Δ
community + culture = politics + performance a psycho-situationist collective’s manifesto An audio-walk manual by Stefan Jovanović. Seminar: Costandis Kizis 36 Bedford Square
/Conrad has just given you the audio walk. You are on the bridge. I want you to face east. People running down the stream, ducks swimming in the opposite direction. I want you to stare. Straight. Ahead. Towards the pinnacle of the church. You will see some movement in the distance. Listen to me very carefully. I would like to welcome you to the new collective./
“We can reach every point in the world but, more importantly, we can be reached from any point in the world. Privacy and its possibilities are abolished. Attention is under siege everywhere. Not silence but uninterrupted noise, not the red desert, but a cognitive space overcharged with nervous incentives to act: this is the alienation of our times […] workers commonly and voluntarily work overtime, the population is tethered to cell phones and Blackberries, debt has become a postmodern form of slavery, and antidepressants are commonly used to meet the unending pressure of production. As a result, the conditions for community have run aground and new philosophical categories are needed.”1 /The sun just hit the pinnacle of the church. Absolutely beautiful. I want you to look slightly to the left. You will see a massive cage with birds flying around. We are going to walk by it. I want you to turn left.
1
(Berardi)
Go to the end of the bridge, and walk down the pathway to the stream. You will see a map. Pass the map to your left. There is an orange arrow on the ground, follow it. You’ll be slightly inclined to your left, but follow the path down to the stream. You wil reach a different type of footpath very soon. I want you to take a left. Listen to the sound of my footsteps, try to follow them./
Furthermore, are we interested in the community, or just attracting the crowd? Do we want to engage with culture or simply create the spectacle? Is it politics that we want to address, or agitation that we want to stir? Finally, do we want performance, or simply just violence? /I want you to walk under the bridge now./
In the context of our contemporary urban and metropolitan life, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the city to physically re-generate itself, London especially. We, and by we I mean the royal “we”, find ourselves in the midst of a, perhaps architectural, but more importantly cultural discourse, falling into a taxonomy of labels where we can be classified as enablers, agitators, iconographers, or utopianisers.2 Or rather, we should strive to at least align ourselves with one or multiple of the above doctrines of behavior, rather than fall into this blurry pool of the undefined ambiguous collective that has no character nor sense of individuality. The expert has been expelled to the periphery of the decision-making nucleus, there has been a loss of trust and confidence in governance, and finally art is in a constant tiresome battle with capital. What I am also witnessing is the loss of confidence and the abandonment of both the spoken and written manifesto. Nothing new, you may think, and if so, that means that there is a problem. From this point onwards, when I state …we, I mean myself, and you… the reader who will automatically become a subscribing member of the new situationist collective that will assume the title of the #Δ user.
2
(Franch I Gilabert)
/We have reached the cage. There are three ladies looking into it. You will hear the rushing of the stream, and birds sounding. I want you to look up into the space. What do you feel? Do you notice anything peculiar?
Look at the footpath and the railing? What relationship does it have to the birds? Now, look at the reflection of the rippling water on the wall. Look towards the center, there is a hole in the wall. There is a bird pecking inside. Can you identify which bird that was? I want you to turn around, and walk to the left. You see…/
I am on the constant search for that new upcoming and vibrant space; that secluded underground vault, or the hidden room behind the bar inside the restaurant within that building. /You know which one I am talking about./
I have a constant thirst for a set of subversive instructions to guide to me an esoteric and unexpected experience, a thrill for the immersive. I, as an audience member of a society that thrives off of spectacle, want nothing more than to become an activist in my own right. I want to lose accountability, but at the same time, I want to withhold authorship. Yet, there seem to be fewer and fewer places left where one can exact such an enabling agitation of an iconographic notion of utopia… /You will see a homeless man on a bench on the left, talking to himself, with his many bags, music playing. The radio. Keep walking./
…or dystopia. /Look at her… Bending her neck./
This has directly affected the divide amongst the spectators and users into two categories of nomadism, the first being “lyrical – a mobility thematised as a random and poetic interaction with the objects and spaces of everyday life”, and the second being “critical – it does not enact or record an action or movement for the spectator’s delectation, so much as locate travel itself within historical and institutional frameworks”.3 This mobility can then redefine the purpose of the built environment within the context of both the lyrical and the critical nomad.
3
Coles, Alex. Site-Specificity: The Ethnographic Turn. London: Black Dog Publishing Limited, 2000. Print. 11
/Keep walking. You are approaching a second bridge. I want you to walk under this one as well. You will see a red, floating barge in the distance. I want you to walk towards it. The number 12 seems to be appearing often, I wonder what it could mean.
