tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28108842349471513862024-03-08T16:04:19.838+00:00Urban OrienteerToward a Critical Urbanism: Negotiating the Urban Imaginary and Opening Critical SpaceUrban Orienteerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09648014205214341657noreply@blogger.comBlogger62125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2810884234947151386.post-81863466795027545482012-04-09T02:34:00.002+01:002012-04-14T15:06:50.239+01:00Dreampolitik - Imagination and Politics as the Art of the Impossible<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="274" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/s8GvLKTsTuI" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Video - <a href="http://youtu.be/s8GvLKTsTuI">ill Manors [Official Video]</a> by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/planbuk">Plan B</a> on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/">Youtube</a>]</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Following last<span style="font-size: small;"> summer's riots t</span><span style="font-size: small;">he London School of Economics and the Guardian newspaper interviewed 270 rioters from London, Birmingham, Liverpool, Nottingham, Manchester and Salford a</span><span style="font-size: small;">s part of their collaborative project </span><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/series/reading-the-riots">Reading the Riots</a></span><span style="font-size: small;">. Their findings suggest that <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/dec/05/more-english-riots-to-come">85% of participants believe that poverty was an 'important' or 'very important' factor</a>, apparently with 68% of the general public in agreement. Additionally a compelling case has been made by both left-wing </span><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.social-europe.eu/2011/08/the-london-riots-on-consumerism-coming-home-to-roost/">intellectuals</a> and the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/dec/05/summer-riots-consumerist-feast-looters">people interviewed on the ground</a> </span><span style="font-size: small;">for the pressures of consumerism</span><span style="font-size: small;"> as a contributing factor: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Among some interviewees – such as the 19-year-old from Battersea who felt "revolutionary … against capitalism" – there was a sense that an opportunity to change society had been lost. "They fucked up big time, the opportunists," said a 19-year-old man from Tottenham, who observed the riots but did not loot. "If they went to parliament and stood up for what they thought was correct, they could have brought down the government, man. We could have changed the whole everything, the whole government, man, but people wanted Nikes and crap on their feet."</span></blockquote>So had the rioters been duped into wanting the wrong things? <span style="font-size: small;">In the words of one 16 year old girl who was interviewed:</span><br />
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<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">"It was like Christmas; it was so weird"</span></div><br />
Perhaps if they had known better, if the spell of the Nike fetish had been removed, perhaps then they wouldn't have made the same choices? The 'revolutionary...against capitalism' can suppose that the downfall of the Nike brand will help them realise that they actually want other things. Likewise, the enlightened liberal can suppose that better access to education will help show young people where they are going wrong, be more rational, and recognise their mistakes before they make them. In both cases we find the same assumption. Enlighten the youth and they'll realise that they actually want the same things as us. This was very much the argument made by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhtAfIw4qJY">Plan B (aka Ben Drew) in his recent TED talk</a>. All sensible stuff! However, Josh Hall gave a great summary on the music blog <a href="http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2012/03/plan-b-is-not-your-saviour/">Line of Best Fit</a> where he wrote as follows:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Drew is the archetypical liberal. He believes that poverty can be solved through charity, and that the poor must respond to structural violence either by ignoring it, or by acting within strict parameters of acceptability. For Drew it’s bad that there are no jobs, that there are mothers skipping meals in order to feed their kids, that people are being forced to work for free in order to keep their benefits – but if you throw a brick through a window you’re on your own.</blockquote>In practical terms the choice offered by liberal ideology is that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_is_no_alternative">There Is No Alternative</a>. If you can't afford Christmas all year round you end up alone in <i>ill Manors</i> by default. But if that is the case does it not imply that Christmas all year round really is the true horizon of peoples expectations? Why wouldn't that be rational when juxtaposed with a life of deprivation? And if so, might the dystopian Urban Imaginary of <i>ill Manors</i> actually be more powerful in reinforcing this ideology than the critical message of the song is in displacing it?<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="274" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/H8BhXKGOeeY" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Video - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8BhXKGOeeY">Utopia Is No Place: The Art and Politics of Impossible Futures</a> by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/walkerartcenter">Walker Art Center</a> on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/">YouTube</a>]</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"></div><br />
In the video lecture above sociologist and activist <a href="http://www.dreampolitik.com/">Stephen Duncombe</a> suggests that the central issue for political transformation today might actually be the atrophy of the imagination, not the failure of education or critique. In doing so he offers a highly accessible discussion of the ideological situation described elsewhere by <a href="http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj-zizek/articles/cynicism-as-a-form-of-ideology/">Slavoj Zizek</a>, following German philosopher <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sloterdijk">Peter Sloterdijk's</a> characterisation of Cynical Reason, as that of 'enlightened false consciousness':<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">[O]ne knows the falsehood very well, one is well aware of a particular interest hidden behind an ideological universality, but still one does not renounce it.</blockquote>According to this view the rioters may be fully aware of the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2014325/Nike-workers-kicked-slapped-verbally-abused-factories-making-Converse-line-Indonesia.html">criticisms levelled at companies like Nike for using child labour</a> in circumstances even more impoverished than their own. The may also fully believe that the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_social_responsibility">Corporate and Social Responsibility</a> programmes of such companies are nothing more than cynical attempts to distract consumers from their questionable ethical practices. The point is that knowledge of these facts and the strength of these beliefs don't necessarily make Nike trainers or the promise of a liberal consumers Christmas all year round any less desirable.<br />
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Following the argument of his book <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1595580492/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=urbanorien-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=1595580492"><i>Dream: Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy</i></a> Duncombe argues that oppositional political programs inevitably reach loggerheads insofar as their political power relies on two assumptions about the efficacy of rational critique:</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">1. That there is an intrinsic value in knowing the truth.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">2. That there is a false belief that must be removed in order to reveal that truth.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Duncombe accepts that these assumptions are justified in a situation where there is a scarcity of knowledge or a monopoly of power as in Hans Christian Andersen's story <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes"><i>The Emperor's New Clothes</i></a>. In that story the young boy frees the adults around him from their complicity in the pretence that upholds the Emperor's power by saying out loud what they all already knew: "But he isn't wearing anything at all!". However, Duncombe offers two arguments against the efficacy of critical practices.<br />
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Firstly he suggests that the democratisation of knowledge and our recognition of the collective production of truths today undermines the idea that the value of any specific truth, and hence the exchange of that truth for any other, might have conclusive political implications. The example he uses is the collective maintenance of open source information such as that held on wikipedia.<br />
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Secondly he argues that belief itself, whether true or false, is no longer required as the support for the political legitimacy of a society for which there is no alternative because there is no positive program to displace or supplant the established routine to which 'there is no Outside'. By way of example the reader might consider our own government's policy u-turn on <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/apr/03/surveillance-what-parties-said">civil liberties</a> and the public ambivalence toward <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/29/short-history-of-privatisation">privatisation</a>.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
In the rest of his discussion Duncombe explores <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopian">Utopian</a> fiction and art as a way of opening a space of thought in which alternatives can be imagined. Crucially he argues that this Utopian space must necessarily be maintained against closure precisely by attempting to imagine the 'impossible'. Against Otto von Bismarck's proposal in 1861 of a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik">Realpolitik</a> according to which 'Politics is the art of the possible', Duncombe suggests that today 'politics is in fact the art of the impossible'.<br />
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This is not to claim that material poverty, rampant consumerism, and access to education aren't crucial political issues. Neither is it to claim the sufficiency of imagination alone for political change. The task of Dreampolitik would be to offer alternatives which inform particular political struggles by providing them with an aim, but without thereby functioning as their necessary end.<br />
