Contemporary Theatre Review

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Contemporary Walking Practices and the

Situationist International: The Politics of
Perambulating the Boundaries Between Art and
Life

Simone Hancox

To cite this article: Simone Hancox (2012) Contemporary Walking Practices and the Situationist
International: The Politics of Perambulating the Boundaries Between Art and Life, Contemporary
Theatre Review, 22:2, 237-250, DOI: 10.1080/10486801.2012.666737

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 Contemporary Theatre Review, Vol. 22(2), 2012, 237–250

Contemporary Walking Practices

and the Situationist International:
The Politics of Perambulating the
Boundaries Between Art and Life

Simone Hancox

1. These have taken the

forms of theatre-based
performances, such as
The Travels (2002) by
Forced Entertainment;
In the past decade, I have participated in and witnessed a number of
audio walks, such as performances and artworks that were premised on walking in the city,1
Janet Cardiff’s The indicative of wider proliferation in participatory and site-based art from
Missing Voice (London,
1999, ongoing) and the late twentieth century onwards. The most frequently cited historical
Graeme Miller’s antecedent to these practices is the 1957–72 European avant-garde
Linked (London,
2003, ongoing); or
movement, the Situationist International (SI). In a key text on
guided walks such as contemporary site-orientated art, Claire Doherty uses the term ‘new
Simon Persighetti’s situationists’ to broadly describe ‘artistic practices for which the
and Phil Smith’s Tour
of Sardine Street ‘‘situation’’ or ‘‘context’’ is often the starting point’.2 While I acknowl-
(Exeter, 2010). edge that the Situationists remain an important source for theorizing
and making a range of theatre, performance and art,3 I am interested in
2. Claire Doherty, ‘The
New Situationists’, in
the critical implications for describing certain forms of contemporary
Claire Doherty (ed.), practices as ‘new’ manifestations of this historical movement. The
Contemporary Art: Situationists were a politically radical coalition who employed a number
From Studio to
Situation (London: of creative tactics to combat the alienating effects of capitalism. Their
Black Dog Publishing, ultimate ambition was to construct a labyrinthine Situationist city that
2004), pp. 7–41 (p. 7).
would nurture the improvisation, play and creativity of its citizens.
3. The Situationists are
Arguably, their egalitarianism was to prove naively utopian, and was
taught as part of contradicted by the elitist and authoritarian structure of the organization
modules in a number (founder and permanent SI member, Guy Debord, was ruthless in his
of theatre, drama and
performance dismissal of members). Today, dreams of urban utopias seem even less
departments in the UK attainable given the continued diversification of capitalism into the
(such as Queen Mary
University of London, minutiae of everyday life. Equally, if Situationist theories and practices
Warwick, Lancaster,

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Ó 2012 Taylor & Francis http://www.tandfonline.com
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10486801.2012.666737
238

Exeter, Aberystwyth, continue to be recuperated by aesthetics, could contemporary artists be

and Plymouth). There
have also been a criticized for depoliticizing a once radical project? Or is there an
handful of texts that alternative politics at stake?
have mapped and/or
analysed the influence I analyse two performative walking pieces by British-based artistic
of the Situationists practitioners who each note the Situationists as an influence on their
upon contemporary
British theatre and
work: Teleconnection, Teledirection (2007) by Townley and Bradby,4 and
performance, such as a chosen instruction from A Mis-Guide to Anywhere (2006) by Wrights &
G. D. White, ‘Digging Sites.5 In addition, I draw on interviews I conducted with some of the
for Apples:
Reappraising the artists.6 These practitioners take particular inspiration from the Situa-
Influence of tionist dérive, a technique where
Situationist Theory on
Theatre Practice in the
English one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their
Counterculture’, work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement
Theatre Survey, 42
(Spring 2001), 77– and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain
190; and Peter and the encounters that they find there.7
Ansorge, Disrupting
the Spectacle: Five Years
of Fringe and Both walks took place in London (though neither were/are site-specific),
Experimental Theatre and were premised on the participant following a rule (or rules)
in Britain (London:
Pitman, 1975). prescribed by the artists. The walker then embarks upon a process of
subjective interpretation of the rules, followed by ephemeral creation –
4. Townley and Bradby’s following, bending or breaking the rules. In this sense, they may be
Teleconnection,
Teledirection was part distinguished from other walking-based pieces such as Janet Cardiff’s
of a broader project, The Missing Voice (London, 1999 and ongoing), or Fiona Templeton’s
Feet Follow These Rules YOU – The City (the first version was performed in New York, 1989),
within the ‘RSPV
Contemporary Artists where in both cases the artist takes greater control over the participant’s
at the Foundling’ engagement with her surroundings.
exhibition curated by
Gill Hedley. It took Using the city as the stage and walking as the performative medium
place at the Foundling dispels the need for large inputs of capital, and the two walks I discuss
Museum, Brunswick
Square, London, from
here were/are free for participants.8 In concordance with the SI, these
28 September to 18 practitioners share an interest in the everyday city, and underpinning
November 2007. their work is a desire to challenge the hegemonic uses of urban space
and diminish the hierarchy that is associated with the artist as producer
5. There are a variety of
instructions; some and the audience as consumer. Townley and Bradby frequently
require solitary walks, introduce games and play into public space in order to encourage
others group walks,
some call for
participants and passing public to engage with particular environments
interaction with in non-normative ways.9 Wrights & Sites are interested in the multiple
people, others with myths and uses of space; through urban exploration they find the
props. See Wrights &
Sites, A Mis-Guide to extraordinary in places that are seemingly banal, quotidian and often
Anywhere (Exeter: overlooked.10
Wrights & Sites,
2006).
However, there are also key differences, two of which I will focus upon
here. First, whereas the SI aimed to destroy art entirely so that everyone
6. My interviews were would become an artist of the everyday, these performative walks
conducted with Anna maintain their identity as art even though they aim to blur the boundaries
Townley and Lawrence
Bradby from Townley between art and life (in that there are no performers, no props and
and Bradby, and two of no special effects present on the walks, but the rules are determined by
the four members of
Wrights & Sites: Cathy
the artists). Second, the Situationist project was founded upon an
Turner and Phil Smith instrumentalist goal of ideological revolution and the material transfor-
(Simon Persighetti and mation of the city; conversely, both Townley and Bradby and Wrights &
Stephen Hodge were
unavailable for Sites do not prescribe a specific strategy to resist capitalism, nor strive
interview at this time). to physically change the cityscape. Instead, the political potential of the
 239

