ManiaIntroSteveSuggests
+ You nailed the intro, Mania! I have a few suggested edits here. I have got rid of the passive voice ("perhaps I", "maybe I" &c). My changes are in bold
In smart cities technology offer seamless experience, provide instant solutions, automated systems seem to be easier and more hassle-free than communicating with people. standards are set based on data such as income or housing norms, leaving those who do not fit into the norm behind. What do we not see? What is happening on the street, between promises of luxury, next to shiny modern buildings? With this text I look for unsmoothnes, disruptions of routine. Through these random combinations of people, locations and what to pay attention to ( FOR PEOPLE… / TO SEE…/ IN…) I embark on a search to find those cracks in polished image of the city. I have fun unfolding little details at street level and narrating them in artbook format. And these random prompts spark my imagination as they converge into unusual combinations that reveals more the messiness that interests me. I want to touch on something rather seamfull, not calculated and predictable, are those moments of collision and exchange.
Embracing friction, surprise, and play is a way of pushing back against the alienation often found in modern cities. Slowing down is a form of resistance. In this context, I treat play as a tactic, an approach to fostering connection, expressing freedom, and resisting the pressures of constant productivity.
This began with a question of how to design a publication that doesn't only depict our surroundings but engage readers in experiencing them and actively reads into our cities. To see the city as something that can be read suggests that it can also be rewritten. It is something that we not only discover but also make.
This text weaves together my observations with other texts, turning writing into a dialogue with walking, collecting, and experiencing the city. It invites you to slow down, to notice, and perhaps to play.
Chapter 1
Methods for reading the city
Through walking, recording the city as a text, and observation, I have built my understanding of what urban smoothness is. This chapter discusses methods of reading the city… Inviting a slower approach that stands in opposition to prioritizing efficiency, through random connections that serve as prompts to search for what is happening on the street and finally, through reading the city as play.
(At the beginning of this research, during a "public moment" at the Piet Zwart institute, I filled a small space with photos of the city up to the ceiling. I invited people to add their fragments - their own observations - what catches their attention?; what they would like others to see? Sculptures in Rotterdam where mentioned several times... so I set off to look at them, among the fragments mentioned were also signs of houses for sale - revealing the frustration of those looking for a room, when no room chooses you and all the time you see apartments for sale. I weave those observations through the text. Together with using random juxtapositions I continue the search for these disruptions of routine, vivid moments, surprises—more messiness in a city. Those observations will have their place as visual chapters between the text)
Chapter 2
Interventions as response to smoothness - The politics of public playfulness. How can freedom be expressed through play?
This chapter explores how play can be a form of political resistance, reclaiming public spaces for community engagement rather than profit or efficiency.
The Situationists used play and spontaneity as a form of resistance, breaking routine through dérive and psychogeography to explore the emotional layers of the city. Similarly, Aldo van Eyck transformed neglected urban areas into imaginative playgrounds, emphasizing how people create a “sense of place” in the modern city.
The chapter also discusses live interventions, such as Sarah Ross’s Archisuits, which challenge urban injustice. Artist resists hostile architecture; "Archisuits suggest a wearer might resist by not only being present but being present comfortably, leisurely.’”
On Thursday we can go through your synopses and discuss how they can best serve this chapter.
I'm going back to my practice and the photographs I found at the flea market to discuss how urban planning dictates our movement. I example of my scores and bringing sport as play to the street… with examples of repurposing space through play—such as skateboarders appropriating urban landscapes. The concept extends to the scores as artistic expressions, like Cage and Cunningham’s unpredictable performances, showing how playfulness disrupts norms.
See this classic text on skatebording: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/1694672.pdf
Chapter 3
Rewriting spaces, what do you see when you dream?
In this chapter I focus on pushing against alienation (as an aspect of rewriting space)
Recalling street observations of chalk drawings and play at street level, I wonder how play makes cities more human and fosters connections.
In this chapter, I mention DeBoog as an example of a place that is collectively shaped, focused on collaboration and creative exchange. The atmosphere there offers plenty of room for play and learning from one another, it is very chaotic, but also so alive (qualities of an unsmooth place). Many of my paper experiments and prints are created there, and that is also where I plan to conduct my workshops. Yes! That makes sense. On thursday we discuss how this material can be integrated into the thesis.
more of the references I will use ---> User:Mania/synopsis#Rewriting space / Reaproprating space / Dreaming together
Great to have a clear chapter outline that charts the development of your work (and of your argument), and great to see you have come toe to toe with the political implications of your work, its individuality and its collectivity :-)
Explain the concept of fragments
Why did I decide to look at the city in fragments, in a reality where it seems we lock ourselves in our own bubbles that do not fit together? I have the impression that by looking at something first on a smaller scale, I can devote more attention to it and get to know it more thoroughly. Cities are so complex, an infinite network of dependencies – how would I even begin a publication capable of holding that?
In her Nobel Lecture, Tokarczuk outlines the necessity of a narrative that allows for a broader, holistic view that goes beyond the boundaries of one's own self. A view that allows for the connection of independently existing fragments into a wider network of connections. ( Nobel Lecture: Olga Tokarczuk, Nobel Prize in Literature 2018) Putting these fragments together in prompts I treat them more like metaphors that stimulate my imagination. They make me open my eyes to other people in space, to other objects and experiences. I look at events or objects and interpret them anew. A fragment seen and narrated becomes alive. I become a witness to other stories happening in the city. And although I will not step into the skin of others, I will not share their experience, these random juxtapositions hold the intention to reveal previously unnoticed narratives. Fragments overshadowed by the main urban narrative of productivity, competition.