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The challenge to progressive political art is that it needs to show what else there might be to look forward to other than Christmas in <i>ill Manors</i>.</div>Urban Orienteerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09648014205214341657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2810884234947151386.post-26862304331534526912012-04-08T15:19:00.001+01:002012-04-08T15:20:49.839+01:00Article 31.1 - Sneak Preview<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://31point1.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/article31point1_poster.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://31point1.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/article31point1_poster.gif" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: center;"><u><span style="font-size: x-large;">Article 31.1 - The Universal Right To Play</span></u></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: center;">That every human being has the right to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts. That cities shall respect and promote the right of the citizen to participate fully and spontaneously in cultural and artistic life and shall encourage the provision of equal opportunities for cultural, artistic, recreational and leisure activity.</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Adapted from Article 31 on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child</span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">How would the playful city be designed and planned?</span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">What institutions would civic society need to create in order to support the universal right to play? How would the culture and practice of everyday life be changed?</span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: large;">What space is there in the city for the imagination? Is there anywhere left for play by rules of our own making?</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The old team are back with some new faces to participate in the <a href="http://www.lfa2012.org/">London Festival of Architecture 2012 - The Playful City</a>. Exhibition proposals will be hitting venues shortly.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Watch this space or check out the <a href="https://31point1.wordpress.com/">Article 31.1 web pages</a> for further details.</div>Urban Orienteerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09648014205214341657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2810884234947151386.post-36102200136057397432012-03-17T11:31:00.001+00:002012-03-17T11:41:41.646+00:00Space For Rent - The art of street skating<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/38457234?portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Video - <a href="http://vimeo.com/38457234">Space For Rent</a> by <a href="https://vimeo.com/user1953153">Jeremy Knickerbocker</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>]</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In this beautifully shot short film <a href="https://vimeo.com/38457234">Space For Rent</a> filmmaker Jeremy Knickerbocker considers the relationship between street skateboarding, artistic practice and the use of space in the urban environment.</div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Space For Rent is a short documentary which examines the creative act and process of reacting to spaces in architecture, as it manifests itself in both performance and sculpture. Street Skateboarders are largely reacting to the excesses created by industrialization and corporate capitalism.</blockquote><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Enjoy!</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Via <a href="http://www.caughtinthecrossfire.com/skate/skate-news/space-for-rent-skateboarding-documentary/">Crossfire</a></div>Urban Orienteerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09648014205214341657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2810884234947151386.post-51822229326817032182012-01-29T21:14:00.000+00:002012-01-29T21:14:07.151+00:00Crack The Surface - Episode II<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/35626914?portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Video - <a href="http://vimeo.com/35626914">Crack The Surface - Episode II</a> by <a href="http://vimeo.com/silentuk">SilentUK</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>]</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This is a must see! <span style="font-size: small;">Following the release of <a href="http://urbanorienteer.blogspot.com/2011/07/crack-surface.html">Crack The Surface - Episode I</a> last summer the good people at </span><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.silentuk.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">silentuk.com</a>, <a href="http://www.sub-urban.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">sub-urban.com</a> and <a href="http://www.placehacking.co.uk/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">placehacking.co.uk</a> have teamed up with <a href="http://www.allcitynewyork.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">allcitynewyork.com</a> and<a href="http://www.shaneperez.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> shaneperez.com</a><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> to explore the UrbEx scene beyond Europe in Canada and the US.</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Be inspired, stay safe, and don't try this unless you know what you're doing!</div>Urban Orienteerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09648014205214341657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2810884234947151386.post-387576445708447222012-01-15T23:17:00.001+00:002012-01-15T23:28:34.457+00:00Chantal Mouffe: Agonistic Politics and Artistic Practices<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/10375165?portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Video - <a href="http://vimeo.com/10375165">Chantal Mouffe about Agonistic politics and artistic practices</a> by <a href="http://vimeo.com/user1825319">The New Patrons Project</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>]</span> </div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In this talk given to the European <a href="http://www.newpatrons.eu/">The New Patrons Project</a> for art commissioning, Belgian political theorist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chantal_Mouffe">Chantal Mouffe</a> examines the function of critical artistic practice in terms of her politics of 'agonistic pluralism'.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Mouffe develops her understanding of 'the Political' through the concepts of 'antagonism' and 'hegemony'. The key to Mouffe's position is to understand that antagonism or conflict is considered to be 'ontologically', meaning necessarily, irreducible. What Mouffe refers to as 'the Political' is distinguished from 'politics' which refers to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony">hegemonic</a> practices and institutions through which society is ordered and conflict controlled. However, because antagonism is necessarily irreducible, the social circumstances in which we live are inherently 'contingent' meaning that they could always be otherwise. It is this fundamental contingency that explains why social change is possible. It also implies that hegemonic projects are always insufficient with regard to their own stated ends e.g. new laws being continually required to patch up the insufficiencies of their precursors.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Rather than seek the elimination of antagonism through the completion of hegemonic projects which is both totalitarian and impossible, Mouffe advocates a politics of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agonism">agonism</a> which acknowledges the contingency of all hegemonic practices. Hegemonic practices would not disappear. Instead they would be democratically regulated through the creation of institutions and practices that support the formation of dissensus. What Mouffe refers to as 'critical art' would be one such means:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">According to the agonistic approach that I am defending critical art is art that forms a dissensus. It is constituted by a manifold of artistic practices aiming at giving a voice to what is silent within the framework of the existing hegemony. But of course in order to put this question in a fruitful way one needs to understand in each moment what is the conjuncture in which one should intervene. And this is I think where a hegemonic approach is important because it allows us to grasp, for instance, that the current neoliberal hegemony is the result of a set of political interventions in a complex field of economic, legal and ideological forces.</div></blockquote><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Where hegemonic institutions and practices seek to legitimate or naturalise themselves by concealing their contingent foundations, agonistic critical art would be any aesthetic practice that uncovers and exposes the specific combination of circumstances that enabled them to form. In order to achieve this critical art would necessarily be public art. This in turn has implications for our understanding of public space:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Such a view challenges the widespread conception that, albeit in different ways, informs most visions of public space, conceived as the space where consensus could emerge. For the agonistic model on the contrary, the public space is the battleground where different hegemonic project are confronted without any possibility of final reconciliation.</span></span></blockquote><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In these agonistic spaces the </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">hegemonic struggle for the exclusion or elimination of 'enemies' is replaced with mutual competition</span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> between a plurality of 'adversaries'. Here I think we are at the threshold between something like <a href="http://www.streetartnews.net/2011/08/robbo-vs-banksy-graffiti-wars-full.html">Graffiti Wars</a> and radical politics. In order to make the leap from one to the other Mouffe suggests there are several myths of modernist avant-garde art that need to be relinquished:</span><br />
<ul><li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">That to be political or radical requires a total break with the existing state of affairs;</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Critical art must create something absolutely new in order to achieve that radical break;</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The more transgressive a practice is, the more radical it will be and the less susceptible to recuperation by the status quo;</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">That a total break with the existing state of affairs is possible.</span></li>
