User:Mania/Special Issue 24

Loitering

A proposal to observe and engage with the city in its shifting technological and social contexts, by spending time in public and semi-private spaces, finding ways to execute digital and performative scripts, encountering inhabitants and other forms of life, interacting with ubiquitous computing in the wild.

The proposal then is to find appropriate spots to loiter in and around Rotterdam, spend some time in company of its networks and its inhabitants, and find suitable ways to develop, execute and alter scripts for the public space.

This coming three months will then be dedicated to explore together the possibilities to compute and publish while being outdoors.

Scripted city

Smooth city is expierienced differently by different people, and as much as everyone needs a safe and clean urban environment, free from danger and crime, it can also be a highly normative, controlling environment, gradually eliminating any chance for unexpected changes, productive friction, or oppurtunities to intervene according to one’s own ideas and desires.

Steering away from the expectations set by the "smooth city" often leads to various forms of social discomfort, ranging from disapproving looks to police intervention. Consequently, anything that strays from these expectations is seldom allowed to evolve naturally or at its own pace, resulting in a homogenized environment where diversity and individuality are suppressed.

Scripts for perfection and efficiency

• Contemporary urban scenarios - predictable what can happen
• Dictating what kind of activities are allowed
• Controlled terrain
• Social norms
• Certain expectations

How people are expected to behave?

What kind of city do we accually want?

• Never speak to strangers / talk to strangers

• Desire for smoothness / desire for friction

• Frictionless less environment / Random chances encounter

• Predictable / Surprising

• Higly controlled spaces / Autonomous spaces

• Privatised / Collectively shaped

Yet, what unfolds when the city achieves this desired state of “perfection”? How do we, as its residents, perceive and interact with this newfound efficiency in our everyday experiences, and crucially, how does it influence our daily lives and how it makes us feel?

Script open for interpretations

" In the ‘Smooth City’, complexities are deliberately erased. Spaces and narratives are simplified to form a streamlined version of urban life. The city, with its highly scripted and predictable spaces, becomes easy to use and thus remains unquestioned. The opposite of smoothness, unsmoothness, does not necessarily equate to unscriptedness. Like a theatre script that results in a different play according to a different director and actors, the ‘Unsmooth City’ enables a variety of narratives and interpretations. As such, smoothness and unsmoothness can coexist and even enhance each other." 

Different narratives, open for interpretations, role playing / scripts for walking in public space / encountering chance /

There are countless types of walks and routes:

• The daily route
• The adventurous route
• The route you never walked before
• The route to clear your mind
• The evening slow walk
• The Sunday stroll
• The routine route
• The route to the nerest supermarket
• The safer route
• The visitor route
• The local route
• The I’m not in a hurry route
• The date walk

Choose a route, let your preference guide you, or choose something more adventurous, something that you normally wouldn't try.

Obsession with perfection and efficiency

Everything was either

"Who needs glass mles when you can slide your feet into these leather beautys? Prince Charming, here I come"

"Enchange your environment with a sensual, floral love potion that unleashes deep desires"

"Turn you daily walk into a fashion show and impress the neighbourhood with matching accessories"

• Renovated
• Restored
• Repaired
• Repolished
• Renewed

Presented as

• Wealthy,
• Successful,
• Consumable
• Happy
• Shiny

Smoothness around me

• Ads
• Airbnb superhost guide
• Smooth skin
• Glowing
• Success
• Shiny
• Happy
• Shopping
• Phone charging bus stop
• Private guards
• Steel elements
• Bistro tables
• Sameness
• Extention of the interior
• Human interaction limited to minimum
• Friction less experience

Strictly regulated space:

• Control over urban space
• Predictability
• Comfort
• Hermetic
• Finalized
• Monotonous
• Efficiency
• No surprise
• Profit-driven
• Maintenance
• Optimisation
• Seamless experience
• Security systems
• Increasing surveillance
• Social problems effectively hidden
• inhabitants treated as consumers

PROBLEMs:

• Serving only a specific group of professionals
• Smooth image of preferred reality
• Absurd rent prices
• Hegemonic
• Normative
• Unequal
• Undemocratic

"In cities around the world a new urban condition is spreading rapidly, characterized by ever-increasing levels of 'perfection', efficiency, control, and the active eradication of any aberration or alternative. In the smooth city, urban space is sanitized and urban life is compressed into a seamless experience. While the need for safe, clean, and well-functioning urban environments is clear, the rise of the smooth city undermines the democratic nature and emancipatory potential of cities as it leaves almost no space for anything that is experimental or incompatible with dominant norms." ~ Rene Boer

Those conditions doesn’t appear out of nothing, but are a result of of all kinds of power structures, political impulses, planning processes, design choices. Advertisement contribute to spreading this polished spectacle.