7. Guy Debord, ‘Theory walks relies on how the participant decides to engage with the rules and
of the Dérive’, thus relies on the walker’s personal-political stance.
Internationale
Situationniste, 2 The first section of this paper explores how the politics and aesthetics
(1958) trans. by Ken of these contemporary walking practices differ from those of the
Knabb, 5http://
www. bopsecrets.org/ Situationists. Drawing on Nicolas Bourriaud’s writing on relational
SI/2.derive.htm4 aesthetics, I argue that part of the political efficacy of Teleconnection,
[accessed 4 May
2011].
Teledirection and the Mis-Guide relies upon their status as art. In
addition, by utilizing Jacques Rancière’s theories on politics and
8. Teleconnection, aesthetics, I propose that this ‘art’ aspect generates a heightened sense
Teledirection was free of performativity during the walk that lends agency to the walker’s
to attend. The Mis-
Guide is available to engagement with the city. The politics at stake thus depends upon a
purchase online but it latent possibility that, in a Rancièrian sense, the participant’s personal
is also available for loan
from various libraries.
aesthetic co-ordinates will be transformed. The second section
addresses how the urban tactics of the Situationists and contemporary
9. Their projects include practitioners reflect the distinct material and ideological environments
guidebooks such as to which each group responds (such as mid-twentieth-century Paris
Sweep and Veer (2005)
or urban interventions and twenty-first-century UK cities respectively). The variations in
such as What Now: A creative and political approaches by each group are indicative of their
Silent Public Discussion
about the Changing
different experiences of spatio-temporality as materialized in the space
City (2008). For of the city: the Situationists largely reacted to modernist developments
further examples see in Paris, whereas today’s practitioners primarily respond to the
Townley and Bradby,
‘Artworks’, Axisweb, postmodern city. Through interrogating the similarities and differences
5http://www. between recent Situationist-inspired walking practices and the original
axisweb.org/seCVWK.
aspx? ARTISTID¼
avant-garde, scholars, practitioners and participants of art and
122154 [accessed 1 performance may continue to consider what kind of politics is at stake
December 2011]. in pedestrian-based performative practices, and critically assess if they
effectively contribute to our agency as citizens and our rights to the
10. In addition to the Mis-
Guides, Wrights & city.
Sites have created a
number of site-specific
performances such as
Everything You Need to From Dissolving To Blurring Art And The Everyday: The
Build a Town Is Here
(2010), a series of
Politics Of Performative Walking Practices
signs that détourn the
urban environment Standing outside the Foundling Museum on Brunswick Square in
through parodying
official public plaques. London, I scanned a piece of paper handed to me.
For further examples
see Wrights & Sites, 1. Begin outside the Foundling Museum, back to back, mobile phones in
‘Company Projects’,
Mis-Guide, 5http:// hand.
www.mis-guide.com/
ws/past.html4
[accessed 1 December 2. The leader explores the city in any direction, and at whatever pace they
2011]. choose.

11. These rules can also be 3. Every time the leader turns left or right, doubles back, pauses or
found in the free
artists’ broadsheet resumes their walk, they text this direction to the follower.
published for the event
with a number of rules
for journeys, see 4. The follower may only act on instructions received from the leader.
Townley and Bradby,
Feet Follow These Rules
(London: The
5. The role of the leader is swapped every 15 minutes.
Foundling Museum,
2007). 6. Neither follower nor leader may enter any building.11
240