Now, look to your right. You will see The Castle, with a skull inside. Who do you think lives here? Or, on the Geronimo? People do live here, you know… And right behind… a house. What kind of co-habitation could this be? You see, I think this is the time that I have to tell you that we are now in…/
London is like an onion, with the rock solid upper class at its core, and the remaining strata of society forming its multiple peels…the lowest class of the society is the first to move into an area; and gradually the fabric begins to change, until the ultimate developers settle down and the onion can no longer re-generate itself.4 /We are reaching the end of the stream. I want you to walk up the footpath now. You will see a church appear on your left-hand side, walk towards it./
Still, it is difficult to view the entire city as only one onion, but rather should be seen as a network of smaller onions, which try their best to regenerate from the core; but increasingly fail to do so. Soon enough there will be no more spaces where the performance can happen; every piece of architecture and space will fall into a taxonomy of predetermined and classifiable use, and what then I ask? /The church seems to be barred and closed. I want you to take a right, and walk down the periphery./
We should no longer look to the generation of new space, but rather to the creation of the event. The latter will become the new device by which experiences within the city are measured. The qualities of the existing spaces, whether dilapidated warehouses, or grade-III listed heritage sites will become the backdrop to a new choreography; making the city into the stage set for an infrastructure of collectives which operate within a physical, technological, and theoretical system that essentially has no confines, at least not to the beholders. The event, whether an act of immersive theatre or performance art, a fictional political campaign, a railway for moving restaurants become ephemeral experiences which in turn develop, negotiate and renew the urban space and fabric. You see, like at the end of the nineteenth century, when “theatre became the means for the recovery of a collective catharsis – for the recovery of a portion of unalienated space”,5 the city at large will now have do the same, and we should then question how the architect can become the enabler as such? /You’ll see your first cherry blossom approaching on your right. I want you to look at it. I want you to look at its leaves moving. There is a parking space behind. How does that co-exist? Keep walking./
Adolphe Appia wondered “how [the] materialization of souls in space, this private ritual, can be translated into everyday behavior. ‘The fireside pours out into 4 5
(Rees) Tafuri, Manfredo. The Sphere and Labyrinth. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1987. Print. 96
the street,’ he writes, ‘and street-life bursts in through our windows.’”6 His logic was not far from the challenge we are being forced to affront now. It is not a montage that we are seeking, but the opportunity for the everyday action and private ritual, as he calls it, to become mechanisable. Let us momentarily take a step back to two precedents, which I hope will inform us on how to proceed. /I warn you, don’t get distracted by the passing cars. They are many of one. Keep walking. There are two men approaching, they will pass you on the left. But…don’t worry, in case they start to follow you. There is a woman in a red dress across the street. She is trying to cross. What an interesting combination of reds that she has on. She seems to be talking to herself. Valar Morghulis./
At the heart of Guy Debord’s thinking and theory was that the “direct experience and the determination of events by individuals themselves are replaced by a passive contemplation of images”, thus signifying that the individual was to create a new situation rather than reproduce an already existing one.7 In order to create this so-called situation, or have the need to participate, engage or stage a spectacle, the individual would have had to be isolated and thus alienated by and from society. At this stage, “one of the fundamental modes of reification [for the individual] is the spatialisation of time”.8 And thus we are brought back to the idea of the individual’s personal ritual, that moment, or sequence of moments in his or her daily life, which assumes a physical dimension and spatial quality. /Now… We have reached the end of the park. I want you to take a right. And go to the stop light, the first one you see. Wait for the cars to pass, I’ll wait for you on the other side. There is a statue here. Can you recognize who that is? The Gift of William Thornton. The Martyrdom of St. Pancras. I want you to take a right and walk. If you haven’t realized, you are on another bridge. Look below, the children’s playground, a courtyard, a pond. I want you to walk down Albany Street. We will be here for a while./
Debord and his entourage of Letterists thus introduced us to the dérive and détournement, products of the their systematic observations of psycho-geography arising from their interests in a unitary urbanism. Whilst their journeys most often than not would have commenced at a bar after consumption of alcohol and various narcotics, they sought to redefine their experience of the city through a sense of adventure and passion. They sought to construct the beauty of the city in a situational manner by “the solicitations of the terrain and of chance encounters”.9 Ibid, 98 Jappe, Anselm. Guy Debord. 3rd ed. London: University of California Press, 1999. Print.6 8 Ibid, 27 9 Ibid, 59 6 7
What they wanted was for the spaces that they encountered, to provoke new feelings. These different levels of catharsis could then be mapped on a psychogeographical chart that would map the zones of experience within a city in an antifunctionalist architectural manner. /I want you to keep walking straight. There is a bus stop in front of you… Regent’s Park Barracks, it says. I want you to wait for the cars to stop and then cross the street to the other side./
It is thus in unaccustomed and perhaps uncanny architectural spaces that we may find this upsurge of emotions that the situationists were speaking of. Or perhaps if we seek to find the equivalent of the emptiness in De Chirico’s arcades, we will achieve the same influx of emotion. More importantly, however, is the act of drifting, and be it continuous to the point that the individual achieves an utter state of disorientation.
