85701 Research Based Designing WEEK 1 'The Contemporary Flaneur'

‘Flanerie’: the art of wandering pointlessly through the city.
                                                               - Andrew Hussey (Sutton, 2010)




What is a flaneur? Traditional meanings of the term imply and individual who loses oneself in the city by walking through it, aimlessly wandering with no particular destination in mind in order to experience the city and its inhabitants.

However, I find this definition to be fundamentally flawed – I argue it is difficult, if not impossible, to wander the streets with no aim or purpose, particularly in the context of today’s modern city. Even if one were to set out with ‘flanerie’ in mind, the flaneur still has an active purpose: to try to interact with the city with no end destination, to experience the city. Certainly our ‘flanerie’ field excursion was driven by a destination, and more a study of the unappreciated and unnoticed city aspects than an aimless wander.

Hence, I propose the actions of the flaneur are not intrinsically ‘aimless’ or ‘pointless’ in nature, but are actually an active interaction with the city, revolving wholly around experience, interaction and exploration dictated by curiosity. Edmund White accurately describes the flaneur as ‘…a stroller, a loiterer, someone who ambles through a city without apparent purpose but is secretly attuned to the history of the place and in covert search of adventure, aesthetic or erotic.’ (White, 2009)

Another apt description of the flaneur is Baudelaire’s term ‘a botanist of the sidewalk’ (Sutton, 2010), illustrating the flaneur as an active participant in the life of the city, always in search of interesting and overlooked locations, objects and subtexts.

Another interesting concept is the idea of the street photographer as a flaneur. Obviously they are not without purpose, aiming to capture that ‘decisive moment’, yet they practice flanerie while in search of spaces and subjects, wandering at will and documenting the environment in which they inhabit.

(MOMAT, 2010)

                                           

Finally, both the flaneur and the street photographer are essentially anonymous in personality – the flaneur seeks to become one with the crowd to experience the city’s flow, quintessential street photographers such as Cartier-Bresson and Kertesz sought to remain disguised and hidden, unidentifiable as they captured the essence of the city and its people.

(MOMAT, 2010)

                                
 
 
 
 
REFERENCE LIST
 
White., E., 2009, The Flâneur: A Stroll through the Paradoxes of Paris, amazon.com, <7/8/10>, http://www.edmundwhite.com/html/flaneur.htm

Week 1 Lecture, The Flaneur, Sutton. P., University of Technology Sydney, 3/8/10.

The National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo (MOMAT), 2010, Exhibition, MOMAT, <7/8/10>, http://www.momat.go.jp/Honkan/HenriCartier-Bresson/


Tester, K. ed, 1994, The Flaneur, Routledge, London