I was taking part in Teleconnection, Teledirection. Five minutes earlier,

inside the museum, I had been assigned a walking partner, Georgie. After
clarifying the rules together we quickly swapped mobile phone numbers
and decided that Georgie would begin as leader. We stood back to back,
and set off in opposite directions. I received a stream of texts on my
mobile phone for the next fifteen minutes: left, left, keep walking, right,
turn around, stop, keep walking . . .
Habitual routes and destination-oriented walks have a tendency to
cause the walker to disengage with her immediate location through
inducing introspection or a focus on ‘getting there’ rather than ‘being
here’. By contrast, walking for the purpose of participating in an art piece
demanded a heightened attention towards the environments I passed
through. For the Situationists, ‘to dérive was to notice the way in
which certain areas, streets, or buildings resonate with states of mind,
inclinations, and desires, and to seek out reasons for movement other
12. Sadie Plant, The Most than those for which an environment was designed’.12 The dérive
Radical Gesture: The required individuals to set aside a period of time to walk with intensified
Situationist
International in a sensitivity to place, to be more aware of how places attract and repel and
Postmodern Age how they educe particular types of movements and behaviours. In a
(London: Routledge,
1992), p. 59. similar way, the imposition of rules designed by Townley and Bradby
produced an elevated state of emotional and critical alertness: as follower,
the text messages imposed a route that I had to concede to, pushing me
to walk or pause in places I otherwise might not, but also liberating me
from the responsibility of deciding which paths to take. As leader,
I became more self-reflexive about the personal and engrained habits
that may affect my movements daily, as well as the ways that the urban
terrain facilitates my pedestrian routes through its paths, barriers, signs
and landmarks.
The rules of the walk, though they could be bent or broken, permitted
a demarcated period of time to focus on the task at hand, facilitating a
new engagement with the city. For Townley and Bradby, it is precisely
‘taking away some of the freedom [that] makes people engage with the
13. Lawrence Bradby, ‘An project more creatively’.13 They are interested in work that acts as a
Interview with ‘framework which people can use to reflect on their surroundings’ and to
Townley and Bradby’
(unpublished enable their audiences and participants to ‘feel for the bounds of what is
interview, Norwich, permissible’.14 Anna Townley observed that: ‘you’re doing that [pausing
2008).
somewhere I usually wouldn’t] because it’s part of the rules, whereas you
14. Townley and Bradby, would have moved off sooner if you were daring yourself to stay there’.15
‘Artist Statement’, The algorithmic drifting also gave me permission to remove myself (to
Axisweb, 5http:// some extent) from the responsibility of my actions: I used the instruction
www.axisweb.org/
seCVFU.aspx? as an excuse to wander or loiter where I would normally feel prohibited
ARTISTID¼122154 or uncomfortable, and in other places it encouraged me to behave more
[accessed 1 December
2011]. boldly. At one point in my journey as leader, I decided to enter a
community gardens project; before I had a chance to leave this enclosed
15. Anna Townley, ‘An space, I had to return to the role of follower, forcing me to take abrupt
Interview with turns and sometimes double back on myself, unable to leave. I felt
Townley and Bradby’.
conspicuous, but emboldened to be so. I imagined my own performance
of the walk to others sitting on the benches in the garden. Although I
had never been there before, my confidence in ‘performing’ was
nurtured by my identification with the garden and the people occupying
 241

it – I felt comfortable in acting out of place. Lawrence Bradby explained

that:

the rules expose those barriers that are at such a low level you don’t even
notice. You might walk past that entrance, and without even thinking
about it you’d feel that it wouldn’t be the right place to go to if you were
16. Lawrence Bradby, ‘An just on a wander, on a dérive on your own.16
Interview with
Townley and Bradby’.
When given the rules, the walk generates in the participant differing
degrees of ease or unease, which act as a barometer for discerning the co-
constituted relationships between personal identity and place identity.
After about an hour of participating in Teleconnection, Teledirection, I
received a text message from Georgie to ‘pick something up’. This
direction was not exactly in keeping with the rules that Townley and
Bradby had prescribed but we had begun intermittently to add our own.
Just before receiving it, I noticed a broom pushed into a hedge at the side
of the road (Image 1). As I had walked past, I gave scant attention to it,
but Georgie’s instruction gave me the permission or the impetus to
engage with it. I briefly flouted my walking rules, and went back a few
steps to retrieve it. I dragged it behind me as I walked and leaves rustled
and accumulated in its bristles, leaving an index of my route through
their absence. My impromptu and brief interaction with an abandoned
broom on a public street drew little attention, a few inquisitive gazes, but
I became increasingly self-aware. This action revealed how acts of
creativity within the city can expose and mitigate self-disciplining
mechanisms and the ideological internalization of how to behave in
public space.
I had a similar experience by
following a rule from Wrights
& Sites’s Mis-Guide. The in-
struction I chose was: ‘Choose
one small block of streets and
walk them again and again in
every possible direction until it
seems that the streets them-
selves are taking you for a
17. Wrights & Sites, A walk’.17 Circumnavigating an
Mis-Guide to entire block in Soho, London,
Anywhere, p. 31.
took about seven minutes;
as the route became familiar I
no longer needed to orientate
myself – my body learnt how
Image 1. Abandoned broom: photo taken by many steps it would take until
author on mobile phone while walking. the next left or right turn.
After two hours, I became
acutely aware of contravening conventional urban perambulatory
practices and experienced a moderate sense of anxiety from passing the
same shops and houses over and over again. The walk also served to
uncover that the division between public and private is conditioned by
the temporal as much as the spatial. Passing the windows of homeowners
242