</ul><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Finally, Mouffe argues that critical artists must avoid </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">trading on moral condemnation in the place of aesthetic judgement otherwise they risk missing the specificity of the agonistic political struggle inherent in the process of revealing the complex contingent structure of the hegemonic institutions and practices their art seeks to undermine.</span>Urban Orienteerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09648014205214341657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2810884234947151386.post-8904818899651838182012-01-15T16:43:00.000+00:002012-01-15T16:43:58.191+00:00The Power of Paper and Glue - Use art to turn the world INSIDE OUT<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="274" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/0PAy1zBtTbw?rel=0" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Video - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PAy1zBtTbw">Use art to turn the world inside out</a> by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/TEDtalksDirector">TEDtalksDirector</a> on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/">YouTube</a>]</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Recently I've been interested in <a href="http://urbanorienteer.blogspot.com/2012/01/taking-liberties-with-old-media.html">fly-posting</a> and the uses of media that might otherwise be considered outmoded. In this TED talk from 2011 French artist <a href="http://jr-art.net/">JR</a> discusses 'the power of paper and glue' in the context of his previous art projects. Having started out as a graffiti writer on the streets and roof tops of Paris the artist now describes works with poster-sized, black and white photographic prints, which he posts in public places where they are likely to achieve the most social impact.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The discussion above ends with his proposal for a global participatory art project called <a href="http://www.insideoutproject.net/">INSIDE OUT</a> which is now underway. Submit a photographic portrait of yourself or someone you care about to JR via the project <a href="http://www.insideoutproject.net/">website</a>, he'll then help you share it with the world by sending you back a full size poster.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Here's JR's own glue recipe to help get you started:</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="274" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/i6tpc65AQyA?rel=0" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Video - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6tpc65AQyA">Do your glue</a> by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/28millimetres">28millimetres</a> on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/">YouTube</a>]</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The rest is up to you... <br />
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Via <a href="http://www.lensculture.com/webloglc/mt_files/archives/2012/01/ted-jr.html">Lens Culture</a></div>Urban Orienteerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09648014205214341657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2810884234947151386.post-55557656985211566562012-01-09T13:53:00.004+00:002012-01-09T14:14:18.933+00:00Codified Space<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/26260209?portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">[Video - </span><a href="http://vimeo.com/26260209"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Codified Space</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> by </span><a href="http://vimeo.com/user2109172"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Justin Ascott</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> on </span><a href="http://vimeo.com/"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Vimeo</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">]</span></span></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tonight filmmaker </span><a href="http://www.justinascott.com/justinascott/home.html"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Justin Ascott's</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> excellent short film </span><a href="http://vimeo.com/26260209"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Codified Space</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> will be screened as part of The London Short Film Festival 2012. The screening will be in collaboration with Passenger Films </span><a href="http://passengerfilms.wordpress.com/about/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Passenger Films</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> who hold regular screenings related to the subject of cultural geography. In Ascott's film we see an unnerving study of a disused car park now transformed into an uncanny space:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Architecture is a system of signs that structure patterns of social use, but what happens when a building falls into disuse and no longer serves the function for which it was originally intended? Does it continue to transmit its own secret signals? The film metaphorically links eroded signs in a car park with distorted sonic signals - based on diegetic location sounds manipulated using modulation filters.</span></blockquote><span style="font-family: Arial;">The screening is part of The Architecture of Re-Assurance programme hosted tonight by the Hackney Picturehouse from 6.15pm.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Other films being screened are as follows:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://vimeo.com/24262838">DRY</a> by Nic Wassell.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A London-shot 16mm film about travel and memory, inspired by the Taiwanese films of Tsai Ming-liang.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">THE FOLLY by Mira Aroyo.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The cottage home of an elderly lady who has to adapt to her remote surroundings as she gets older.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://skeca.com/mirage/">MIRAGE</a> by Srdan Keca.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dubai as an unfinished ‘post-apocalyptic’ city.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A THOUSAND TREES by Ed Lawrenson.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A Scottish new-town built for a non-existent population that never came.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The screenings will be followed by a panel discussion with the filmmakers and Justin Jaeckle, Curator of Public Programmes at the Architecture Foundation, hosted by Ben Campkin, Director of the UCL Urban Laboratory.</span> <br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Monday 9th January 2012 at 6:15pm, </span><a href="http://www.picturehouses.co.uk/cinema/Hackney_Picturehouse/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hackney Picturehouse</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> (270 Mare Street London, E8 1HE, Tel: 0871 902 5734). £6, £5 conc, £4 Hackney Picturehouse members.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Via <a href="http://passengerfilms.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/monday-9th-january-architectural-rushes/">Passenger Films</a></span>Urban Orienteerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09648014205214341657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2810884234947151386.post-62555261143450244652012-01-08T22:42:00.002+00:002012-03-17T10:50:20.581+00:00Return to the Street - Culture or Critique?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lwpefpx8c31r1ogyf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lwpefpx8c31r1ogyf.jpg" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Image - <a href="http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lwpefpx8c31r1ogyf.jpg">Return to the Street conference flyer</a> via <a href="http://fuggbug.tumblr.com/post/14717201625/returntothestreet">Limit Experience</a>]</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths recently announced their two day <a href="http://www.gold.ac.uk/calendar/?id=4981">Return to the Street</a> conference running 27-28 June 2012. The call for papers provides an excellent statement of the socio-political landscape that a relevant and genuinely critical urban practice today would need to negotiate:</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Identity formation and public debate do not simply occur online or through new media technologies. As the recent excessive imprisonment of those involved in the UK riots this summer demonstrated, the control and regulation of real bodies within real spaces is still very much at stake. Within the context of riots, protests and occupations in the UK and worldwide - the street appears to have become once more the space where people gather to be heard and counted. Considering this ‘return’ (although it is questionable whether we every really left the street) how might a line be drawn between the type of discourse which pays lip service to banal, neoliberal fetishised notions of street as site and object of subversive cool – incorporating graffiti, fashion, skateboarding, hiphop - and a more critical and engaged examination of processes of exclusion, confrontation and violence which constitute the everyday reality of life on and in the street. The street is and should not simply be flagged up as a site where power relations are toyed with as part of an ongoing Damien Hirst-meets-Banksyesque flirtation between public and private space. Such fetishisation ignores or glosses over notions of territory, surveillance and fear. <br />
<br />
Yet at every moment attempts to challenge existing power structures from within the space of the street are at risk of being recuperated in the service of bourgeois, neoliberal modes of consumption. The return to pedestrianised zones in major European cities is frequently part of gentrification processes and occurs within privately owned spaces with the aim of encouraging consumerism rather than increased social interaction precluded by motorised city spaces. The festival atmosphere at protests and occupations might also be considered not simply as a means of creating greater solidarity amongst participants but as embodying a Bakhtinian form of carnival in which the political impetus of the event or movement exhausts itself in a media circus of spectacle and rhetoric staged between protestors and law-enforcement.</blockquote><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Despite the growing importance of social media in our everyday lives, our city streets are still indispensible sites for the exercise of citizenship. And yet a vibrant street culture, though laudable, will never be sufficient to guarantee our civil liberties against intended or accidental forces of societal control. No matter how subversive particular urban practices assume themselves to be, they are never wholly immune to recuperation or exhaustion by way of spectacle and consumption. </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">One more effort is always required.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What is at stake for a critical urbanism is not </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">EITHER street culture OR critique, but rather BOTH street culture AND critique. We must be able to think</span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> the complex interactions between graffiti and protest, </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">fashion and territory, shopping and riots, skateboarding, surveillance and exclusion...No small task!</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The full call for papers for the conference can be hound <a href="http://www.gold.ac.uk/calendar/?id=4981">here</a>.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Incidentally the conference coincides nicely with the <a href="http://www.lfa2012.org/">London Festival of Architecture 2012</a> in which I'm hoping to participate. With the theme of 'The Playful City' the LFA2012 could easily descend into a nostalgic apology for the kind post-industrial, pre-crunch aspirations associated with Richard Florida's '<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_class">creative class</a>' and the '<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_city">creative cities</a>' in which urbanist Charles Landry supposed they would live. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Here's to those with a little more imagination who take up the critical urbanist challenge! Play hard!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Via <a href="http://fuggbug.tumblr.com/post/14717201625/returntothestreet">Limit Experience</a> </span>Urban Orienteerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09648014205214341657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2810884234947151386.post-64833249767695623302012-01-02T22:34:00.006+00:002012-01-04T00:25:47.690+00:00New York Longboard<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/18300299?portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Video - <a href="http://vimeo.com/18300299">New York Longboard</a> by <a href="http://vimeo.com/user5610508">PERROPRO</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>]</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Yes I am obesessed! So here we are again with another great longboard video, this time by Alberto Alepuz of <a href="http://www.perropro.com/">Perropro</a>. This film sees longboarders Ra and Bruno Sorondo skate New York. Great opening sequence skating in the rain!</div>Urban Orienteerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09648014205214341657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2810884234947151386.post-21075988979410297562012-01-02T16:35:00.004+00:002012-01-15T15:55:00.896+00:00The Billsticker - Taking liberties with outmoded media<div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In the <a href="http://www.victorianlondon.org/advertising/billposting.htm">SENSEable</a> and <a href="http://vimeo.com/14294054">augmented</a> cities of the near future it may be expected that traditional print media will become obselete. When your internet search history can be monitored remotely on the fly and appropriate adverts posted to you directly via your smartphone, why would anyone bother handing out paper flyers or posting them to the wall?</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Something that has been interesting me recently is the way that old media are re-purposed as their prior uses are assumed by new media. If as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan">Marshall McLuhan</a> said "The medium is the message", could it be that traditional forms of print media such as the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flyposting">fly-post</a> will communicate more fully on their own terms, unburdened of the uses to which they had previously been put? Perhaps, or perhaps not. What we can expect that they will be used to carry different messages and find new audiences for those ready to exploit them imaginatively. Might we also find that they afford the willing unexpected liberties?</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Here's a suggestive passage on 'The Billsticker' from Charles Manby Smith's <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1409966496/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=urbanorien-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=1409966496"><i>Curiosities of London Life</i></a> of 1853: </div><blockquote class="tr_bq" style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">He may be said to live in the eye of the public as much, if not more, than any other man of his day; and is, whatever pretenders may choose to think, or cavillers to say to the contrary, essentially a public character. He is a literary man in a sense at once the most literal and extensive, and he caters for the major part of the population almost the only literature that they ever peruse. He is a publisher to boot, whose varied and voluminous works, unscathed by criticism, are read by all the world, and go through no end of editions. It is an axiom of somebody's - whose, we forget just now - that most men look at the world, and all things in it, through the medium of their own profession. If that be the case; how does the billsticker regard it? What tricks does his fancy play him? What are the myths ever revolving before his imagination? Is there a golden age looming in the distant future of his hopes? A good time coming, when every wall and hoarding, every house-front, window-shutter, and now interdicted inclosure - from the "palaces of crowned kings," down to the humblest "habitations of all things that dwell" - shall be patent to his paste-brush, open as charity to his broadsheet, and when he shall no longer be compelled to trudge beneath his heavy load in all weathers, through weary miles of mud and rain, in search of a sanctuary where the art and mystery of his calling is not forbidden?</div><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">[...] it may chance that an amateur billsticker may get himself into trouble, through ignorance of details with which the regular professional is intimately acquainted. Though the majority of hoardings - if bill-stickable at all - are free to all paste-pots, that is by no means the case with them all. Many which are of long standing are private property, and are let in compartments to the members of the profession, who of course tolerate no trespassers upon their domains, and would inflict the penalties of invasion upon any one caught in the act of violating their privileges. To such irregular aspirants to this honourable profession we commend the admonition, familiar to us on brick-walls and park-enclosures - STICK NO BILLS.</span></div></blockquote><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The text above can be found in full on Lee Jackson's excellent website <a href="http://www.victorianlondon.org/advertising/billposting.htm">Victorian London</a>.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> Further information about fly-posting and activism can be found on <a href="http://www.urban75.com/Action/flypost.html">Urban75</a>. </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Readers should be aware that fly-posting in the UK is covered by the </span><a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/38/part/6/crossheading/penalty-notices-for-graffiti-and-flyposting" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003</a><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> and can incur fines of between £50 and £2500.</span>Urban Orienteerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09648014205214341657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2810884234947151386.post-76425127036622953982011-12-29T22:06:00.006+00:002011-12-29T22:06:00.758+00:00Another awesome longboard video - Winter Night Longboard<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/19836445?portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Video - <a href="http://vimeo.com/19836445">Winter Night Longboard</a> by <a href="http://vimeo.com/juanrayos">Juan Rayos</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>]</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Sooner or later I'll get bored of longboard videos...but not just yet. Here's another fantastic video by Spanish photographer and filmmaker <a href="http://www.juanrayos.com/">Juan Rayos</a>. Featuring Ra, Nacho, Quique, Kati, Paula, Borja, Luis, Jorge y Guido of the Madrid longboard scene Rayos' exquisite footage shows them skating with the city traffic one winter night earlier this year.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Pure asphalt poetry! Just watch it!</span>Urban Orienteerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09648014205214341657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2810884234947151386.post-71126644466899285932011-12-13T18:01:00.003+00:002011-12-18T14:32:39.596+00:00Angels Dancing on Concrete Waves<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="270" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/14008830?portrait=0" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Video - <a href="http://vimeo.com/14008830" linkindex="60">Between Yellow Lines</a> by <a href="http://vimeo.com/maxespo" linkindex="61">Max Esposito</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/" linkindex="62">Vimeo</a>]</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;">Watching <a href="http://espositooriginals.com/" linkindex="63">Max Esposito's</a> beautiful short film of longboarder Amanda Powell I couldn't help recalling feminist philosopher <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luce_Irigaray" linkindex="68">Luce Irigaray's</a> passage on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel">angels</a> in her book <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0826477127?ie=UTF8&tag=urbanorien-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0826477127" linkindex="69"><i>An Ethics of Sexual Difference</i></a>:<br />
<blockquote><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">These swift angelic messengers, who transgress all enclosures in their speed, tell of the passage between the envelope of God and that of the world as micro- or macrocosm. They proclaim that such a journey can be made by the body of a man, and above all the body of a woman.</span></blockquote>The stakes of Irigaray's angelology are the unexplored possibilities of relations between men and women, but also between women, each other and themselves. For Irigaray the figure of the angel stands as a mediator that speaks on behalf of desire, and particularly on behalf of a specifically feminine desire that has learned to speak on its own account without reliance on masculine categories. But where is the link between language, desire and skating?<br />
<br />
Back in 2001 the popular image of skateboarding had become inextricably linked with the prankish machismo of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackass_%28TV_series%29">Jackass</a> and their copycats. In the same year architectural historian <a href="http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/research/architecture/profiles/Borden.htm">Ian Borden</a> released his book <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1859734936?ie=UTF8&tag=urbanorien-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=1859734936"><i>Skateboarding, Space and the City: Architecture and the Body</i></a> which celebrated the potential of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_skateboarding">street skating</a> as a 'performative critique' of the city. In sympathy with the <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0520236998?ie=UTF8&tag=urbanorien-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0520236998">analysis of everyday life</a> offered by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_de_Certeau">Michel de Certeau</a>, Borden was inclined to view the performance of the skateboarder as a series of enunciative acts. Like someone using and recombining the elements of their language different meanings, the skater chooses between different locations and architectural elements to include in their 'run'. Through this spatio-temporal editing the skater 'tactically' articulates a desire their own desire, while simultaneously usurping the spaces and times of the city maintained for other purposes. So what is that desire?<br />
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Both Irigaray and Certeau were psychoanalytically trained against the French <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Lacan">Lacanian</a> background in which the maxim is held that '<a href="http://www.lacanonline.com/index/2010/05/what-does-lacan-say-about-desire/">desire is the desire of the Other</a>'. As the 'Other' is equated here with the impersonal law or culture of the male patriarchal order this would imply, for Irigaray in particular, that feminine desire will inevitably be alienated within or co-opted by a social order structured around masculine desire. While it is true that this structure is also replicated within skate culture itself, what struck me about Espisito's film was the way it depicted how much more skate has to offer both women and men. <br />