/I want you to take a left now and walk down. You will see a bell-tower appear very soon, or perhaps you will hear it first. This is an abandoned church. Perhaps, you would like to go in? But you see, 197b says no, and 197a was dead long ago. Keep walking straight. You will soon approach a gateway, with a peculiar sign embedded into the wall. I want you to remember this sign. It is the sign of our collective. Perhaps when you are ready, we will induct you. This is where the ceremony will happen. Look at the sunlight creeping under the door, it’s not all dark on the other side you know. Keep walking./
In 1955, the Letterists proposed a series of interventions that was the mere beginning of improving the cityscape of Paris – /Before I tell you these suggestions, I want you to keep walking straight, past Cumblerand Terrace no.60. To your left you will see the Territorial Army, The Royal Artillery. I wonder… do you have any idea what goes on in this space?/
- suggestions included “the rooftops of Paris should be opened to pedestrian traffic… the subways should be opened at night after the trains have stopped running… street lamps should all be equipped with switches so that people can adjust the lighting as they wish…churches be left standing but stripped of religious content…cemeteries should be eliminated… [and] obscene street names should be obliterated”.10 /We are approaching a very small crossroads up ahead. Twenty meters now. I want you to take a right. Trust me. There is a free-standing archway. I want you to pass through it.
10
Knabb, Ken. Situationist International Anthology. 4th ed. Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2006. Print. 12-14
Welcome to Cumberland Terrace Mews. I want you to take a left now. You will most likely be alone. There will be one street lamp that is turned on. In the distance, you will see four circular windows aligned along the façade of the building. I want you to stand under the street-lamp that is turned on, for a minute./
What Guy Debord proposes is the subversion of an already existing urban infrastructure; gradual and subtle changes that don’t necessarily have any physical manifestation, but rather a change in operation and policy. The experience of such distortions “introduced in the detourned elements must be as simplified as possible, since the main impact of a détournement is directly related to the conscious or semiconscious recollection of the original contexts of the elements”. 11 It is important to remember that all activity of the situationists and presituationists/Letterists revolved greatly around the political, economic and cultural context of the early to mid twentieth century in France, and Europe. The arousal of new class struggles seeded by capitalism sparked the necessity for a new collective underground and avant-garde, which the SI intended to lead and be at the center of. /I want you to keep walking straight now. You will pass by garage doors, 66, 64, 63, 62, 61, 60, 58, 56, 54, Keep walking straight. You will see a staircase in front of you. A few orange cones on the ground. A broken column of bricks. I want you to walk up the staircase. Can you see the arch that used to be here? I’m afraid we won’t walk through invisible spaces. Walk up the stairs./
Their proposal of a unitary urbanism as dynamic, meant that “spatial development must take into account the emotional effects that the experimental city is intended to produce”.12 /I want you to walk through the gate. There is a massive arch now. Is this public or private property? Does it matter? You are your own ruler. Walk through the archway. You are facing the park again. I want you to take a left now. You will see a neo-classical building in front of you. A man, standing on the balcony, looking out,
11 12
Ibid, 17 Ibid, 38
His hair slicked back, Is he waiting for you? Or is he just lost in the boredom of his everyday life. You see…/
The situationists argued against the construction of any new form of aesthetic, but rather the creation of a protocol that would breach a large majority of existing societal conducts of behavior. /I want you to take a left now, down Cumberland Place. Now take a right. A bit of color finally, to your left. I want you to walk by number 4, 3, now number 2, and walk down the few steps. Keep walking. You will see another archway in the distance to the left. I want you to walk towards it./
Their experiments and call for certain playfulness whilst tackling heavy political activism and collective theory. Another factor that crossed paths with the situationists was the rise of technology, and the resultant increase in the people’s free time. They in turn began to question whether this would have had any effect on the individual’s sense of alienation. The rise of and rapid development of technology, and their refusal to engage with it could be seen as occurring simultaneously with their downfall in 1972. /You have passed the archway. I want you to keep walking straight forward. You will see another street lamp, dimly illuminated. Suddenly, a church tower to the left. I want you to keep walking straight – down the middle of the road if you can./