three or four times felt permissible (and most likely went unnoticed) but
passing ten or twenty times risked rising into visibility; it was to return
too frequently to a public path outside a private house and thus spend,
albeit at intervals, too much time in this liminal public–private zone.
Unwritten and almost imperceptible rules of where, how, and how long I
could walk in particular places became increasingly illuminated through
my personal, mobile and critical engagement with space.
But if these practices are solely reliant upon instructions for walking,
where does this leave the role of the artist? In order to begin to answer
this, I completed a walk of my own to reflect on my experiences of
Teleconnection, Teledirection and the Mis-Guide. The instruction was
simple: to walk right, right and then left. Being taken outside of the
functionalism of walking still heightened my attention to the politics and
aesthetics of space, identity and mobility, however, this walk suddenly
illuminated a crucial difference: I did not have the same sense of the
performing city, nor of myself as performer as I had had during the
artists’ walks. This brought to light the significance of cognitive
positioning – that my own walk did not ‘feel’ like art or performance
was entirely dependent upon how I perceived it. By framing the walks as
forms of art practice that the participant completes, both Townley and
Bradby and Wrights & Sites submerge the walker within the everyday
whilst rendering her fractionally outside of it. During their walks, I was
acutely aware of creating a piece of ‘art’ even though I only walked in the
city. I was more conscious of how I constructed and executed my own
actions, and felt both the need and freedom to think, if not act, more
creatively; in turn, this magnified my attention to the presentness,
ephemerality and non-repeatability of the walks. It is this alteration in
aesthetic perception via a frame of encounter that affects how the
participant perceives the act of walking. The artists might not be
physically present during the walk, but they have presence through their
authorship over the rules. This helps to set these walks apart from an
everyday wander or solitary drift in the city, and for me, was intrinsically
tied to my experiences of the walks as performative. This could be seen as
politically immobilizing: my reliance upon an artist to create the rules in
order to experience the walks as performance would appear to sustain,
however marginally, hierarchies between artist and non-artist. And yet,
such a distinction makes the problematic assumption that the ‘artist as
author’ and ‘non-artist as participant’ necessarily equates to an imbalance
18. Guy Debord, Society of of agency.
the Spectacle, trans. by
Ken Knabb (London: It was this concern with the role of the participant and the dissolution
Rebel Press, 2005), of active–passive binaries between artist and viewer that led Debord to
p. 106, original decry that ‘the abolition and realization of art are inseparable aspects of
emphasis.
a single transcendence of art’.18 In response to the SI’s call for the
19. Nicolas Bourriaud, annihilation of the role of the artist, Nicolas Bourriaud’s theory of
Relational Aesthetics,
trans. by Simon ‘relational aesthetics’ aims to reclaim art’s social value, asserting that
Pleasance, Fronza ‘[t]he work that forms a ‘‘relational world’’, and a social interstice,
Woods and Mathieu updates Situationism and reconciles it, as far as it is possible, with the art
Copeland (Dijon: Les
Presses du Réel, world’.19 According to Bourriaud, it is art’s status as art and its
2002), p. 85. separation from everyday life that provides the basis for critiquing
existing alienation: the ‘social interstice’ is created by the artist as
 243

a spatio-temporal demarcation outside capitalist relations that en-

courages art-consumers to participate in relational and creative (rather
than economic) forms of exchange. In concordance with Bourriaud,
therefore, I suggest that part of the political value of Teleconnection,
Teledirection and the Mis-Guide lies in their identity as art through
providing a contrast with the everyday; the walks may be solitary but the
‘interstice’ in these practices is formed by the participant taking time
away from normative forms of walking in the city to focus intently on
creative exploration rather than capitalist consumption. In contrast to
Bourriaud, however, I contend that the critical value of these pieces does
not depend upon their complete removal from capitalist structures –
such a vacuum is impossible – rather, they submerge the participant
within capitalist space-time by instructing her to walk in the city at one-
step remove.
Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics requires the artist to conceive and
construct a material, de-limited space-time to generate a temporary
‘micro-utopia’ that an audience is invited to visit (often in the spaces of
20. Ibid., p. 31. galleries and biennales).20 These walks, in contrast, encourage the
participant to engage in interstitial perceptions and behaviours. That is,
the ‘social interstice’ in these pieces is formed through how the
participant sees and thus engages with the city, and it is this that
removes her, in part, from the capitalist structures in which she is
immersed. This gives more agency (but also responsibility) to the
participant: she might be prompted to roam without intent to purchase;
to waste time stalling, lingering and loitering, but the potential to
reproduce the capitalist system is ever-present (simply walking and
looking at the cityscape, like ‘window shopping’, may increase the
possibility of economic exchange at a later date). This form of artistic
practice more closely ‘updates Situationism and reconciles it, as far as it is
possible, with the art world’; these ‘social interstices’ are produced
through the walker’s actions rather than the artist’s installation and are
more likely to be transferred into the everyday when the participant is not
participating in art. This said, in light of the Situationists’ cries for active
hostility towards the city spectacle, it seemed that during these walks I
was doing relatively little by way of subversion. I was walking, and by
walking I was bringing the art into being rather than ‘passively’
consuming a work made by another, but it is important not to
presuppose that walking is inherently political simply because it requires
participation. In contrast to artistic interventions that aim to create overt
disruptions in the city space in order to demonstrate alternative methods
for using it, these pieces are more concerned with skewing how the
participant sees the city and then, perhaps, prompting a modification in
how she relates to it. If a politics is to be found in these perambulatory
practices, it is therefore arguably benign, passive and diffuse.
Jacques Rancière provides an effective antidote to this dilemma; he
claims that both the Situationists and Bourriaud reproduce binary
discourses that equate the active with the political and the passive with
the apolitical. While this assumes that spectators lack agency, Rancière
uses the example of theatre to attest the political potential of spectator-
ship, claiming that emancipation starts with a principle of equality:
244