"Ode to the trench coat" ???!

Seeing what is directly in front of me

Public / private

How to observe my street and respond to it?

- sign no parking - Sign no smoking - Playground - Graffiti - Ceramic atudio - Fancy car - Loud car - Sculpture studio - Architecture studio - Flower pots - Electric car - Bike - barber - Thrown away chair - Swing - Broken umbrella - Cafe - Olive tree - Karaoke bar - Trash - Car repair - Another bar - Wild park - Public furniture - Wooden bench - Zoho rainwater buffer - Yellow bridge - collective effort - Park - Not gated community - Piece of grass where people sit - Exit from the park - Railway - “Sloop ons niet” - sign repeating on two balconies - I see stairs but from here you cant see where they lead to - I hear a woman dissolving into laughter - A girl on a bike that from far looks like my dear friend from Warsaw - the narrowing part on the bridge causes anxiety but also excitement - I found a shortcut - colorfull graffiti - conrete cube without a clear purpose or function - I see a lot of diffrent people with a lot of different walking styles - a palm tree in a pot

- a big colorful mural that sais ROTTERDAM: STAD VAN DOEN, STAD VAN VANTOEN, STAD VAN DADEN, STAD VAN LATER, STAD VAN GAAN STAD VAN KOMEN, STAD VAN SLAAP, STAD VAN DROMEN, STAD VAN WAKKER, STAD VAN WADER, STAD VAN WAFER, STAD VAN WATER, STAD VAN DAPPER, STAD VAN MAKERS, STAD VAN PRACHT, STAD VAN PRAAL, STAD VAN KRACHT, STAD VAN TAAL, STAD VAN IDEEN, STAD VAN IDEALEN, STAD VAN IEDEREEN, STAD VAN IEDEREEN SAMEN.

ROTTERDAM: CITY OF DOING, CITY OF THEN, CITY OF DEEDS, CITY OF LATER, CITY OF GOING CITY OF COMING, CITY OF SLEEP, CITY OF DREAMS, CITY OF WAKE, CITY OF WADER, CITY OF WAFER, CITY OF WATER, CITY OF BRAVE, CITY OF CREATORS, CITY OF BEAUTIFUL, CITY OF SPLENDOR, CITY OF STRENGTH, CITY OF LANGUAGE, CITY OF IDEAS, CITY OF IDEALS, CITY OF EVERYONE, CITY OF EVERYONE TOGETHER.

My phone died and I want to translate those words, so I stopped to write them down. I feel people’s looks while standing here and writing down what I see on the mural. It makes me feel more visible and seen, but also it makes me feel that I’m doing something that I was not expected to. Stopping here at the street where you are expected to buy something to do something different than walking, makes me look suspicious, even though I’m only writing down what I see.

How subjective our experience of the space can be…

Words that could transmit a unique perspective of a given person on a particular space. —-> They act as a guide through the space.

Lens you put on and your perspective of the space changes, to step outside of ourselves and experience the city from a different perspective

• Wandering
• Direction
• Aim
• Intimacy
• Locality
• Legs
• Openess

• Spontaneous
• Road
• Running
• Expectations
• Freedom
• Invisible
• Hidden
• Me
• Street
• Character
• Outside
• Together

• Going from A to B
• Noticing
• Safety
• Sameness
• Brick
• Dont have to prove anything
• Convenient
• Rest
• Hope
• Judgment
• Comfort
• Safe space

• Subway
• Memory
• Not alone
• Alone
• Alienation
• Loneliness
• Shaped
• Temporarily
• Be present
• Witnessing
• Productive
• Protest
• Everyday

• Welcome
• Public
• Passing by
• Stranger
• Expectations
• Body
• Distant
• In between
• Authenticity
• Empty space
• Fence
• Barrier
• Territory
• Decisions
• Landscape
• Closeness
• Acceptance
• Unsafe
• Uncomfortable
• Invisible
• Acknowledged
• Taken over
• No judgement
• Identity
• Expressiveness
• Laughter
• Needs
• Pleasant

• Togetherness
• Connection
• Intimacy
• Sound stories
• Remains
• Perception
• Everyday
• Route
• Routine
• Crossroad
• Touch
• Safety
• Play
• Unexpected
• Navigate
• Injustice
• Subjective
• Habits