Category Archives: The Everyday

plan b “All GPS traces in Berlin in 2011-2012” 2012

plan b

plan b

“plan b is the name that Sophia New and Daniel Belasco Rogers take when working collaboratively as artists. They are amongst the leading figures to engage with GPS technologies since their widespread availability over the last decade or more. Their practice is based on both walking and on data collection including, most notably, their GPS traces. Rogers has tracked every single one of his journeys for a whole decade. New has done the same since 2007. On several occasions they have exhibited an entire year’s worth of traces in one space, effectively making every action they take become public knowledge.

Such actions present ethical problems for us, as much as for the artists. The viewer becomes privy to the artist’s habits and, hence, inner life. If information about apparently innocuous activity such as walking through one’s own city can be timed, monitored and recorded by an artist, such information can easily be known by technology providers and sold to others. Those who might want to observe, redirect, restrict or control our behaviour have new ways of doing so. Most recently, plan b have engraved a whole year’s worth of GPS data onto a transparent acrylic sheet. The journeys that they routinely or repeatedly undertake are ‘dug’ out of the material in an almost archaeological manner. Their habits and ways of inhabiting the city are simultaneously made both monumental and as ghost-like traces.”

Wrights & Sites, “A Mis-Guide to Anywhere” 2006

[credit]

“Wrights & Sites are a group of artists and researchers whose collaborative work is focused on their relationships to walking, cities and landscape. The group was founded in 1997 by Stephen Hodge, Simon Persighetti, Phil Smith and Cathy Turner.

They argue that “walking and exploring the everyday remains at the heart of all we do. What we make seeks to facilitate walker-artists, walker-makers and everyday pedestrians to become partners in ascribing significance to place. We employ disrupted walking strategies as tools for playful debate, collaboration, intervention and spatial meaning making. Our work, like walking, is intended to be porous”. Walking is accompanied by “dramaturgical strategies” – i.e. the outcomes of their works are often site-specific performances.

Their ‘Mis-guide to Anywhere’ is, they claim, “a utopian project for the recasting of a bitter world by disrupted walking”. Their work “links the tangible and the imagined” and is a form of “serious play”. It is an activity in which the role of the artist “might become that of guide, or mis-guide, rather than the narrator or interpreter of a particular place”.

Wrights & Sites make use of the intellectual toolbox associated with the canon of writing about the role of ‘the flaneur’, in order to arm us for a consumerized and militarized world. Wrights & Sites observe that in this strange era of the twenty-first century, to go walking in many parts of the world, from war zones like Afghanistan through to most British city centres, is to be under continual surveillance.”

[murmur] (2002-2013)

person with a cellphone on the street

(credit)

Introduction

[murmur] is a documentary oral history project that records stories and memories told about specific geographic locations. In each of these locations there is a [murmur] sign with a phone number on it that anyone can call to listen to a story while experiencing being right where the story takes place.

The stories are as personal as the relationship people have with the spaces they inhabit. Secret histories are unearthed, private truths unveiled, and tales as diverse as the city itself are discovered and shared.

Whose voices are not part of the official story of your neighbourhood?

[murmur] is a Toronto-based collective, collaborating on an archival audio project of first person stories related to particular urban locations, as told by people with a personal connection to the story material. A distinctive green ear-shaped street sign is mounted at each storied spot, displaying a phone number passersby can call on their mobile phones to access that location’s stories, or to leave their own. Stories are also made available along with other information (maps, photos, etc.) on the [murmur] website, and story map postcards are distributed throughout the city.

[murmur]’s Mission

At its core, [murmur]’s mission is to allow more voices to be woven into the “official” narrative of a place or city, democratizing the ability to shape people’s perspectives of place, and making cities, neighbourhoods and ordinary places come alive in new ways for listeners. [murmur]’s stories, though personal or even purely anecdotal, inevitably reveal elements of the wider social, civic and political history of a given spot, its surrounding location, and the communities and individuals connected to it.