It begins when we dismiss the opposition between looking and acting and
understand that the distribution of the visible is itself part of the
configuration of domination and subjection. It starts when we realize that
looking is also an action that confirms or modifies that distribution, and
that ‘interpreting the world’ is already a means of transforming it, of
21. Jacques Rancière, ‘The reconfiguring it.21
Emancipated
Spectator’, Artforum
(Spring 2007), 271– Rancière’s reference to the ‘distribution of the visible’ is the inherent
280, (p. 277). law controlling what is permitted to be seen, and how it is to be seen;
politics emerges when this distribution is disrupted. Carl Lavery utilizes
Rancière’s philosophy of politics and aesthetics to propose that using the
city as a theatrical space reveals ‘the possibility that things could be
22. Carl Lavery, ‘Police on different, that the distribution of the sensible is always open to change’.22
My Back’, Censorship By framing the city as art or performance, these walks temporarily occupy
and Self-Censorship in
Theatre and the participant with an amplified attention to, and critical distance from,
Performance, ed. by C. their everyday environments. They prompt the participant into inter-
Svich (Manchester:
Manchester University preting the city with a similar level of critical attention as she might have
Press, forthcoming towards theatre or art (though this may not be sustained throughout the
2012).
walk), and in so doing these practices help to uncover how the city’s
spaces may be constructed with multiple and hidden meanings.
In addition to looking, my accounts of these walks have also focused
on the heightened sense of performing engendered through non-
normative walking, and a desire or freedom to act slightly differently.
Peter Hallward illuminates Rancière’s theatrical metaphor on equality
and politics, noting that ‘by acting at a distance from themselves or
imitating the action of another, actors and poets threaten the very
23. Peter Hallward, foundations of authority itself’;23 more specifically, the most emancipa-
‘Staging Equality: On tory form of politics is through improvisation, where ‘actors remain
Rancière’s
Theatrocracy’, New other, but not absolutely other, than themselves’.24 Framed as partici-
Left Review, 37 patory art practices, Teleconnection, Teledirection and the Mis-Guide
(2006), 109–129
(p. 113). incite the walker to act differently to her everyday self, to play and
improvise (to pick up an object or linger conspicuously) and thus act
24. Ibid., p. 122, original outside of the distribution of the sensible that is usually maintained
emphasis. through the ‘police order’.25 It is because she is able to play the role of
creative and autonomous citizen that she can dissociate herself from her
25. The ‘police order’
according to Rancière pre-determined position or function as citizen-consumer. With regards
is about keeping to these particular walks, ‘acting at a distance’ from oneself may only be
people in their place. It
is not the police perceptible to the participant rather than to the public around her,
proper, but the nonetheless, this disruption in her own aesthetic co-ordinates (that is, her
hegemonic control usual perceptions of how she is allowed to behave) is a form of personal-
over the distribution of
the sensible that political dissensus. Teledirection Teleconnection and the Mis-Guide do not
‘determines the overtly disrupt distributions of social power, but they do encourage the
distribution of parts
and roles in a participant to interpret and interact with the city in new and multiple
community as well as ways. In doing so, these walks provide the participant with the time,
its forms of exclusion’,
see Jacques Rancière,
space and impetus to act fractionally outside of her everyday self; they are
The Politics of individually empowering through nurturing her critical distance and self-
Aesthetics, trans. by reflexivity over her rights to, and behaviour in, public space.
Gabriel Rockhill
(London: Continuum, Rancière and Bourriaud recuperate the social and political value of
2004), p. 89. art despite the Situationists’ call for it to be destroyed; but with their
emphases upon art and/or theatre that take place within the gallery or
 245

upon the stage, they do not account for those artistic practices that are
more directly inspired by the Situationists’ interest in the urban. By
adapting Bourriaud’s and Rancière’s theories and applying them to
contemporary Situationist-inspired dérives, I have outlined how these
practices are able both to maintain their status as art and possess political
potential. It is now critical to consider why contemporary practitioners
abandon the radical anti-capitalist endeavours of the Situationists in
order to elicit personal-political responses to the city. As the epitome of
reified late capitalism, I propose that the answer to this question lies in
the structure of the city itself.

