Loitering Glossary
A place to loiter on the wiki :)
Counter-tourism
Tourism is boring
Loitering in Theory
Take a step forward if... ... you have crossed a task of your to do list ... you know what you'll have for dinner tonight ... you have send a message to your mother ... you have exercised recently ... you have made plans with a friend for this weekend ... you have completed your vocab exercises for the day ... you have prepared for class tomorrow ... you have folded your laundry ... you have send a postcard to your mother, you ungrateful pig ... you have made plans with a friend for this weekend ... you have reconsidered if you shouldn't be looking for work ... you have still not crossed anything of your todo list, have you? ... you just can't send that message, can you? Such a disappointment ... you are stuck and will never get anywhere like this ... you know this ... you let it happen every day. Why?
Just like one might wander an urban landscape, one might wander their mind. This can be pleasant, extremely pleasant. A book might take you by the hand. Music might help you navigate it in new ways. It can be a most intimate moment with yourself. My mind doesn't like me loafing around. There's a patrol keeping close watch. No nonsense, explain yourself. Don't you have anything better to do? Just do it, then! Loitering in theory is non-trivial. Often, the interests of the facilitator of a space are at conflict with the loiterer in that space. A theoretical loiterer bears responsibility both for mindless wandering, as well as safeguarding their mind. For me, the ability to enjoy a stroll though my thoughts is the best indicator for how well I'm doing with respects to stress levels, anxiety and mental health over all.
Mythogeography
Collective walking! Peripheral observations! Bodily immersion! Pilgrimages! Ecological activism!
Mythogeography looks at multiplicity, it focuses on layers of stories embedded in places, while critically engaging with them.It blends geography with personal narratives, getting immersed in explorations that become site-specific performative acts.
Psychogeography was all about emotions. It became theoretical quite easily when that nice sparkly patina of avant-gardism faded away. Kinda individualistic before, now even more, far from collectivity, far away in the olympus of the dusty-20th-century-avant-garde-movements.
Mythogeography, instead, is the artsy younger sibling, the one that did theatre school and is all about doing 🎤🎭performances🎸🎶, having meditative experiences around rubbles, crying about disrupting the academy, capitalism, the whole reality if possible.
Psychogeography likes to linger in theory without necessarily arriving anywhere.
It's not like everything needs to be a glossary entry, everything should be an experience!
Does hugging trees count? Yes, probably. Is protesting mythogeographical? Yes, probably
pen-plotting-state-of-mind
"Pen plotting is not a technology, it is a methodology. It is an approach to the image, it is grabbing the pen intentionally. It is a consciousness of where you are moving, it is the embodiement of thought and emotion. It is the mathematically discrete point and finite line. It is an abstraction of space through time.
Pen plotting is the imaginary."
Apophenia
Apophenia is the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things.
⊹ For example, the feeling of wonder and meaning associated with angel numbers can be explained by a perceptual error known as apophenia.
Can we transform this into inspiration for art or other therapeutic healing methods to enhance one's happiness? If we could find a balance between embracing and managing apophenia, could it be an interesting way to help you think more creatively?
Interactionism
Studying the ways that interactions (defined as actions, reactions and mutual adaptation) shape and are shaped by individuals within a broader social context. It is connected to the phenomenological concept of intentionality and to the reader-response theory, in the sense that all parties in an interaction are shaped by the other parties.