By engaging with [murmur], people develop a new intimacy with their surroundings and “history” acquires a multitude of new voices, while the physical experience of hearing a story in its actual setting – of hearing the walls talk – brings uncommon knowledge to common space, bringing people closer to the real histories that make up their world, and to one another.

Transforming Places

[murmur] also allows participant storytellers to become community artists themselves – participants in the act of transforming place, and creating and linking communities, through story and public art. The physical marking of the story access spots, by pole-mounted metal signs at street level, also lets these stories become part of the physical urban landscape, giving tellers the opportunity to leave a lasting mark on the communities that inspired their stories, and mapping their experiences onto space together with others who have shared, or continue to share, that space. Community members and visitors can dip in and out of the collections as they go about their daily lives, and once they have, the hope is the storied spots will continue to resonate with new levels of meaning and historical association, far beyond the occasion of first listening.

[murmur] Abroad

The [murmur] project was developed at the Canadian Film Centre New Media Lab in 2002 and first launched in the summer of 2003 in Toronto’s Kensington Market. Since that time, installations have been launched in several neighbourhoods across Toronto as well as in Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, San Jose, Sao Paulo, Edinburgh, Dublin and Galway, Ireland. [murmur] in the Grange neighbourhood of Toronto, a collaboration with the AGO’s ArtsAccess programme, launched in 2009.

More [murmur]

All members of a community are encouraged to contribute to this project, so that the “voice” of [murmur] reflects the diverse voices of the neighbourhood. These are the stories that make up the city’s identity, but they’ve been kept by the people who live here. [murmur] brings that important archive out onto the streets, for all to hear and experience, and is always looking for new stories to add to it’s existing locations.

To find all the story locations, visit the [murmur] web site. After calling the number at any given location and listening to the story, you will have the chance to tell your own tale, giving voice to your own experiences and sharing your version of history with the rest of us.

Stanley Brouwn, “This Way Brouwn” (1960-64)

: This Way Brouwn (1963) [credit]

: Stanley Brouwn, This Way Brouwn #7, (1962) Amsterdam

: This Way Brouwn (1964)

A compilation of maps drawn by passersby of directions to a particular location. The artist stamped them all with “This Way Brouwn”.

“CURATOR, CHRISTOPHE CHERIX: What’s fascinating here is an artist making a work through his interaction with people. He’s basically delegating the making of his work, not to someone that he chose, but to anyone. And the artist basically gives you here only a starting point and stops right when the work begins.

What he did was to ask someone, “How can I get from here to another point of the city?” And he would hand them a sheet of paper, with a pen or a pencil. And, the passerby was asked to make the drawing. And what Stanley Brouwn did was to ask similar directions to different people. So on one side, you see someone who is telling him with very geometrical line how to cross the city, and someone has a much more smooth, fluid way of crossing the city.” (credit)

Guy Debord, Drifting / Dérive (1958), Situationists

an abstract map with red arrows

Guy Debord, The Naked City

Guy Debord established the Situationist method of the dérive (drifting) as a playful technique for wandering through cities without the usual motives for movement (work or leisure activities), but instead the attractions of the terrain, with its “psycho-geographic” effects. (credit: Walk Ways catalog)

While similar to the flâneur, the dérive is influenced by urban studies (especially Henri Lefebvre). (credit: The Art of Walking: A Field Guide, 2012).

Read a more detailed account of the dérive from Debord’s “Theory of the Dérive,” first published in Internationale Situationniste #2 (Paris, December 1958): Debord-Theory_Of_The_Derive

Definition: Letting go of the usual reasons for walking – and being drawn by the affordances and attractions of the place.

The Drift or Dérive is one of the basic situationist practices advocated by Guy Debord and others. It’s a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiences. Dérives involve playful-constructive behaviour and an awareness of psychogeographical effects, and are thus quite different from the classic notions of journey or stroll.