From The Modern To The Postmodern City

By using the mobile phone as an instrument to connect two walkers

across the city, Townley and Bradby nod to the original dérive, in which
walkie-talkies were sometimes used so that different groups could
communicate their experiences to one another as they were drifting.
The Situationists recognized the potential in using radio technology
to amplify one’s attention towards the immediate environment whilst
equally apprehending it as a whole. It was a practical methodology
intended to destabilize the passivity associated with the city of
spectacle, encouraging the dériveur to assert active hostility to the urban
experience – to produce rather than consume the city. By employing
‘psychogeography’ to analyse the impact of place upon one’s mood,
behaviour and emotions, the dérive was a détournement of the city itself,
with the ultimate ambition of creating a ‘unitary urbanism’ where
‘architecture would merge seamlessly with all other arts, assailing the
senses not with a single aesthetic but with a panopoly of changing
26. Simon Sadler, The ambiances’.26 The dérive was developed as a strategy to combat the
Situationist City alienating effects of the city’s compartmentalization into zones that
(London: MIT Press,
1999), p. 119. facilitated capitalist productivity (such as distinct spaces for work, leisure,
home, etc.) and to realize the city’s fluidity as an organic whole.
Today, the walkie-talkie has largely been confined to the realm of
security, having given way to the ubiquitous mobile phone that
simultaneously shrinks and expands time and space by connecting more
and more people across greater distances. The mobile phone is one of a
number of contemporary technologies that induces a condition of
27. Kenneth Gergen, ‘The ‘absent-presence’, defined as ‘the growing domain of divided or diverted
Challenge of Absent
Presence’, in James
consciousness invited by communication technology’.27 It is a device that
Katz and Mark Aakhus diverts the user’s attention from their immediate surroundings so that
(eds), Perpetual ‘[o]ne is physically present but is absorbed by a technologically mediated
Contact: Mobile
Communication, world of elsewhere’.28 Townley and Bradby therefore effectively détourn
Private Talk, Public the mobile phone so as to encourage an active-presence: instead of
Performance
(Cambridge:
speaking on the phone, the sending and receiving of short texts facilitates
Cambridge University responsiveness towards the walker’s environment, forcing her to
Press, 2002), pp. 227– negotiate and respond to her own situated moment.
241 (p. 227).
In tandem with this condition of active-presence, the sporadic
28. Ibid. disruptions or disturbances caused by the messages generate a nebulous
and intermittent awareness of the other walker. Passing building sites
246

and small parks, I imagined the simultaneous route Georgie was taking –
whether she’d already passed through the same places, and how or if
they had changed upon my arrival. A month after participating in the
piece, I interviewed Townley and Bradby, and they commented upon
their own similar experiences while undertaking this walk. Lawrence
stated:

There is that nice duality; that you can be texting someone somewhere else
yet be very aware of where you are – as soon as you talk you do shut off.
[. . .] We said that you get this kind of ‘diffuse consciousness’ for the way
you can be aware of what people in lots of different bits of the city or bits of
29. Lawrence Bradby, ‘An the country are doing.29
Interview with
Townley and Bradby’.
This ‘diffuse consciousness’ was akin to the focus of a camera: when
the foreground was clear the background was blurred, and vice versa.
Teleconnection, Teledirection alerted me to the multiplicity of synchro-
nous spaces and journeys – other peoples and elsewheres – but I was also
made acutely aware of being unable to capture them fully at the same
time. It made explicit space as ‘contemporaneous plurality; as the sphere
in which distinct trajectories coexist; as the sphere therefore of coexisting
30. Doreen Massey, For heterogeneity’.30 The walk might have been undertaken alone, but
Space (London: Sage, the text messages generated an interconnection with the other walker
2005), p. 9.
that served to mitigate a subject-centred self and emphasized one’s
relationality to others and the urban environment.
The Situationists used walkie-talkies in their plans both to unify and
de-centre the city, applying psychogeography to determine the different
ambiances in different zones of Paris. In a ‘Formulary for a Unified
Urbanism’, Ivan Chtcheglov declares that there should be different
quarters based on everyday feelings: ‘Bizarre Quarter – Happy Quarter
(specially reserved for habitation) – Noble and Tragic Quarter (for good
children) – Historical Quarter (museums, schools) – Useful Quarter
31. Ivan Chtcheglov, (hospital, tool shops) – Sinister Quarter’.31 Unitary urbanism, I propose,
‘Formulary for a New is a rather linear understanding of space that does not account for the
Urbanism’,
Internationale diverse, conflicting and concurrent perceptive realities of the city in a
Situationniste, 1 particular place at any given moment. Townley and Bradby’s ‘diffuse
(1958) trans. by Ken
Knabb, 5http:// consciousness’, however, serves to accentuate the impossibility of a
www.bopsecrets.org/ unified utopian architecture because it foregrounds how the experience
SI/Chtcheglov.htm4
[accessed 4 May
of place is affected by subjective emotions and co-present realities that
2011]. cannot be neatly stylized into a simple spatial aesthetic. If the
Situationists strived to impose a top–down heterogeneity through
demarcating boundaries premised on non-normative spatial adjectives
and their concurrent practices, then Townley and Bradby uncloak the
manifold and contemporaneous experiences of place determined through
one’s subjective but also interrelational experiences.
If Teleconnection, Teledirection continually exposed the walker to
unexpected places by forcing her to take new directions and made more
perceptible the multiple coexisting ontologies of space, then the Mis-
Guide instruction exposed the new through repetition, and amplified the
temporality of space. As I obeyed the rule and ‘walk[ed] again and again’,
my attention was drawn to small and impermanent acts of rebellion or
 247