In fact, their mistake to a certain extent was not to have appropriated the technology towards their polemic of urban (unitary) regeneration. Whilst they “supported vandalism, wildcat strikes and sabotage as a way of destroying the manufactured spectacle and commodity economy”, their demise also comprised their not being able to see how the development of telecommunications could have been used to their advantage.13 /It seems, I may have led you to a dead end. But, now all hope is lost. You will see that there is actually a passage way with a door. But, I don’t want you to open this door. I want you to turn around. Sometimes, the easiest way, is not the best way. You see…/
This is where one shouldn’t ignore the simultaneous development of the work of Cedric Price. Marshall, Peter. Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. 4th. Oakland: PM Press, 2008. Print. 552
13
The latter began to address similar topics in London around the same time period that the SI began to crumble. Similarly to his French contemporaries, it is impossible to divorce Cedric from the political context that he found himself in at the time. Perhaps not the most appropriate of terms, but he could indeed be considered an anarchist of his time. /Look to the right, there is someone staring through the window. You are not meant to be here, I’m sorry. Get back on the main road. Keep walking straight. You will see the arch that you passed through. A bodyguard waiting in front of a black Mercedes. Registration plate: 229B172 I want you to keep walking straight. Try not to attract too much attention to yourself. I want you to view this street again. There is something you missed the first time around. Look at the difference between the two steel archways bearing lamp-posts. You have the simple one, with the elaborate staircase. You have the elaborate lamp=post with the primitive staircase. Two choices. One informs the other. Keep walking straight. You are going to take a right now. You see../
Cedric Price may sooner be remembered for his impeccable humor, or sometimes be referred to as a brandy-drinking smoking nutter; but more importantly as someone who redefined the production and implementation of civic architecture. For Cedric this didn’t regard building town halls, libraries, or schools; but rather structures like the Aviary, which we passed not long ago, or his unrealized projects, the Fun Palace, Potteries Thinkbelt, and the Generator. /You are back on Albany Street. I want you to take a right. Keep walking straight. You will see another church to your left. Children screaming in the distance./
In his aviary, one could walkthrough, and co-exist with the birds. He loved the notion that humans could be considered as birds. He challenged the notion of the proscenium arch; and strived for an architecture, which was above all else participative. What Cedric believed in was designing a system; a modular one like the Potteries Thinkbelt, where a dilapidated site in north Staffordshire became a higher educational institution on a railway system. The railways could not have been reincorporated into Britain’s national railway system and were thus left to decay. Price saw this as an opportunity to execute and challenge the presets of individual mobility and non-automobile dependent transportation. /Someone just passed to your left. Be aware of these things. The church is here./
“Price saw technology as a way of testing non-authoritarian ideas of use (multiplicity of use and undreamt of use), encouraging chance encounters and, it was hoped, chance ‘community.’ These aims also situate Price’s work within an
established context of twentieth-century experimental urban critique”.14 What his work also emphasized was how this technology could be used to encourage social interaction. Funnily, he managed to find a way to incorporate exactly what the situationists rejected to achieve a similar speculative outcome. /I want you to keep walking straight. You will see the Victory to your left. Standing outside, there is a man with a hat, framed by green posts. Staring into the distance. He doesn’t see you. Keep walking straight. Sometimes you go unnoticed, that is fine./
What Price thus speculated about and created was a form of accidental architecture that could function very much in line with what Lefebvre defined as the moment, which would then later inform the creation of the situation. However, the “moment is primarily temporal, it belongs to an impure but dominant zone of temporality…the situation, closely articulated to locus, is entirely spatiotemporal”.15 /I want you to keep walking straight. Trust me. This journey will have been worth it by the end. A woman will pass you know on her trotinette. A brief exchange of glances, as she rides on. You will see the BT Tower in the distance. Perhaps that is where I am leading you./
Thus let us see Price’s architecture as the larger system within which the earlier theories of dérives could have operated within. One of the theories Price tackles is the paradoxical situation of the crafted or prepared accident, and the role that technology and society play in this moment. /You will see a very short rooftop, and people working on top. Something is meant to be here. I want you to keep walking straight. People are staring funnily at me for speaking into a sound recorder. They are wandering what it is that I might be saying. What is important, is that you are listening./
He looked “to technologies which can expose inadequacies in the conventional wisdom of architecture while at the same time celebrating the possibilities of thoughtful supportive environments’.16 /Thoughtful supportive environments. Do you think you could relate to this?