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Shortly after finding Espisito's film I came across another wonderful longboard video, featuring the <a href="http://www.facebook.com/longboardgc">Longboard Girls Crew</a> of Madrid, and shot by Spanish photographer <a href="http://www.juanrayos.com/">Juan Rayos</a>: <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="270" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/15378651" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Video - <a href="http://vimeo.com/15378651" linkindex="44">Longboard Girls Crew</a> by <a href="http://vimeo.com/juanrayos" linkindex="45">Juan Rayos</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/" linkindex="46">Vimeo</a>]</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">With hands reaching out to each other, and dipping to the asphalt...<br />
<blockquote><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">They speak like messengers, but gesture seems to be their "nature." Movement, posture, the coming-and-going between the two. They move-or stir up?-the paralysis or <i>apatheia</i> of the body, or the soul, or the world. They set trances or convulsions to music, or give them harmony.</div></blockquote><span style="font-size: small;">Sometimes I imagine a</span> sorority of angels, riding concrete waves, and dancing as they go.</div></div>Urban Orienteerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09648014205214341657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2810884234947151386.post-39472767247898674152011-12-13T01:16:00.001+00:002011-12-13T01:24:37.002+00:00Possessed to Skate!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/4QZtywRfgN4?rel=0" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Video - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QZtywRfgN4">Possessed to Skate</a> by <a href="http://www.suicidaltendencies.com/">Suicidal Tendencies</a> uploaded to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/">YouTube</a>]</span></div><br />
<span style="font-size: small;">Suicidal Tendencies takes me right back...but I have to admit that I preferred the faster version on <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000002BWZ/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=urbanorien-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=B000002BWZ">Prime Cuts</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">Let's Skate! </span></div>Urban Orienteerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09648014205214341657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2810884234947151386.post-13907387832552966742011-08-30T16:24:00.002+01:002011-08-30T16:30:52.600+01:00Spreading the word: V&A Failed Designs screen-printing workshop<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img alt="Screen-printing at the V&A's Failed Design screen-printing workshop." height="374" src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6063/6096144864_16970c4028.jpg" width="500" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">[Image - <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/urbanorienteer/6096144864">Screen-printing at the V&A's Failed Design workshop</a> by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/urbanorienteer/">Urban Orienteer</a>]</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Last weekend Mark from <a href="http://www.dancingeye.co.uk/">Dancing Eye</a> managed to get a little DE/UO propaganda out to the masses after being invited to participate the V&A's 'Failed Designs' screen-printing workshop (</span><b style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-weight: normal;">26 & 27 August 2011).</b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> This formed part of their </span><a href="http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/f/friday-late-summer-camp-design/" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Friday Late</a><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> programme of events.</span></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img alt="Screen-printing at the V&A's Failed Design workshop." height="374" src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6063/6096147160_2c5e005e64.jpg" width="500" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">[Image - <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/urbanorienteer/6096147160">A member of the public screen-printing their own Dancing Eye/Urban Orienteer tote bag</a> by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/urbanorienteer/">Urban Orienteer</a>]</span></span></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Visitors</span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> were able to choose from a number of designs and encouraged to print their own. Attendance on the evening was really good and plenty of people were keen to qeue up, have a chat, and print their own copy of the DE/UO design...spreading the word in true <a href="http://thesocietypages.org/sociologylens/2009/01/16/prosumers-of-the-world-unite/">prosumer</a> style.</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img alt="Tote bag design for the V&A's Failed Design screen-printing workshop." src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6206/6095605983_2f83fd5cb5_z.jpg" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">[Image - <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/urbanorienteer/6095605983">Tote bag design for the V&A's Failed Design screen-printing workshop</a> by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/urbanorienteer/">Urban Orienteer</a>]</span></span></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Designs for the event took inspiration from 'failed' designs within the V&A collection. Mark elected Joseph Paxton's plan for the <a href="http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1108503/drawing-design-for-the-great-victorian/">Great Victorian Way</a> of 1855 as his subject: a ten mile long arcade incorporating shops, residences and transport, </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">intended to encircle central London, </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">and roofed entirely with glass in the same fashion as the barrel-vaulted knave of Paxton's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crystal_Palace">Crystal Palace</a>.</span>Urban Orienteerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09648014205214341657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2810884234947151386.post-12751846061420093252011-07-31T12:14:00.003+01:002012-01-29T20:52:50.885+00:00Crack The Surface - Episode I<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="270" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/26200018?portrait=0" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Video - <a href="http://vimeo.com/26200018">Crack The Surface - Episode I</a> by <a href="http://vimeo.com/silentuk">SlientUK</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>]</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">In the first episode of new series <i><a href="http://vimeo.com/26200018">Crack The Surface</a></i> </span><span style="font-size: small;">the folks </span><span style="font-size: small;">at <a href="http://silentuk.com/">silentuk.com</a>, <a href="http://sub-urban.com/">sub-urban.com</a> and <a href="http://placehacking.co.uk/">placehacking.co.uk</a> promise to take the viewer to the heart of the UrbEx experience...both the good, and the bad.</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">While offering a rare glimpse into the <a href="http://www.placehacking.co.uk/2010/10/23/edgework/">cutting edge</a> of the UK's homegrown scene, it also provides a global perspective, including interviews with explorers from other cities across the globe.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: small;">Erm...Don't try this at home! </span></div>Urban Orienteerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09648014205214341657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2810884234947151386.post-75893449118250971472011-07-25T00:23:00.000+01:002011-07-25T00:23:40.150+01:00Street Photographers! Stand Your Ground!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="303" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/FJH9F7Hcluo?rel=0" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Video - <a href="http://youtu.be/FJH9F7Hcluo">Stand Your Ground</a> by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/ShootExperienceTeam">ShootExperienceTeam</a> on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/">YouTube</a>]</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Back in June six members of the <a href="http://www.shootexperience.com/">Shoot Experience</a> team, responsible for organising the <a href="http://londonstreetphotographyfestival.org/">London Street Photography Festival 2011</a> this month, took to the City of London with their cameras. Instructed to keep to public land while photographing the area, their aim was to test the reaction of private security to photographers, and the state of policing of both public and private spaces.<br />
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In previous years it was the police and PCSOs who were criticised for harassing professional and amateur photographers alike through the misuse of stop and search powers afforded by s44 of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_Act_2000">Terrorism Act 2000</a> (documented on Urban Orienteer <a href="http://urbanorienteer.blogspot.com/2010/01/if-youre-photographer.html">here</a>). However, following the <a href="http://photographernotaterrorist.org/2010/07/section-44-suspended/">suspension of s44</a> last July this should not be an issue. As guided by Chief Constable Andrew Trotter of ACPO in August that year: <br />
<ul style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><li>There are no powers prohibiting the taking of photographs, film or digital images in a public place. Therefore members of the public and press should not be prevented from doing so.</li>
<li>We must acknowledge that citizen journalism is a feature of modern life and police officers are now photographed and filmed more than ever.</li>
<li>Unnecessarily restricting photography, whether from the casual tourist or professional is unacceptable and worse still, it undermines public confidence in the police service.</li>
<li>Once an image has been recorded, the police have no power to delete or confiscate it without a court order.</li>
</ul>In the film above all six photographers were stopped on at least one occasion, though in each case this was initially due to the intervention of private security. On the three occasions that Police were called to attend they did not attempt detain, search or seize equipment from the photographer.<br />
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This is encouraging but clearly won't prevent photographer's being harassed by private security who then waste police time when they aren't satisfied with the result. It is likely that <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/may/13/city-london-security-guards-report-photographers">guidance</a> provided by police to public and private sector organisations on security, counter-terrorism and crime prevention measures as part of their <a href="http://www.projectgriffin.org.uk/">Project Griffin</a> has been to blame.<br />