reclamations of space, such as a bicycle chained to railings where it was

strictly prohibited (Image 2), or small acts of communication etched
onto the cityscape. I noticed a printed text encased in a plastic wallet that
humorously parodied official state notices (Image 3). This placement of
a simple ‘Polite Notice’ that could easily be removed raised the question
of who has the right to write on public space and, in its impermanency,
wryly implied the answer. Its relative transience pointed towards
the potential for unauthorized and democratic co-constitution of place
(it could be moved and perhaps placed elsewhere by other citizens), but
also implied an imbalance of authorship between the users and owners
of space (unlike state or private notices it will probably be swiftly
removed).

Image 2. Bicycle chained to railings and Image 3. Parodied ‘Polite Notice’: photo
prohibition sign: photo taken by author on taken by author on mobile phone while
mobile phone while walking. walking.

The iterability of the Mis-Guide instruction served to illuminate the

temporary and subtle shifts in the composition of place – changes in
people, transport, and the flotsam and jetsam of the city – as well as
moments missed. After a number of circuits observing the bicycle, I
noted that it had suddenly disappeared. I failed to discover whether or
not the cyclist had successfully evaded the law, or had become subject to
it. Despite orbiting the block over and over, I continued to notice new
and seemingly trivial details: graffiti, stickers, and litter were all signs of
people before me whose faces and activities I imagined. These micro-
changes made by citizens gestured towards the notion of the city as a
space that is perpetually and fluidly made and re-made without unifying
motivations or purpose. During one of my orbits of the block, a solitary
builder’s hardhat had been left upon a bench, apparently forgotten, and
remained there for the rest of my walk (Image 4).
I was reminded of the phrase ‘creative destruction’; a trait that has
become associated with capitalist modernity and discussed by David
Harvey. Harvey asserts that for capitalist ‘progress’ to happen, the old
must be destroyed to make way for the new; he illustrates this point
with a plate depicting ‘Haussmann’s Creative Destruction of Second
248

32. David Harvey, The Empire Paris’.32 The Situa-

Condition of tionists were heavily critical
Postmodernity: An
Enquiry into the of Baron Haussmann for
Origins of Cultural demolishing many of Paris’s
Change (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1990), labyrinthine streets (and
p. 17. thus many of the homes of
the working classes) in the
late nineteenth century.
Signs of ‘old Paris’ were
further erased following the
devastation wrought by the
Second World War. A quar-
ter of Paris was demolished
and rebuilt, primarily over-
Image 4. Forgotten builder’s hardhat: photo seen by planner and archi-
taken by author on mobile phone while walking. tect Le Corbusier. In 1953,
Lettrist International mem-
ber Ivan Chtcheglov decried: ‘A Le Corbusier model is the only image
that arouses in me the idea of immediate suicide. He is destroying the last
33. Ivan Chtcheglov, remnants of joy. And of love, passion, freedom.’33 In this text,
‘Formulary for a New Chtcheglov, who later became an SI member, powerfully articulated
Urbanism’.
his fear of, and frustration with, the physical transformation of 1950s
Paris. The Situationists witnessed the indiscriminate erasure of the old to
make way for the rapid development of the new. They observed Paris’s
vulnerability to temporality, especially the top–down developments of
urban modernism, and countered it with plans for their own Dionysian
creative-destruction: the entire restructuring of Paris into a unitary,
labyrinthine city.
Today’s practitioners have adopted a more dispersed, eclectic and
ambivalent attitude towards the metropolis. They respond to the
postmodern city in which ‘[p]lanning is undertaken in a piecemeal
34. Mark Jayne, Cities and way, and urban development on aesthetic rather than social ends’.34
Consumption Unlike the Situationists, who directed much of their vitriol towards the
(Abingdon:
Routledge, 2006), modernist advances of Le Corbusier, these artists do not have a singular,
p. 14. coherent urbanism to react against; rather, the contemporary city is
‘continually renewed and restyled’35 by both state urban planners and
35. Ibid.
numerous privately commissioned architects. Contemporary artists
foreground the heterogeneity of space, and without a singular top–
down urban schema to oppose, they prompt their participants into
observing the micro de- and re-composition of the city as a space that is
36. Massey, For Space, p. 9. ‘always under construction’36 through the co-agency of its citizens.
These contemporary practitioners spatialize aesthetics (encourage
citizen-participants to see the city as a stage that can be actively imaged
and engaged with creatively) as a means to challenge the aestheticization
of space (its beautification through gentrification). To clarify, the framing
of these walks as art prompts the participant into realizing that every
aspect of the city, from the mundane to the obscure, is open to be
contemplated aesthetically and engaged with creatively. In doing so, they
reserve aesthetic judgement for the citizen rather than for state and or
private planners and architects.
 249

Different times and spaces require and produce different politics.