Wilken, Rowan. "Calculated Uncertainty: Computers, Chance Encounters, and "Community" in the Work of Cedric Price." Accidental Environments. 14 (2007): n. page. Print. <http://www.transformationsjournal.org/journal/issue_14/article_04.shtml>. 15 Kaufman, Eleanor, and Kevin Jon Heller. Deleuze & Guattari: New Mappings in Politics, Philosophy, and Culture Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. Print. 148 16 Price, Cedric, and Architectural Association. Cedric Price. London: Architectural Association Press, 1984. Print.11 14
Do you think you are in one now? I want you to think about this carefully as you pass number 59 to your right. Runners pass you to the left./
Another one of his projects, the Fun Palace, in collaboration with Joan Littlewood sought to incorporate similar notions of flexibility and play in a universal theatre of the street, where anything goes. “Price’s work, particularly the Fun Palace project, makes a valuable – and hitherto largely unrecognized – contribution to the history of telecommunications and human-technology interaction; /…like this sound…/
…to the history of avant-garde engagement with the idea of the “accident”; and, to performance of experimental urban spatial and cultural critique.”17 Most important is to understand the balance to be achieved between the prepared accident and the free-flow madness that could follow. /You are approaching the Queen’s Head & Artichoke. You see, someone used to live in the cupola. I’m not sure I should tell you who. Perhaps, you will figure it out by the end of this street. Keep walking straight./
One should also consider, “the degree of spatial variation resulting from participant motivation is comparatively high [in the Fun Palace]. The control of the physical environment, due to the size of the structure and the inbuilt environment, due to the size of the structure and the inbuilt equipment, such as the high level suspension grid and fullspan travelling crane, is achieved by an additive rather than total method. That is, adverse conditions are eliminated separately rather than collectively and affinity grouping of activities is related to physical as well as social conditioning…”18
17 18
(Wilken) Price, 56
/Think about that. You see the zone ends now, But the journey continues. I want you to keep walking straight. You will see St.Mary Magdaleneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s church to the left. I want you to cross the street now and walk behind it.
Cross the triangle. Cross once more. I want you to walk around this church, And observe. Do you see a similarity between the brick half-circular façade to your right, And the glass half-circular façade to your left. Where is the mirror? Keep walking. There is a steel sculpture in front of you and a screen on the façade in the far back. I want you to cross the street and walk towards the steel sculpture. There is a guard in front of it. I want you to keep walking towards the sculpture. You will see six seats. I want you to walk inside. I want you to sit down on one of them. I want you to look through the barges at the church tower. It seems the wind is blowing to the east. Look at the rooftop, it is framing a cloud. I want you to get up now. Walk out the other end. Keep walking straight. Watch the screen, with the passing white bars. People sitting on footsteps. A scissor-lift underneath. Glass Everywhere. I want you to take a right now./
Similar to Price’s Fun Palace, was Constant Nieuwenhuys’ New Babylon, which also proposed for the creation of a dynamic labyrinth, which functioned based on the opportunities of disorientation. New Babylon relied on the prospect of a new form of nomadism, “making us citizens of a fluid world composed of fluctuating notions of place, origin and context. This world requires a new cartography and new reference points”. 19 /I want you to go to the stop-light. You are on Euston Road now. Cross the street to the other side. I will wait for you there./
Constant was one of the founding members of the SI, however betrayed his fellow members when he decided to force the role of technology into the group’s operative and theory. This break that occurred, is in fact what led to the falling apart of the SI. /Finally, cross the street. Run if you need to. Then take a right. Pass no.355 You are going to take a left now. Storm… Watches. Take a left. Down Conway street. Wigley, Mark. Constant's New Babylon The Hyper Architecture of Desire. Rotterdam: Witte de With, 1998. Print. 6
19
You see those flags in the distance. I want you to walk towards them. Now, I’m going to tell you something…/ Now, to go in for the kill, “if the city’s very parameters – fiscal, political, geographic, socially embodied – are a product of pervasive and routine performance, how can the performing arts [and architecture] work actively to intervene in the framing of the ‘new world city’ along more democratic, more socially and ethically just lines?”20
/Keep walking straight. You are approaching Fitzroy square. It is important that you concentrate now.
