Flâneurism

FLÂNEUR: A stroll or wander aimlessly through a city scape to understand this space, to experience and participate in the space, to portray this space.

 Am I a flâneur?

I wander through the city on a regular basis. I wander down streets I’ve not been before. I explore. I discover.  I reflect. Sometimes my walks become banal, routine but every human encounter with time and space is different. There exists a new interaction with Time Place and Being around every corner, every new path I enter, and every bridge I cross. I travel through time, through mental space like a landscape stalker.

I am used to walking in rural areas; the flâneur in rural terms is a very different act from an urban flâneur. It is a simply and pleasurable task to wander through green fields; walk through rivers, over fences. This flâneur ( me, myself and I ) has obstructions of hedges, fences and the odd clusters of hedgerow to meander around. The act of the urban wandering conflicts with physical structures, political radicalism, and transformations of relationships to the urban environment and the behaviour of its inhabitants. To successful navigate around any space but in particular an urban space depends on the composition of a mental map and the use of psychogeography.  I have become a solitary stroller who records presence and place, with a need to engage with this abstract space.

Catherine Street, Limerick.

The endless train track- Limerick

A council sign on the outskirts of the city.

An old sign displayed on Patrick Street

Sign Posts- Customs House Quay

War bunker on the City outskirts on River Shannon

Mapping the city by sound and smell is centered around psychogeographical practices. Each and every place and space differ from each other, smells, sounds and so on. By sound mapping, this provides the audience with an imagined but yet real space. 

The invisible map is a peculiar guidebook created by people who have never seen the place they describe or the city where they live.

Krakow has such a map, Maps of the city that was created by Blind and Visually Impaired people Sound and Smell Map

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