Drawing a direct comparison between the Situationists and current forms
of performative walking fails to appreciate the specificity of the original
avant-garde – their revolutionary ideas, exclusivity, and absolutism – and
likewise the nuances of contemporary art practices. The SIs’ radical
ambitions were conceived in response to a precise context: 1950s and
1960s Paris. Yet, their pre-revolutionary and politico-aesthetic practices
have stood the test of time and traversed space. The dérive has been
appropriated and modified by various practitioners and urban enthusiasts
along the way, but the fundamental concept of taking time out of
habitual engagements with the city in order simply to be ‘drawn’ to the
terrain remains an efficacious tool for exploring, disrupting and even
critiquing urban space. Like the dérive, the walks conceived by Townley
and Bradby and Wrights & Sites can be transferred to any (Western)
urban environment, serving as templates or strategies for gauging the
metropolis by stepping outside of one’s usual interactions.
These perambulatory practices are critically effective because they
structure an apportionment of time that permits an imaginative and
inquiring interaction with the city; the walker is immersed within urban
capitalism, but she also stays relatively outside of capitalist consumption.
This is not to say that the walker is entirely free from consuming the city;
we internalize the machinations of capitalism in ways that we can never
fully grasp, and whilst walking I became aware that my gaze – especially
the occasional gaze of my camera – was a form of visual consumption that
may have been discomforting for other city-users. Nonetheless, these
walks do provide a model for alternative forms of producing and
consuming the city that can be applied to one’s everyday. Phil Smith has
found that in his experience, ‘[m]any people have said that once having
been introduced to these ways of looking and exploring, they then begin
to see many things in a different way, without especially following a Mis-
37. Phil Smith, ‘An Guide task’.37
Interview with Cathy From my conversations with the artists, there was a general consensus
Turner and Phil Smith
of Wrights & Sites’. that although there is no strict political impetus driving their practices, the
politics at stake depends upon how the participant greets the work, and
this could potentially transfer into political action. With such dependence
upon the positionality of participants, Wrights & Sites member Cathy
Turner speculates that ‘[t]his could be a problem [. . .] [I]t depends on
whether you trust that being ‘‘woken up’’ to the world will be likely to
38. Cathy Turner, ‘An produce a positive engagement with it, or not’.38 Lawrence Bradby goes
Interview with Cathy further than this, claiming: ‘I don’t feel that some sort of walking activity
Turner and Phil Smith
of Wrights & Sites’ reveals the causes of why you can and can’t do things, so in that sense I feel
(unpublished e-mail that it’s not political – it might be the first step towards politics’.39 These
interview, 2008).
pieces may not be overtly political and, for some participants, the walks
39. Lawrence Bradby, ‘An may simply provoke a pre-political awareness of the city; but applying the
Interview with theories of Bourriaud and Rancière to my personal experiences of
Townley and Bradby’. participating in contemporary walking-based practices demonstrates
that an implicit politics is at stake, one that draws from Situationist urban
tactics without sacrificing the status of the walks as art.
Today’s artists accept a more individuated relationship to space
and relinquish the Situationists’ radically utopian ambitions. Instead of
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conceiving strategies to disrupt or alter the city physically, they aim for
subjective modifications in how the city is encountered by the individual
walker. Given that there is little or no dominant urban style or strategy
to react against, they encourage participants to reclaim their rights to
the city on a personal and micro level, on the premise of a citizen
co-authorship of the everyday. The contemporary city is predominantly
concerned with appearances and experiences (in contrast to the modern
city that is concerned with functional designs and efficiency), and as such,
these walking-based practices offer a way to sense, interpret and practise
the city differently, rather than to change it materially.
Diversifying from the SI, the politics inherent in these contemporary
walking pieces is personal rather than public, moderate rather than
radical, and micro rather than macro. This politics rests not only on the
utilization of rules to differentiate these walks from everyday perambula-
tions in the city, but on the status of these walks as art through their
authorship by artists, and the sense of performativity that this engenders.
These kinds of walking-based practices give the participant the
opportunity, licence and incentive to set aside time outside of her
everyday routines to give her full critical and creative attention to city. If
contemporary practitioners followed the Situationists’ request and aimed
to dissolve art and life entirely, ‘maintain[ing] that state [of heightened
critico-creative attention] through all your waking hours would be
40. Phil Smith, ‘An inadvisable, too big an ask, and in the end unproductive’.40 I could not
Interview with Cathy sustain such hyper-sensitivity to the urban environment all of the time,
Turner and Phil Smith
of Wrights & Sites’. but partaking in these urban walking practices gave me more motivation
to rethink my habitual engagements with the city. Through this, there is
the chance that ‘disrupted exploring will generate a kind of mental
41. Ibid. discipline’41 whereby the user begins to see opportunities to use the city
in alternative ways, even when she is not participating in prescribed and
pre-determined walking practices. With the increasing pervasion of
capitalism into all aspects of life, the possibility of everyone becoming an
artist of the everyday remains a utopian dream for some (though perhaps
dystopic for others). Townely and Bradby and Wrights & Sites take their
time to devise tools or structures for participants to deviate from their
routine engagements with place. They encourage citizens to re-think
playfully and independently the possibilities of their everyday for the
duration of the art. Crucially, the space of the art is the city itself – just as
the Situationists desired.