Hopkins, D.J., Shelley Orr, and Kim Solga. Performance and the City. 2nd Ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Print. 2
20
You will see ornament in the windows to the left. Those gates have been stolen. Keep walking straight. You’ll see some benches ahead of you. I want you to walk in front of the people sitting on them. A man will cycle by you. A French beret on his head. Another exchange of glances. Was that an accident? Three men are now sitting on the bench, and a woman… They are eating. The woman is reading, Pride and Prejudice. I want you to walk around the park to the left. You will pass the sculpture on the way. With a hole. Watch it frame the sequence of views. Keep walking. Now I have to ask you something…/
“Who exactly are the masses? Are they the nineteenth century proletariat, underpaid and dulled by mind-numbing labor and with nothing to lose but their chains? Or are they the people of the future, robbed of their occupations by automation and cracking up of boredom…21 /I want you to walk to the south-east corner of Fitzroy square. You will see the beginning of Grafton Way. I want you to walk down Grafton Way, straight, On the right-hand side of the street./
These people of the future that Constant speaks of, would be us, yes, again the royal we, who indeed have entered into a new era of boredom facilitated by automation, and by the exponential effect of technology and social media on our daily lives. Everything has become so accessible and classified, spaces as well. /You have just passed Whitfield street. I want you to keep walking straight. Pass Carlton House on your left./
Hence, how does one take the dérive and the détournement, the vagabonding within the accidental moment where someone’s private (domestic) ritual becomes the basis of an urban strategy? It is very much so a matter of finding a “very complex, very changeable, constant activity, a deliberate intervention in the praxis of daily life in the daily environment.22 This exchange of rituals would happen simultaneously with an “incessant technological renewal” whilst taking into account and promoting “generalized secrecy; unanswerable lies; an eternal present…23 /I want you to cross the street now. The man is green. I will wait for you on the other side. Walk towards the coca-coal sign, And then keep walking straight. Happiness in a new bottle for some.
Wigley, 132 Ibid 23 Jappe, 7 21 22
We are still waiting for happiness in the new world. Keep walking along the wall. You are approaching a building site on the right, a gate, which is probably closed. Stop. Look to the left. You will see two tiers of basement floors. Sitting in a pile of dirt, rubble, and water. You know, something happened here two months ago. Turn around. Walk back towards Tottenham court road. Run your finger along the timber boards. Create an accident. I want you to take a left now. Keep walking straight. Bäckerei are probably serving samples of their food outside. Take one if you please, but keep walking straight. Look to your right now. There is a glass building. Across the street you will see a pub called the Court. I’d like you to cross the street towards it. I will wait for you on the other side again./
To start off with, we must take into consideration the development of the image of the self, which has acquired an unprecedented extremity, facilitated by social media such as facebook, instagram, twitter, and so forth. Ironically while the individual’s opinioned willpower has ceased to exist, the multiple representations of the same one’s appearance and virtual profile or avatar has exponentially increased. Individualism has assumed the role of the #selfie, ie the public posting of the self, whether through imagery or video, to no other end but to acquire an increase in likes, views, pokes, or some other equivalent nonsense, or is it? /Once you have crossed the street I want you to take a left. Keep walking down Tottenham Court Road./
Yet, these existing tools will be what we use as the starting point from which a new type of information will be disseminated; and these already existing online networks breached. I am not making a parallel between our contemporary social networking tools and the situationists’ devised catalogue of existing infrastructures such as street lamps, rooftops, and underground tunnels; but rather with Price’s proposal for the incorporation of telecommunication and media into the orchestrated accident. We should still attempt to sabotage and hijack the city’s lampposts, change the underground’s opening hours; walk our own dérives along these Georgian rooftops and, of course, strip churches off their religious content. /I want you to keep walking straight. You are going to pass Howland street on your right. There is probably a lot of people right now. A lot of people staring at you. Don’t worry. I want you to keep walking. Some people sell dreams, Others, just a loaf of bread. Slightly pick up your pace now. You have to fit into the daily pace around you. If you are too slow you’ll get bumped int. If you are too fast you will hit someone over. Keep walking./
