Territory/ Text
- I will be analyzing and mapping the walk from my dorm room to the subway by exploring different "artists marks", or graffiti, posters, and signs. I will explore mapping by examining art that is created in a place it is not necessarily intended for, such as missing dog signs and graffiti. I will use the movie “Style War’s” as my primary text as well as “The Cruise” and “The Agency of Mapping.”
Specific Aspects of the Everyday that I will be Mapping
- I will be mapping graffiti and urban artwork that can be seen, but commonly overlooked, on my walk to the subway. I will take pictures and video to try to grasp a deeper understanding of the message the artist was trying to portray through his or her artwork.
Concepts of Corner
1) Drifitng – explore different routes I can take to get to subway. What is the different graffiti I see going each way?
2) Extracting- the “de-territorialization” of my surroundings. The extraction of architecture, landscape, people.
3) Landscape and architectural arts- explore what the graffiti is drawn on. Is there more graffiti is certain areas than others? Is it drawn on certain
4) Plotting- to track, to trace, to explore.
Critical Questions
1) How does the appearance of graffiti and signs affect my walk?
2) How does it interact with the body, the eyes, the senses?
3) How has technology affected the appearance and creation of graffiti?
4) How does this graffiti affect my everyday life, the walk I take everyday to get to the subway?
Format
My essay will be mapped using photographs and written text and possible video.
Research
“Style Wars” and “The Cruise” will be used in my research greatly. Research of the neighborhoods of Brooklyn, the subway, and the laws surrounding graffiti would also be helpful in my paper.
It's good that you were so clear on defining the terms that you'll be covering, such s "Drifting" and "Extracting", because those terms will help you define the graffiti. Your definitions are strong, and that will be good when you're explaining your essay. I think it will help you out a lot since you grasp the topic so well.
ReplyDeleteYour idea is cool- it will be fascinating to see what you will find and maybe you will even stumble across new pieces each time you go.
Which makes me think maybe you should go multiple times to see if things change with different weather or different amounts of people. Maybe see how others respond to the art, or if you can overhear conversations about any pieces. You could also go in multiple directions on the subway to see if different areas means different types of work.
You have so many possibilities for creative mapping, too. Photography, collages of different pieces...ah you could do so much!
I remember you were talking about including the posters like missing dog signs as well as your subject. Which makes me imagine that you could map the route of the artist or the person who put up the posters. Then you might be able to find a pole where different people pass by and posted, and maybe find a common route that people take. Also, what could one poster affect the other person's route? If a pole or a wall is already occupied with many other posters and graffiti, the next person with a piece in his mind might choose another area, or put their piece on top of it, and so on. It's another idea you can include in your essay to supplement the idea of drift maybe? Anyhow, Good luck!
ReplyDeleteI like your topic and in a many ways you seem to be creating a long poem of walking as mapped through various interventions into space--things like fly posting, graffiti, etc. Will you also observe the way other people inhabit and move through those spaces? Other walkers? Or a skater? I'm not saying you must, just wondering. You should check out one of the links on our class blog called, "Thoughtless Acts," basically a project which collects images of the way people adapt things in their environment (in ways not intended and often without thinking) for their own personal use. It is not exactly the kind of thing you are thinking about, but there is a connection.
ReplyDeleteYou might also consider using the incidence of your various encounters with graffiti or fly posting, etc., to determine your route. In a sense following them as a set of signs to determine your "drift." And I think making the walk about drift--wandering, etc.--rather than getting from point A to point B will be key. You could even create a set of rules for drift beforehand, perhaps incorporating your own interventions: for instance, if you see a post for a lost animal, or someone looking for work as a dogwalker, you create your own post in response (related or unrelated to the original--it could be poetic, absurd, reflective, autobiographical, an expression of empathy or disbelief). You would have to carry your own material for posting of course and avoid doing anything illegal. You would want to document both of course, but would be interesting to create a dialogue in these spaces. (Just a thought of another way to activate and make poetic the space.)
Either way, you should clarify your focus. Primary text means the focus of your analysis, so if you are doing a walk that looks at these interventions, that walk--and those interventions--are your primary text. Anything else you draw on would be your secondary material; but you should make sure you are using only material that will help support your reading of your walk/space. Since you are not analyzing graffiti only, Style Wars doesn't really make sense in this context. I'm not sure the Cruise does either, but feel free to run it by me. What's important is that you keep your observations while on your walk (and possible interventions) the focus of your map. Simply including Style Wars for a point of Contrast or because loosely related would distract from the focus of your project.
I do think de Certeau will be a very productive critical text for you (and you might glance at the intro to de Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life which is linked on the course blog--it talks about urban tactics as a tool for making urban space habitable). You might consider this notion of habitablility as you drift and notice various interventions. Could be a useful concept for articulating your project's relevance--e.g. the way such interventions make the dense, gridlike city more habitable, transforming various surfaces into spaces of enunciation, statements of desire, loss, and inserting emotion into a seemingly static, rational space. Some thoughts . . .
Let me know if you have any questions about this or anything else you're thinking about. I think you have a potentially very strong project and I want you to do really well on this final; so try to really push your analysis and yourself as far as you can. Engage the course material deeply and use it to motivate your own approach to the process of mapping.
Check out some of the other links from the course blog for ideas/motivation--e.g. "Memoryscape: Audio Walks," or "Locations & Dislocations"--and look up Richard Long's work on walking too. There's a lot of artists out there interested in walking and this idea of a mobile city.
Good work!