provided by the 3rd year subject of History of Art, Aesthetics and Design of everyday life at UMA, as well as by the work The System of Objects by Jean Baudrillard. As an object, the Christmas lighting of Larios Street for the 2022 festivities, designed by Iluminaciones Ximénez, is taken as a product of the main industrial engine of the city of Malaga today: tourism. From this staging, connotations, encrypted and symbolic values are derived that go unnoticed before the daily or idle gaze of the public that prostrates itself before them with no more interest, without a doubt, than that of the perfect post. This article aims to decode the narratives that are extracted from these ephemeral works. They can be considered as neo-medievalism at the gates of the modernization process that the capital of the Costa del Sol intends to undertake as a result of its bid to host Expo 2027. Precisely, the geographical framework of the Malaga coast is ideal for a phenomenon relatable with other cultural products that have followed one another as a consequence of tourism, transiting these through categories such as kitsch or pastiche. Although, there is a patrimonial identity substrate in everything analyzed that, duly, will be contextualized.