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While concerns over spending cuts on policing are being framed by the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/21/police-cut-30000-officers-staff">expectation of rising crime</a>, perhaps we should be more worried by the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-13919066">'rise' of private security with police powers</a> and the prospect for the growth of informal policing that might be expected in the Conservative's new <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8688860.stm">Big Society</a>.<br />
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Remember though, it doesn't matter how big that society is if it's locked behind a gate. So why not get inspired in the last week of the <a href="http://londonstreetphotographyfestival.org/">London Street Photography Festival 2011</a>, then head out with your camera and start reclaiming those streets back for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_commons">commons</a>, first by posting them on the <a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/londonist/pool/">Londonist Flickr pool</a> if nothing else.<br />
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via <a href="http://londonist.com/2011/07/security-and-the-city-shooting-in-london.php">Londonist</a></div>Urban Orienteerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09648014205214341657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2810884234947151386.post-26565647096724078782011-07-23T12:26:00.005+01:002012-01-02T13:37:48.123+00:00TED - Kevin Slavin: How algorithms shape our world<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="274" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/TDaFwnOiKVE?rel=0" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Video - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDaFwnOiKVE">Kevin Slavin: How algorithms shape our world</a> by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/TEDtalksDirector">TEDtalksDirector</a> on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/">YouTube</a>]</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In this recent <a href="http://www.ted.com/">TED</a> talk by game designer <a href="http://about.me/slavin">Kevin Slavin</a> on the impact of mathematical algorithms on our lives. Here he argues that the increasing complexity and co-implication of the autonomous algorithms we have created to help run our everday lives is rapidly outstripping our ability to read or control them.</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">These are the physics of culture. And if these algorithms, like the algorithms on Wall Street, just crashed one day, went awry, how would we know? What would it look like?</span></div></blockquote><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Particularly interesting is his discussion of the idea that architecture itself has become 'subject to algorithmic optimisation' according to a 'machine dialect' which, as in his example of the 'destination control elevator' with no buttons, is built to the measure of the 'bin packing' algorithm written to run it, rather than to the needs of the humans intended to use it. Further, it is not merely the man-made environment but the Earth itself and the natural landscape that are subjected to this new 'co-evolutionary' force.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Brilliantly Provocative!</div>Urban Orienteerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09648014205214341657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2810884234947151386.post-76688881135419490652011-06-18T14:14:00.018+01:002011-12-27T18:43:09.558+00:00RSA Animate - Choice<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="274" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1bqMY82xzWo?rel=0" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Video - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bqMY82xzWo">RSA Animate - Choice</a> by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/theRSAorg">RSA</a> on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/">YouTube</a>]</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In the recent most recent instalment of the series<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><a href="http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/videos/" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">RSA Animate</a> Slovenian philosopher <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renata_Salecl">Renata Salecl</a> discusses her recent research into the anxiety of choice in capitalist society. Following the argument of her new book <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1846681863/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=urbanorien-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=1846681863"><i>The Tyranny of Choice</i></a> Salecl argues that capitalism pacifies and prevents social change through its promotion of an ideology of choice and self-making.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In a lively discussion, which ranges over the reading habits of Yugoslavian communist party members and the sex lives of British journalists, Salecl develops a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Lacan">Lacanian</a> critique of choice which is argued to generate anxiety in three ways:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">1. We choose what other people are choosing because we are obsessed with the way the choices we make will be judged and validated by society, the 'big Other'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">2. We try to make an ideal choice which leads to dissatisfaction when what we have chosen does not match the ideal we imagined.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">3. Choice always involves a loss which we seek to avoid even when this is not possible.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The result implied by Salecl is a society of subjects either totally overwhelmed by choice, or else busily labouring away, in both their leisure as much as their work, to satisfy and manage the unending and impossibly competing demands of the Other.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In order to accept the analysis as presented here the viewer would have to be quite charitable. As such the presentation is bset taken as an invitation to engage with the psychoanalytic (Lacanian) and Marxist (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Althusser">Althussarian</a>) background that inform it. Without doing so it would be extremely easy to be reductive. For those interested in learning more a video of the complete lecture on which this RSA Animate episode was based can be found <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4_HGRjJs9A">here</a>.</span>Urban Orienteerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09648014205214341657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2810884234947151386.post-6466460070266065602011-05-27T09:38:00.000+01:002011-05-27T09:38:27.358+01:00Vertical Expectations - The Shard of Glass<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="270" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/24168975?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Video - <a href="http://vimeo.com/24168975">Vertical Expectations</a> by <a href="http://vimeo.com/user3824260">Simolab-Creative AV</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>]</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
Expected to reach completion in 2012 the architect Renzo Piano's glass <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shard_London_Bridge">Shard</a> at London Bridge will stand unrivalled on London's skyline at an imposing height 1,017 ft or 310 m. By that time it will be the tallest building not only in the UK, but also in the whole of the European Union.<br />
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In this brilliant new film <a href="http://www.sim-o.com/photography/photos1/photography1.htm">Simona Piantieri</a> of <a href="http://www.simolab-creativeav.co.uk/">Simolab</a> combines a visual document of its construction with a balanced cross section of expectation and critical opinion concerning the aspirations, architectural or otherwise, that seek expression through the construction of this improbable edifice.<br />
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So ask yourself again...do <a href="http://urbanorienteer.blogspot.com/p/exhibition-proposal.html">Crystal Palaces Cast No Shadows?</a><br />
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Great work!</div>Urban Orienteerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09648014205214341657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2810884234947151386.post-10624540456430329692011-05-03T02:01:00.002+01:002011-05-03T21:35:30.700+01:00Urban Exploration - Going Native?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="270" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/22932154?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Video - <a href="http://vimeo.com/22932154">Trespass</a> by <a href="http://vimeo.com/bradleygarrett">Bradley L. Garrett</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>]</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Last summer Bradley from <a href="http://www.placehacking.co.uk/">Place Hacking</a> kindly agreed to join Urban Orienteer and others in the group exhibition <a href="http://www.lfa2010.org/event.php?id=127&name=transparency_and_the_city_public_spaces_or_forgotten_places_">Transparency and the City: Public Spaces or Forgotten Places?</a> where he displayed his film <a href="http://urbanorienteer.blogspot.com/2011/05/urban-explorers-quests-for-myth-mystery.html">Urban Explorers: Quests for Myth, Mystery and Meaning</a> as part of his own Urbex crews <a href="http://behind-the-scene.co.uk/">installation</a>. Having completed his ethnographic research he's escaped the pack for a while and gone <a href="http://vimeo.com/22844966">Gonzo</a> out West while he works out the <a href="http://www.placehacking.co.uk/2011/03/03/long-live-curiosity/">story of their adventures</a>. In his absence he's left us a brilliant new film on the innocent joy of trespass. No longer speaking to the intellect, it seems we are to be lured by other means...</div><blockquote style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">It seems I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is the very essence of dreams...</blockquote><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Joseph Conrad, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0141441674/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=urbanorien-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0141441674">Heart of Darkness</a>]</i></span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">...slowly going native?</div>Urban Orienteerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09648014205214341657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2810884234947151386.post-68148208042208794832011-03-14T16:05:00.295+00:002011-12-27T18:48:50.095+00:00RSA Animate - The Internet in Society: Empowering or Censoring Citizens?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="274" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Uk8x3V-sUgU?rel=0" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Video - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk8x3V-sUgU">RSA Animate - The Internet in Society: Empowering or Censoring Citizens?