Social Practice and the Creative Enviroment: Mapping Paris

Words—I often imagine this—are little houses, each with its cellar and garret. Common sense lives on the ground floor, always ready to engage in “foreign commerce,” on the same level as the others, as the passers-by, who are never dreamers. To go upstairs in the word house, is to withdraw, step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream, it is losing oneself in the distant corridors of an obscure etymology, looking for creatures that cannot be found in words.

— Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

I decided to take a trip to Paris to stroll the streets there, Debord did this on a regular basis and I wanted to sense this for myself. I decided to print out a google map of Limerick city while in Paris. In reality I could have brought my own map but I choose not to do this, by doing so I wanted to use a map that was accessible to everybody from anywhere in the world. It was a hard task as these two cities are very different. But no matter where any two cities are situated geographically it will be difficult to traverse one using the others maps.

The Limerick map I used while strolling the streets of Paris

Debord and the situationists did this in Paris by walking down the streets using various different maps and finding themselves in various spaces. He reflected on this through various methods of recording and analysing.

Parisian routes I experienced while utilizing a Limerick Map

An Alleyway I found myself in - 'Robert's Street'

This was in interesting exercise as I was able to concern myself with a final destination outcome rather than be concerned with the presence of space and me passing through these spaces. I found myself looking ahead to see when i would have to talk the next street and if that would match with my physical space. In many cases it did not match up so I would have to improvise. I found myself taking some streets off the beaten track while was very explorative.