What we need is that the new “’theatre of operations’ would be everyday life: ‘what changes our way of seeing the streets is more important than what changes our way of seeing paintings…24 /Like the one to your right, that you will see through the vitrine. You are approaching the American International Church. Who ever new such a thing existed. I forbid you to enter this place. It used to be the Whitfield memorial church. Now it is a Christian community for all people. Men selling bags on your right. Right after that, there is a footpath. I want you to go onto it. A pedestrian site filled with people and pigeons, eating. Again, birds and people co-existing. Cut diagonally through it. Walk towards Maxcliff house. Right before, I want you to turn right and walk towards the pub called, the Hope. For remember, there is still hope. I want you to take a left. You will see a colorful mural on the wall. Polock’s Toy Museum. Walk towards it./
However, in order for the street to be viewed in an innovative manner, it shall first assume the role of a backdrop to the subject, being the self-obsessed nomad. /I want you to stand in front of one of these murals. Take your phone. And I would like you to take a picture of yourself in front of this mural. Be sure and capture the backdrop. Now peek in through the window of Pollock’s Toy Museum. They are also selling high-class biscuits and cakes. Next to stuffed ducks. I wonder whether you know who used to live here… And what they used to sell. I want you to keep walking forward towards the end of this street, And listen very very carefully. I will give you the rules of the collective now./
24
Ibid, 65
/1/
â&#x20AC;˘
The nomad will be prompted to explore his immediate surroundings by finding locations where best to take a photograph of him or herself. /You have just done this. 2/
â&#x20AC;˘
There is only one rule, the space must evoke an emotion, whether fear, love, intimacy, panic, or anything that has the power of stirring a feeling. I am even tempted to say that the space must disrupt in some way. /Cross the street.
Cross Goodge Street, And keep walking down Whitfield Street./
•
This photograph, which will be digital, to be disseminated amongst as many social networks as thinkable, will be hash-tagged with the symbol Δ. /That was 3, and 4. I want you to post this picture on all of your social platforms, And hast-tag the symbol delta, Along with the location where you took it. 5/
•
Each hash-tagged space’s coordinates will be mapped and catalogued.
•
No space will be catalogued twice.
•
#Δ will automatically create a virtual database of cathartic spaces. /That was 6, 7, 8… 9/
•
The single find will gradually turn into an adventurous competition to find the most desirable space. /10/
•
The audience will competitiveness.
be
rewarded
for
their
contribution
and
their
•
Gradually very small collectives, from squatters to underground artists, quicksand porn lovers to parkour runners will be prompted to designated locations where their privatized rituals will be able to acquire a physical and public dimension. /I want you to take a left now. We are approaching our destination. I want you to walk towards Tottenham Court Road, and listen… 11./
•
As the quantity of selfies will continue to grow, so will the collection of appealingly random spaces, until they become occupied. /12./
•
A new set of conditions is then imposed, where each collective will be invited to stage an event within an accidentally allocated space. /I want you to walk towards the stop-light. You will only have ten seconds to cross this street when the man goes green. I want you to be ready. When the beeping starts… Ten seconds, Remember. I will wait for you on the other side. Please…/
NB When I say invited, I mean an accident will be orchestrated. •
The belief of coincidences will be left to the naïve.
•
Staged synchronicity is the law by which we will operate.
/13, 14./
/Finally, 15./
•
Gradually, collectives and individuals will begin to overlap, and their activities will begin to inform one another until a portion of the urban fabric is redefined, redeveloped, remapped, renegotiated, until this fucking prefix, re will be given a new meaning altogether. /Keep walking straight. I want you to turn left on Bailey Street now. Avoid the crowds. Once you have turned left, I want you to walk straight. There is another square soon approaching./
We now shall now seek, “a culture that valorizes a return to the personal and lyrical encounter with the everyday over the discursive and critical investigations of an apparently obsolete postmodernism.” 25In essence, there is no need to create an entirely new physical space, as Constant proposed with New Babylon, for we can use the existing public and private domain to create a theatre of accidents, and align ourselves closer to the operations of the Letterists and Debord. /I have brought you now to Bedford Square. I want you to cross the street towards the square. Walk towards the lamp-post which is different from all the others, Slightly curved, And listen to me./
We should however bear in mind Cedric’s emphasis on the use of technology to create the orchestrated or planned accident. Cedric also once said that “architecture should have little to do with problem-solving – rather it should create desirable conditions and opportunities hitherto thought impossible”.26 So, rather than design the infrastructure within which the accident can occur; the cultural entrepreneur or collective of individuals would be the first ones to inhabit the existing space. The repetition of their privatized ritual will inform the necessary redevelopment of the city; which will gradually begin to be experienced by a multitude of mechanisable operations, and this, will be a true society of the spectacle. /The sun has just come out. Look to the ground at the shadow cast by the lamppost Have you noted anything familiar that we have already seen on this journey? Perhaps?
