Postmodern Flanerie

Hi everyone…

Just to add an art historical element to the lab, I’ve been looking into Surrealist theory, particularly Breton’s concept of ‘Automatism’, his auto-biographical ’Nadja’, Baudelaire’s ‘Forest of Symbols’, Aragon’s ‘Paris Peasant’, the idea of ‘profane illumination’ and other writings on the Surrealist City.  The flaneur is the key theme…which led me onto placing it within the twenty-first century context, investigating how the modern day ‘flaneur’ navigates the cityscape visually, but more interestingly, aurally…not only within the confines of the city, but all that extends beyond it.

 a few thoughts and references…

• Aural ‘forest of symbols’? How sounds govern/guide everyday existence.
• “Qui suis-je?” ..Modes of self-exploration: mentally investigating the private whilst physically inhabiting the public. 
• Psychological spaces.  
• Achieving a sense of ‘place’.
• SOUNDS IN THE CITY – see The Auditory Culture Reader for texts by Fran Tonkiss (Aural Postcards: Sound, Memory & The City), Les Back (Sounds in the Crowd), Jean-Paul Thibaud (The Sonic Composition of the City), Caroline Bassett (How Many Movements?) and Michael Bull (Soundscapes of the Car)
• Paris as ‘lieu de memoire’ in twentieth century…modern day equivalents?? See False Urban Memory Syndrome by Austin Williams http://www.futurecities.org.uk/archive/arch_essay03.html
• The ‘ non-place’… Head Out on the Highway: Anthropological Encounters with the Supermodern by Samuel Collins http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.996/review-2.996
• The Cyborg Flaneur? – see Passage of the Flaneur by Gaylene Barnes http://www.raynbird.com/essays/Passage_Flaneur.html
• Postmodern flaneur? http://rhizome.org/thread.rhiz?thread=34&page=1#1031
• Data-flaneur and data-dandy http://www.mith2.umd.edu/teaching/courses/s06/engl758a/?p=29

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