</a> by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/theRSAorg">RSA</a> on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/">YouTube</a>]</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In this recent instalment of <a href="http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/videos/">RSA Animate</a> technology commentator <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evgeny_Morozov">Evgeny Morozov</a> seeks to expose some of the 'cyber-utopian' myths he associates with the adoption of online social media by liberal ideologues as an inevitable spur to the spread of democracy: 'if you have enough connectivity...democracy is almost inevitable'. </div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Following the argument of his new book <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1846143535/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=urbanorien-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=1846143535"><i>The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate The World</i></a> Morozov suggests that this liberalist assumption of the correlation between connectivity and democracy ignores important political, cultural and sociological differences and confuses the 'intended' uses of 'technology' with 'actual' uses. As indicated in the video:</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">1. Liberal democracies are not the only one's that engage with the use of social media.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">2. Repressive regime may actively seek the engagement of their citizen's in policing social media through crowd-sourcing intelligence against online dissent.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">3. As much social media is publicly accessible it is not necessarily the best means for propagating dissent.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">4. The younger generation of 'digital natives' may not necessarily be inclined to use the new technology for civic engagement, political activism or dissent: 'some of them will go and start downloading reports from human rights watch but most of them will still be downloading pornography'.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I've always been rather sceptical of social media and sympathise with Morazov's point concerning cyber-utopianism. The use of online social media is not a sufficient condition for social change. At the same time we should avoid being cynical. Perhaps the crucial role social media do play is to communicate momentum through commentary once change has begun.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In a recent post '<a href="http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2011/02/24/digital-dualism-versus-augmented-reality/">Digital Dualism versus Augmented Reality</a>' on the excellent Cyborgology blog the writer identifies the theoretical position of 'digital dualism' as a fallacy:</div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Digital dualists believe that the digital world is “virtual” and the physical world “real.” This bias motivates many of the critiques of sites like Facebook and the rest of the social web and <b>I fundamentally think this digital dualism is a fallacy</b>. Instead, I want to argue that the digital and physical are increasingly meshed, and want to call this opposite perspective that implodes atoms and bits rather than holding them conceptually separate <b>augmented reality</b>.</div></blockquote><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Digital dualists could be either cyber-utopians or cyber-sceptics, the common thread that links them being that they both subscribe to this bi-partition of reality. Morozov is included amongst a list of other digital dualists who are taken as subscribing to the view that:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">...the problem with social media is that people are trading the rich, physical and real nature of face-to face contact for the digital, virtual and trivial quality of Facebook. The critique stems from the systematic bias to see the digital and physical as separate; often as a zero-sum tradeoff where time and energy spent on one subtracts from the other.</div></blockquote>This of course is a caricature. Insofar as Morozov recognises the efficacy of crowd sourcing intelligence online we have to admit that digital dualists may admit varying degrees and directions of influence between the two realms. Indeed, politically speaking this might make all the difference. Hence the extent of theorists cynicism with regard to work with social media may prove to be a valuable index of their politics in an age coming to terms with the possibilities for <a href="http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/tag/augmented-reality/">augmented reality</a>.<br />
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The video of Morozov's complete lecture can be found <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah_T9cg-J6s">here</a>.</div>Urban Orienteerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09648014205214341657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2810884234947151386.post-56333428481941339982011-03-01T22:40:00.006+00:002011-03-04T17:04:00.344+00:00The Tower of David - Vertical Urban Anarchy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/05CBTPBxwEA?rel=0" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Video - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05CBTPBxwEA" linkindex="30">Squatters on the Skyline</a> by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/TheNewYorkTimes" linkindex="31">TheNewYorkTimes</a> on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/" linkindex="32">YouTube</a>]</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The video above accompanies a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/world/americas/01venezuela.html" linkindex="33">remarkable story</a> from The New York Times (<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">via </span><a href="http://archinect.com/news/article.php?id=104903_0_24_0_C" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Archinect</a>) about an unfinished skyscraper in the centre of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuela" linkindex="34">Venezualan</a> capital of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caracas" linkindex="35">Caracas</a> that is currently inhabited entirely by squatters. Known as the 'Tower of David' the 45 floor building is named after its financier David Brillembourg who died in the early 90s before it could be completed.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Following the death of Brillembourg and a banking crisis in in 1994 the tower fell into the hands of the government and remained empty for over a decade until its occupation in 2007. Without utilities or services the dangerous building is now home to over 2,500 so-called 'invaders' who have been unable to find accommodation elsewhere due to the failure of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Ch%C3%A1vez" linkindex="36">Hugo Chavez's</a> socialist government to provide adequate housing.<br />
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While offering hope to some residents it has become a symbol of 'decline' for others: </div><blockquote><div style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif;">“They call me an invader and I work in the credit department of Banco de Venezuela,” said Mr. Hernández, referring to the state-owned institution that he says employs him. “Society hates us, and the government doesn’t know what to do with us. Do they really think we want to be living in the Tower of David?”</div></blockquote><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This story reminded me of the the building hijackings in Johannesburg's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbrow">Hillbrow</a> district which first came to my attention after seeing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Theroux">Louis Theroux's</a> BBC documentary <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B002BFZJP8?ie=UTF8&tag=urbanorien-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=B002BFZJP8">Law and Disorder in Johannesburg</a> in 2008. Following up on the story I found this 2010 interview by <a href="http://www.abndigital.com/">Africa Business News</a> with Moses Ka Moyo of the <a href="http://inner-city-forum.blogspot.com/">Friends of the Inner-city Forum</a>:</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/lW36bKIFEB4?rel=0" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Video - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW36bKIFEB4">The Real Estate - Building hi-jacking in South Africa</a> by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/ABNDigital">ABNDigital</a> on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/">YouTube</a>]</span></div><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Undoubtedly the contrasts between these two situations have as much to tell us as any ostensible similarities.</span>Urban Orienteerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09648014205214341657noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2810884234947151386.post-86453451209171613812011-02-27T00:24:00.007+00:002011-12-13T00:48:50.444+00:00Tracing Angels - Satellites and Social Movements<blockquote style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif;">What could be more luminous than a space traversed with messages? Look at the sky, even right above us. It's traversed by planes, satellites, electromagnetic waves from television, radio, fax, electronic mail. The world we are immersed in is a space-time of communication. Why shouldn't I call it angel space, since this means the messengers, the systems of mailmen, of transmissions in the act of passing or the space through which they pass? Do you know, for example, that at every moment there are at least a million people on flights through the sky, as though immobile or suspended - nonvariables with variations? Indeed, we live in a century of angels.</blockquote><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">[<i><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0472065483?ie=UTF8&tag=urbanorien-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=19450&creativeASIN=0472065483" linkindex="75">Michel Serres with Bruno Latour: Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time</a></i>]</span></span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ydbbd-4oEds?rel=0" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Video - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydbbd-4oEds" linkindex="76">Real-time Satellites in Google Earth</a> uploaded by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/gearthblog" linkindex="77">gearthblog</a> on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/" linkindex="78">YouTube</a>]</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It was a recent post on the <a href="http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2011/02/satellites_around_the_earth.html" linkindex="79">Google Earth Blog</a> that reminded me of French philosopher Michel Serres' curious <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel" linkindex="80">angelology</a>. The post relates to a <a href="http://www.gearthblog.com/satellites.html" linkindex="81">Google Earth plugin</a> that was created by a developer for <a href="http://adn.agi.com/" linkindex="82">Analytic Graphics</a> by a developer called Matt Amato (visualised above). The plugin uses openly available data published by <a href="http://www.stratcom.mil/" linkindex="83">U.S. Strategic Command</a> (USSTRATCOM) relating to over 13,000 man made objects orbiting the earth, including active and retired communications <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite" linkindex="84">satellites</a> along with other assorted <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_debris" linkindex="85">space debris</a>. <br />