Merlin Coverley mentions psychogeography has these core elements: [credit]

the political aspect,
a philosophy of opposition to the status quo,
this idea of walking, of walking the city in particular,
the idea of an urban movement,
and the psychological component of how human behaviour is affected by place

Recently the idea of the drift has been extended in the practice of Mythogeography, where its characteristics are described thus:

- Best with groups of between three and six.
- There should be no destination, only a starting point and a time. A journey to change space, not march through it.
- To drift something has to be at stake – status, certainty, identity, sleep.
- In a drift, self must be in some kind of jeopardy.
- There may need to be a catapult: starting at an unusual time of day, taking a taxi ride blindfold asking to be dropped off at a spot with no signage, leaping onto the first bus or tram you see.
- There may be a theme: wormholes, micro-worlds, peripheral vision – whatever you want.
- Be tourists in your own town.
- Use the things around you as if they were dramatic texts, act them out.
- “…on a ‘drift’ we found ourselves at a Moto Service Station on the edge of the city. In the restaurant they had a guarantee printed on little cards. They’d give you your money back if you weren’t “completely satisfied” with your meal. So we organised to meet there on our next drift with about 10 other people; we ate big breakfasts and asked for our money back, because, philosophically, a cooked breakfast could never ‘completely satisfy’ a socially and culturally healthy person, not ‘completely satisfy’ all their desires and passions, not a human being. We got the money, but more importantly numerous staff were commandeered to interview us and we turned a restaurant into a debate about desire and fulfilment.”
- The drift should be led by its periphery and guided by atmospheres not maps.
- A static drift: stay still and let the world drift to you.
- When you drift, use wrecked things you find to make new things (this is called détournement – using dead art and uncivil signs to create unfamiliar languages). Make situations: build miniature wooden villages, giant insects from branches, ritual doorways from burnt remnants, make a small model shed from the wood of a full-sized one and process it from shed to shed until you reach the sea. Construct things from what you find, enact imaginary searches, bogus investigations, gather testimonies for new religions. Just build!!! Leave stories, situations and constructions for any drifters that follow you, they’ll re-make them in their own ways.

Transcript of a Dérive

Credit to Jesse Bell, Notes on My Dunce Cap.

Time/Place begun:
Person/Persons a Party to the Initial Plan:
Description of the Dérive’s Shape:
Misunderstandings Created/ Discovered:
Signed/Dated:

Occupy Oakland protesters (2011) Photo by Noah Berger, Oakland

Connections to 21st Century

“In addition to inspiring artists, architects and urban planners, the Situationist International’s take-back of public space is credited as catalyzing the The Occupy movement.

“We are not just inspired by what happened in the Arab Spring recently, we are students of the Situationist movement…One of the key guys was Guy Debord, who wrote The Society of the Spectacle. The idea is that if you have a very powerful meme … and the moment is ripe, then that is enough to ignite a revolution. This is the background that we come out of.” – Kalle Lasn, editor and co-founder of Adbusters, the group and magazine credited for Occupy Wall Street’s initial concept and publicity.” (credit)

Exercises:

Credits and references:

Gwen MacGregor, 3 Months New York/ Toronto (2004)

Video still. CREDIT: //www.gwenmacgregor.com/three_months_new_york_toronto.html

GPS Series – 3 months New York / Toronto

VIDEO

single-channel video, duration two minutes, 2004; exhibited: librairie-galerie Histoire de l’oeil, Marseilles, France; Rencontres Internationales Paris–Berlin, Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, Spain; Theatre Babylon, Berlin, Germany, 2007; Transmedia Dundas Square, Year 01 Artist-run Centre, Toronto, 2006

THE FIRST OF THE GPS SERIES, this animation charts my movements for three months in New York and in Toronto. Each day is drawn and then partially fades to allow the day to be seen in the context of the accumulation. By leaving the page white, the identity of the locations are revealed over time. In this way the works uses walking as a creative drawing tool.

ABOUT THE GPS SERIES:
Since 2004 I have been carrying a GPS everywhere I go to record my movements. This raw data is used to create animated drawings for an ongoing series.