25 26
Coles, 24 Hardingham, Samantha, and Kester Rattenbury. Supercrit #1 Cedric Price Potteries Thinkbelt. 1st ed, Oxon. Rouledge, 2007. Print 11
Walk towards the gate of the square. There is people having their lunch… Siting on the ground. I want you to walk towards the right. You will see a series of buildings, of Georgian house, with posters hanging in front. I want you to walk towards the building with the banner in front of it./
You may have uncovered where I have been leading you to all this time, however I hope for some it may yet still end up being a surprise. Guy Debord once stated “the whole life of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that once was directly lived has become mere representation…”27 Let me conclude by telling you how our society of the spectacle will obliterate representation. /I want you to sit on one of the benches. Listen to my final words… Here is your bloody finale./
What you as a #Δ user will abide and live by is the following: when a crowd is formed by whatever means, it will assume the quality of a community by the mere fact of having been brought to the same location, motivated by the same willpower, interest or desire. This has already happened online with the formations of the group. Now, it will acquire a physicality. When there is a spectacle, and this can range from an immersive interior performance to a hijacked synchronized light game with the city’s lampposts, it will be a reflection of the contemporary culture’s needs, be it a need for rage, demand, or simply humor. The spectacles we choose to stage or allow occurring will define the cultural vernacular we are creating and therefore living within. Any form of agitation that may result from the spectacle, stirred or witnessed, will have the sole purpose to redefine a political strategy, be it the politics of policy, the politics of space, or the politics of time. Finally, if the spectacle transforms into a political act, then it will have to be renamed as a performance, and by this I mean it will have to disrupt. /You have obediently followed me thus far; and I appreciate it, and I have revealed to you a few of the spaces I speak off along the way, but now I have led you to the first place of disruption. Look around yourself, do you feel the blood moon rising?/
27
Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. 3rd ed. New York: Zone Books, 1995. Print. 12
Works Cited
Berardi, Franco Bifo. "what_now 2014 festival." . Independent Dance, 20 Mar 2014. Web. 26 Mar 2014. <http://www.independentdance.co.uk/programmepage/activities/what-festival/>. Coles, Alex. Site-Specificity: The Ethnographic Turn. London: Black Dog Publishing Limited, 2000. Print. Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. 3rd ed. New York: Zone Books, 1995. Print. Franch i Gilabert, Eva. "Trojan Horses, McGuffins & Curatorial Objects: Towards a Theory of Earliness.". Ed. Stefan Jovanovic and Takako Hasegawa. London: Architectural Association, 2014. Web. 26 Mar. 2014. <http://www.aaschool.ac.uk//VIDEO/lecture.php?ID=2373>. Hardingham, Samantha, and Kester Rattenbury. Supercrit #1 Cedric Price Potteries Thinkbelt. 1st ed, Oxon. Rouledge, 2007. Print Hopkins, D.J., Shelley Orr, and Kim Solga. Performance and the City. 2nd Ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Print. Jappe, Anselm. Guy Debord. 3rd ed. London: University of California Press, 1999. Print. Kaufman, Eleanor, and Kevin Jon Heller. Deleuze & Guattari: New Mappings in Politics, Philosophy, and Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. Print. Knabb, Ken. Situationist International Anthology. 4th ed. Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2006. Print. Marshall, Peter. Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. 4th. Oakland: PM Press, 2008. Print. Price, Cedric, and Architectural Association. Cedric Price. London: Architectural Association Press, 1984. Print. Rees, Peter. "Sex Marks the Spot." AA Night School Lecture Series. Architectural Association. AA Soft Room, London. 20 Feb 2014. Lecture. Tafuri, Manfredo. The Sphere and Labyrinth. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1987. Print. "The Theory of Moments and the Construction of Situations." Internationale Situationniste. 4. (1960): n. page. Print. <http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/moments.html>. Wigley, Mark. Constant's New Babylon The Hyper Architecture of Desire. Rotterdam: Witte de With, 1998. Print. Wilken, Rowan. "Calculated Uncertainty: Computers, Chance Encounters, and "Community" in the Work of Cedric Price." Accidental Environments. 14 (2007): n. page. Print. <http://www.transformationsjournal.org/journal/issue_14/article_04.shtml>.