Comments on jen+tommy™ | a blog about us.: The Flâneur

Suppose we were to create an "Arcade Project&...

2010-01-06T15:21:55.200-05:00

Suppose we were to create an "Arcade Project" in Lowell. What word would substitute for "Arcade"? As Benjamin held affection for Arcades - what is it that we, denizens of Lowell & New England, hold affection for?

What could be the process at the center of our preoccupation? Would a central preoccupation even emerge or would it be a cacophony, plurality and fragmentation? What 'shifts' would we discern? Perhaps the "Walter Benjamin" for our project would not be a single person but a multi-vocal network? And if we employed a collaborative approach to a constructivist formation of categories - would we arrive there via consensus - or would dissensus be preferred?

Is the notion of flâneur, or or 'flâner-ing' still apropos - as observers - or do we need a new metaphor of which we are are own prime models as Benjamin was for the flâneur?

"The term flâneur comes from the French masculine noun flâneur—which has the basic meanings of "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer", "loafer"—which itself comes from the French verb flâner, which means "to stroll". Charles Baudelaire developed a derived meaning of flâneur—that of "a person who walks the city in order to experience it"." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fl%C3%A2neur

"Benjamin describes the flâneur as a product of modern life and the Industrial Revolution without precedent, a parallel to the advent of the tourist. His flâneur is an uninvolved but highly perceptive bourgeois dilettante."

What is to be our 'flâneur'? What would that metaphor be a product of today - postmodern life and the post-Industrial Revolution?

Sortons et flâner

Great comment Kevin. I couldn't agree more abo...

2009-12-21T13:27:07.877-05:00

Great comment Kevin. I couldn't agree more about the "permission slip" analogy. So many people feel a strong need to document how they've spent their time, either through a drawing, some writing or a photograph series. This is great as a first step, but the end goal should be for all of us to feel free to spend our time entirely as we wish, with no need for permission slips or documentation. With that said, I'm certainly glad the camera phone has helped people have more of a reason to enjoy certain scenes, in much the same way that going out for a smoke "allows" people to spend a few minutes outside, idly doing nothing in particular. If only non-smokers could also be allowed that same kind of freedom in our twisted society!

Perhaps the proliferation of camera phones provide...

2009-12-21T11:22:19.253-05:00

Perhaps the proliferation of camera phones provides an affordance (Gibson, Norman) to the latent flâneurs in our city's denizens. I know that when I carry a camera around town it affords me the opportunity to spend a few moments really looking at something in my daily environs that I might not otherwise take the time to engage. This is the case even though I am not a professional photographer - and I know that most of the photos I take will probably never go anywhere or be used for much of anything. Yet, the simple mechanism of capturing a shot almost acts like a permission slip for spending that time, with the spot, that place, this nook, that look.

I have a collection of these permission slips - which may have all the aesthetic interest to others as looking through a stack of receipts.

But those receipts are time stamped indices on those moments in which I awoke from my sleep-walking and asked "what's this?", "how does that work?", "why is this here?", "where did it come from", and "who else was there?"