Urban Walking – a Subversive Staged Experience ? The Post-heroic Flâneur under Observation (original) (raw)
Related papers
Urban Walking – a Subversive Staged Experience?
2019
On the one hand, for decades there has been a growing interest in urban walking as an authentic physical, creative or subversive spatial experience. On the other hand, cities as well as different walking practices are more and more staged, are part of mediatized, as well as market-oriented city scenarios or artistic image productions. Thus urban strolling appears increasingly to be a theatre- or film-like experience. The text discusses the ambivalence and complexity of today's walking practices and re-evaluates their meaning ranging from resistance to consumerism, referring to the historical concept of the flâneur as well as to the current phenomenon of a post-heroic urban stroller. Examples from film, fine arts and literature from recent decades, illustrating paradoxical walking concepts, are used for analysis; a special focus is placed on Bertrand Bonello's film Nocturama, Albrecht Selge's novel Wach and Valérie Jouve's photo series Les Passants and Les Personnages.
The Strolling, Viewing, and Producing Character of the Modern City: The Flâneur
Toplumsal Değişim, 2020
This article focuses on the concept of flâneur, which had largely emerged from the works of Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin, and attempts to reveal the level that this concept has echoed through the contemporary period. Flâneur is accepted as a teaching metaphor on the point of modernity' s relationship with urban living; therefore, it can serve the function of a tool in the social, historical, and theoretical explanations regarding the world today. Studies revolving around flaneur have been published in a wide variety of fields. This study will discuss flâneur over "strolling", "viewing", and "producing", which come at the top of the elements of city life that are as inevitable as much as they are also changing and transforming. Discussion around flaneur that will interest many of the social science disciplines and those working in these fields are examined in the context of the literature that has been developed.
The Aesthetics and Politics of Cinematic Pedestrianism: Walking in Films, 2022
The Aesthetics and Politics of Cinematic Pedestrianism: Walking in Films offers a rich exploration of the cinematic aesthetics devised by filmmakers to reflect the corporeal and affective experience of walking in the city. Drawing on urban studies, film theory, aesthetic philosophy, and feminist methodologies, it is the first monograph to approach the history of cinema from the perspective of walking. A series of case studies providing nuanced analyses of widely referenced figures, including the flâneur/flâneuse, the vagabond, and the nomad, reveal how filmmakers have articulated their objection to repressive structures through depictions of walking –– a common everyday act, which is nevertheless transgressive, bold, and indomitable. Through the lens of Henri Lefebvre’s theory of space, Michel de Certeau’s concept of pedestrian acts, Jacques Rancière’s treatment of the politics of aesthetics, and Rosi Braidotti’s feminist nomadology, The Aesthetics and Politics of Cinematic Pedestrianism offers fresh insight into film historiography by tracing the pivotal role of the feet, shoes, and insurgent wanderers in the technical and aesthetic evolution of cinema.
Street and Spatial Stories: Performing the Transgressive Step
Proceedings of TTT2016, 2016
The current paper explores the transgressive aspects of walking as an aesthetic practice through selected walking-oriented artworks, actions and performances within the urban context of the late 20th and early 21st century globalized city. Initiating from the aesthetic and methodological concepts of flaneur and psychogeography which have been reverberating throughout 20th century, this paper considers the transgressive element being approached not only as a radical action but also as a series of sophisticated site-specific performances including author’s one (i.e. Francis Alÿs, Susan Stockwell, Regina Galindo, Dominique Baron, Tim Knowles, Bill Psarras) which bring together senses, poetry, repetition, objects, places, technologies into a “performative constellation” with poetic and political implications. The paper touches on emerging methodological issues of what it means to walk with objects/technologies/people and into places (Lee & Ingold, 2006), trying to find emerging commonalities while discussing the transgressive of such spatial actions within the multimedia urban landscape.
Proceedings of the 2018 ACM International Joint Conference and 2018 International Symposium on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing and Wearable Computers
We present the activity of strolling as an artistic practice. With this we make an invitation to be lost in the geography of an urban setting. The main concept is to provide the physical space with a communication level that would be pleasant to discover while wandering without a destination. We want to support flânerie as way for recapturing the dimensions of both time and space against the modern division between work, conviviality, rest and family life which are typical of modernism. Therefore the Post-Modern paradigm of valuing heterotopias drives this contribution. Along with considerations about semiotics, sonification, ecological psychology and digital jewellery we would like to furnish a possible way to imbue the suburban areas of genius loci, the spirit of a place.
Passeio, passing by, walking by. A platform of urban art and culture
2017
Passeio (the Portuguese word for walk) is a platform of urban art and culture, conceived within the scope of the University of Minho’s Communication and Society Research Centre (CECS). Using a qualitative methodology and an anthropological inspiration, this project looks at urban streets – in terms of architecture, graffiti, music, street theatre and animation, urban sports, handicrafts and traditional commerce, outdoor advertising and window-shopping – and organises its respective images and stories, focusing on the technological connections that extend the layout of these streets and networks. Based on a review of the theoretical paradigms related to visual culture, the city and notions of space and place, in this article the common point of departure for this passeio (walk) is the inspirational figure of the flâneur, as described and analysed by the German philosopher, Walter Benjamin.
Errant Paths: The Poetics and Politics of Walking
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29.4, pp. 672-692, 2011
Walking has moved into increasing visibility in social, cultural, and geographical studies as well as art and cultural practice in recent times. Walking practices are often mobilised as a means for sensing and learning about spaces, for enabling reflection on the mutual constitution of bodies and landscapes, and for finding meaning within and potentially re-enchanting environments. Through the influence of Michel de Certeau in particular, the idea that walking ‘encunciates’ spaces and is a creative, elusive, and resistive everyday practice, counterpoised to the ‘solar eye’, has become commonplace. This paper focuses on projects by the artist Francis Alÿs that are based on walking in London and other cities, to consider their engagements with the politics of urban space. Attention is paid to walking as his method of unfolding stories, and to its potential to unsettle and bring into question current realities, especially in the context of the regulated, fortified, and surveilled zones of London. Addressing the poetics and politics of his spatial practices, however, reveals the inadequacy of undifferentiated models of creative resistance, nomadism, and subversion beloved of much recent theory, and often endorsed through a partial reading of Certeau. Instead, the openness and ambivalence of these practices suggest a need for a more nuanced approach to the multiple rhythms, trajectories, and narratives that constitute urban spaces as well as to their contested (in)visibilities.