[CREDIT]

Danica Phelps, Walking 9-5 Series

Graphite on folded paper, 30.625 x 20.5 inches; CREDIT: //www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Walking-9-5–Graz/D328CC010A678FB5

“Walking 9-5, March 21, 2001, Greenpoint, Brooklyn to Riverdale, Bronx, NYC” (2001), Pencil, watercolor and collage on paper, 30 × 22 1/4 in; CREDIT

: 116 small-sized drawings (2002)

: 116 small-sized drawings (2002)

The earliest work in the exhibition is Walking Amsterdam 9-5 , a sprawling installation of 116 small-sized drawings. Danica created this work in 2002 for the Amsterdam gallery Annet Gelink. She spent three weeks in the city, and 13 days walking through it, for exactly 8 hours every day. Point of departure for these excursions was always the central station, and every one of them proceeded in as straight a line as possible in all directions, 20° off the direction taken the previous day. At 5pm she would look for the nearest means of public transport in order to return to the city centre. One of her 8-hour hikes took her to a suburb of Utrecht, another all the way to Zanfort. The individual drawings on this wall are clustered by days. One lists all the day’s activities, the others represent situations and objects on which Phelps spent money. Every red stripe stands for a Dollar spent, and green stripe for a Dollar earned. The price of each drawing (from 30 to 800 Euros) depends on how much the artist likes the drawing. As she believes that the determination of the price is the final aesthetic decision, the price becomes part of the work itself – and is noted, in US$, on the drawing itself. If a certain drawing finds a buyer, Phelps creates a copy of it on tracing paper, which then replaces the sold drawing in the series. On this ‘second-generation’ drawing she paints a number of green stripes that corresponds to the price fetched by the original, the name of the collector, the gallery and the date of the sale. This in turn renders the copy unique again – and means that it is itself now up for sale. The presentation at Nolan Judin Berlin is the first chance since their exhibition in Amsterdam in 2002 to buy these drawings. [credit]

Roberley Bell, Still Visible After Gezi (2015)

[credit]

: Roberley Bell, Still Visible After Gezi (2015)

: Roberley Bell, Still Visible After Gezi (2015)

“In 2010, I began photographing the “Istanbul” trees on my daily meanderings through the city streets. These trees were not iconic symbols of the beauty of nature, but rather trees that had negotiated a precarious position within the urban landscape. I returned in 2105, after the Gezi demonstrations to check up on and again photograph my “Istanbul” trees. I returned to try to find the trees, they had become important to me and I knew seeking them out would reveal something –I just wasn’t sure what that would become. I wanted to go back and see, if working from memory, I could relocate these trees. What emerged was a story, theirs and mine, as I moved through the city retracing my footsteps from memory. For me, the trees of Istanbul are a powerful metaphor and stoic symbol of survival speaking to the humanity of the ever-expanding city. The installation Still Visible After Gezi expresses that set of experiences.

For the installation, I conceived each tree as its own story, creating a turquoise frame. Within the frame the tree as I originally photographed it in 2010, smaller images of landmarks that guided me back to the tree in 2015 then finally an image of the tree as I found it five years later or a void. The empty space representing that the tree was no longer there or perhaps I had remembered the location wrong. Still Visible After Gezi includes 16 tree stories.”

Link to Bell’s Site

Michael x. Ryan, Roadstains (2007)

[credit]

Roadstains #3: Coke spill from parked car on Potomac Ave. Chicago, Fall 2004 / Installation in process, view #3, Hand cut wood relief: Finnish and Baltic Birch plywood painted with latex paint to match wall color, 2017

Ryan traced spilled drinks in the street as he went walking. He transferred them to wood carvings painted white.

Francis Alÿs, Paradox of Praxis 1 (Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing) [1997]

[credit]

“Paradox of Praxis 1 (1997) is the record of an action carried out under the rubric of “sometimes making something leads to nothing.” For more than nine hours, Alÿs pushed a block of ice through the streets of Mexico City until it completely melted. And so for hour after hour he struggled with the quintessentially Minimal rectangular block until finally it was reduced to no more than an ice cube suitable for a whisky on the rocks, so small that he could casually kick it along the street.”