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Fascinating as this is it doesn't help us penetrate the sense of Serre's opaque invocation of angels. While orbiting satellites are absolutely necessary for the transmission of global communications, if we sit back and track the relays we actually miss the messages passing invisibly between them. How do you capture angels in flight? </div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/LrxalYXXBfI?rel=0" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe></div></div></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Video - <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrxalYXXBfI" linkindex="86">24 Hours Of Air Traffic - World Mercator Projection</a> uploaded by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/airboyd" linkindex="87">Airboyd.TV</a> on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/" linkindex="88">YouTube</a>]</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Created by <a href="http://www.technorama.ch/" linkindex="89">Technorama</a> on behalf of the U.S. <a href="http://www.noaa.gov/" linkindex="90">National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</a> (NOAA), the visualisation above used a <a href="http://sos.noaa.gov/datasets/Atmosphere/air_traffic.html" linkindex="91">data set</a> provided by the <a href="http://www.flightstats.com/" linkindex="92">Flight Stats</a> website that tracked the departures and arrivals of commercial flights from approximately 9,000 civil airports over the course of 24 hours. While we appear to see a time lapse of the actual flight paths it is important to note that successive positions of each flight have been interpolated from the data concerning arrivals and departures. What we actually see then is only one possible flight path<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Leibniz" linkindex="94"></a>.</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
Here it strikes me that the trope of the angel was introduced by Serres' precisely to throw such idealisations into question. In the course of his conversations with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Latour" linkindex="95">Bruno Latour</a> the figure of the angel was introduced in the context of the need for a means of describing the fluctuations of global events precisely in a situation where the 'the widest relationality is possible'. His concern is that in a world of global telecommunication it is necessary to be able to provide global descriptions, but without abstraction, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism" linkindex="96">reductionism</a> or falling into the imposible task of trying to explain everything:<br />
<blockquote style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif;">A verb or a substantive chosen from the galaxy of Ideas, from the categories either in consciousness or in the subject, spawns systems or histories that are static, even if they claim to describe a process of becoming. It's better to paint a picture of relations and rapports - like the percolating basin of a glacial river, unceasingly changing its bed and showing and admirable network of forks, some of which freeze or silt up, while others open up - or like a cloud of angels that passes, or the list of prepositions, or the dance of flames.</blockquote>It is through this self-consciously constructed modern myth of the angel that he seeks to promote a sensitivity to the multiplicity of messengers and messages that is often overlooked in the supposition of a single overriding message or meaning, and an openness or hospitality to the contingent events that the fortuitous encounters of those messengers and their messages bring about. For Serres the virtue of angels is that they are 'restless', unsystematic' and cannot be <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_many_angels_can_dance_on_the_head_of_a_pin%3F" linkindex="97">pinned down</a>. Though their passing can be traced, their location remains uncertain: <br />
<blockquote style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',sans-serif;">I imagine that for every angel there is a corresponding preposition. But a preposition does not transport messages; it indicates a network of possible paths, either in space or time.</blockquote>Above, below, before, behind, amongst, inside or outside; the number of possible <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_prepositions" linkindex="98">prepositions</a> correspond to the number of media. And multiplying the media is likely to multiply the number of mediators. One interesting example might involve the innovation of the <a href="http://sukey.org/" linkindex="99">Sukey</a> anti-kettling tool. What is amazing about the Sukey tolls are that all of the technology is openly available and requires only a relatively small amount of technical knowledge to set up. Through the combined use of mobile telephony, the internet, and old fashioned word of mouth, it enables the Sukey team to crowd source geo-located information on police positions at demonstrations and relay that back to users so as to indicate police positions relative to the users. All this is achieved without disclosing the users' locations to the police force attempting to kettle them. Electronic messages are relayed between protestors, whose own bodies are a signal or message to the powers that be by virtue of their co-presence on the streets.<br />
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I wonder then whether Serres' thought might have something to contribute to an understanding of the role played by online <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network" linkindex="100">social networks</a> such as <a href="http://www.twitter.com/" linkindex="101">Twitter</a> and <a href="http://www.facebook.com/" linkindex="102">Facebook</a> in the formation of new<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_movement" linkindex="103"> social movements</a> and particularly the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/feb/25/twitter-facebook-uprisings-arab-libya" linkindex="104">events unfolding in North Africa and the Middle East</a> right now?</div>Urban Orienteerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09648014205214341657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2810884234947151386.post-65460874924443028592011-02-15T13:13:00.001+00:002011-07-31T11:12:54.786+01:00Gordon Matta-Clark<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="276" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/3677102?portrait=0" width="480"></iframe></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Video - <a href="http://vimeo.com/3677102" linkindex="35">Gordon Matta-Clark exhibit walk-through with Jane Crawford</a> by <a href="http://vimeo.com/hsilver" linkindex="36">Howard Silver</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/" linkindex="37">Vimeo</a>]</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Couldn't resist sharing this great video about the site-specific work of urban artist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Matta-Clark" linkindex="38">Gordon Matta-Clark</a>. </span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Influenced by the French <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International" linkindex="39">Situationists</a> and their practice of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9tournement" linkindex="40">détournement</a> the artist became widely known for his modifications of existing buildings or 'building cuts' that he conceptualised as a form of 'anarchitecture'.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Filmed by <a href="http://vimeo.com/hsilver" linkindex="41">Howard Silver</a> the video features a walkthrough of a 2007 exhibition of the late artist's work by his widow Jane Crawford. The film is presented of part of a web series on the arts by Silver called <a href="http://www.artsintoproduction.net/" linkindex="42">Arts Into Production</a>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Those intersted in UrbEx may also want to check out Silver's film <a href="http://vimeo.com/13549007" linkindex="43">Steve Duncan, Urban Underground Explorer</a>. Readers may remember that another video on Steve Duncan appeared in an earlier post <a href="http://urbanorienteer.blogspot.com/2011/01/undercity-new-york.html" linkindex="44">here</a>.</span>Urban Orienteerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09648014205214341657noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2810884234947151386.post-63152407911102666162011-02-05T11:05:00.004+00:002011-03-01T21:37:44.573+00:00Control Societies and the Subversion of Subversion<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/K2Rvh8VG3o8?rel=0" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe></span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">[Video -</span><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span class="long-title" dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="TEDxVienna-Johannes Grenzfurthner-On how to subvert subversion"> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2Rvh8VG3o8" linkindex="37">TEDxVienna - Johannes Grenzfurthner - On how to subvert subversion</a> by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/TEDxTalks" linkindex="38">TEDxTalks</a> on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/" linkindex="39">YouTube</a>]</span></span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="long-title" dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="TEDxVienna-Johannes Grenzfurthner-On how to subvert subversion"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="copy" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In this video Viennese artist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Grenzfurthner" linkindex="40" target="_blank">Johannes Grenzfurthner</a> of <a href="http://www.monochrom.at/english/" linkindex="41">monochrom</a> discusses the necessity of subverting subversion in contemporary society. Beginning his discussion with the transgressive performances of groups like the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viennese_Actionism" linkindex="42" target="_blank">Vienna Actionists</a> Grenzfurthner explains their diminishing impact in the shift from the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish" linkindex="43" target="_blank">Disciplinary Society</a> theorised by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault" linkindex="44" target="_blank">Foucault</a> to the contemporary <a href="http://www.nadir.org/nadir/archiv/netzkritik/societyofcontrol.html" linkindex="45" target="_blank">Society of Control</a> elaborated by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Deleuze" linkindex="46" target="_blank">Gilles Deleuze</a>.<br />
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Grenzfurthner concludes that complexity of the emerging system must be matched by the complexity of the prank. Hence his advocacy of ‘context hacking’ and ‘weapons of mass distribution’.<br />
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via <a href="http://www.boingboing.net/2011/02/04/tedxvienna-talk-on-c.html" linkindex="47" target="_blank">Boing Boing</a></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span class="long-title" dir="ltr" id="eow-title" title="TEDxVienna-Johannes Grenzfurthner-On how to subvert subversion"></span></span></div>Urban Orienteerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09648014205214341657noreply@blogger.com0