Beatrice - From Bridge to Bridge
On Monday, February 19th, my sister Eleonora and I ventured on our alternatively designed dérive. In our walk, we decided to get from our apartment building, two blocks north of the Williamsburg Bridge on the Brooklyn side, to the Brooklyn Bridge, south of our home. Our only sense of distance and direction was defined by a glance at our New York City MTA map (which, by the way, has some issues of scale!) We left our apartment building around 2 p.m. and started walking in the general direction of the bridge in cold, sunny weather. The walk, up to our destination, ended up taking about two hours, most of which were spent next to desolate roads, the BQE, and huge industrial constructions. On our way, we met several people whom we asked for directions, and the walk quickly became an occasion for interactions that would otherwise be unlikely within a more controlled context (i.e. one in which our sense of place and our intention were clearer.)
The methodology of our own dérive had embedded with it the necessity of interaction with community members on the way to our destination in order to ask for directions. While Guy-Errnest Dubord makes it a point to argue that, in a dérive, “the most fruitful numerical arrangement consists of several small groups of two or three people,” (Theory of the Dérive) I find the emphasis on the walkers's experience of the dérive a little dissatisfying. This is also true of Simmel’s focus, in “The Adventurer,” on the experience and qualities of the individual taking up the adventure. Both writers are very interested in the “active” role of the person undertaking the walk or adventure: yet what about the role of those who participate in the performance but with a role other than that of the central performer?
In fact, the dérive, as other projects involving psychogeography, are themselves performances. In these performances, the kind of interaction between performer (the walker/s) and the audience/spectators (the people encountered on the walk) is mediated differently from the tourist productions we have considered so far. My sister and I, for example, asked for directions on several occasions and each time where met with a particular perspective which was not necessarily conspiring 1) with our own project; 2) with other perspectives. For instance, two of the people we met highly discouraged us from pursuing our walk: “What? The Brooklyn Bridge? Do you know where that is? You are faaaar,” or “Brooklyn Bridge? The Williamsburg Bridge is right over there!” In these encounters, it became very clear that there was no total environment designed around our walk: the impression of some tourist productions that everything is conspiring to give you the whole, the best, or the most authentic experience was far from our adventure. We also met people who did not question our goal and gave us tips on how to get to the Brooklyn Bridge quicker: where they people who walked more? How was their sense of time and distance different from those who discouraged us? What informed the assumptions about distance and time that different people had? (Here there seems to be a lot of room for exploring what might or might not be considered leisure and what events- such as walks- are considered worthwhile pursuing.)
In the readings available this week, I found that the projects dealing with psychogeography that most appealed to me where the ones in which the relationship between performer and audience was questioned/highlighted/blurred. The projects described by Pinder which involved “listening to the city, listening to the multiple stories and memories that make up urban spaces, and finding means of responding to or recounting the tales,” (Pinder 392) were particularly interesting. It seemed to me that space, particularly public space, is especially interesting because of the complexity and the multiplicity of people’s experience and understanding of it. As a “technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances,” (Essay of the Derive) the dérive serves as a provocative attitude towards the experience of space, yet as a project it seems to lack the time for an analysis of the interactions and communication that goes on amongst its many players. Furthermore, the chance element is not conducive to repetition. This may make each dérive unique, yet at the same time it can detract from the possibilities of entering into a dialogue with the different participants. In the writings surrounding the concept of dérive, I missed a more critical analysis of the relationship the walker develops not only to the space, but to the other psyches inhabiting that space.