The New And The Always Same: Toward New Geographies of Habit
“The street signs for our event are all hand-written. The directions are painted over signs from past events. These handwritten signs are like the bus line that no longer runs.”1 --Philippe Parreno, Snow Dancing
For this project I will perform a re-enactment of my own daily routine, according to a dia- gram of my movements formulated by GPS data over a period of six months. Without using a map, I will attempt to navigate an unknown landscape according to memory of my own habitus. The event will take place during an hour and twenty-three minutes in front of a live online audi- ence, who will track my progress in real time upon two virtual maps superimposed upon one an- other. One is a map of my home city, Berlin, and the other is a map of the location where the event is taking place. The audience will also be able to toggle between soundtracks for two narratives: the experience I am describing while I walk, and a pre-recording of myself narrating my own rou- tine journey through my own city. Simon Schama writes, “Landscapes are culture before they are nature; constructs of the imagination projected onto wood and water and rock.”2 Cultural spaces are naturalized through routine, but through this process of superimposition I will “de-nature” the urban landscape, in an attempt to locate meaning within the arbitrary or the banal and to question the singular nature of experience. Further, the act of performing a simulation of my own routine will expose the fissures, or spaces of discrepancy, between the real and the virtual.
In Theory of the Dérive, Guy Debord cites a 1952 study in which the movements of a stu- dent living in Paris’s 16th arrondissement were diagrammed over the course of a year: “Her itiner- ary delineates a small triangle with no deviations, the three apexes of which are the School of Po- litical Sciences, her residence and that of her piano teacher.”3 Habit confines us to an astonishingly diminished sector of our environments. The daily travel routine that presents itself as a means to an end is in fact an end itself: going places gives us purpose. The rhythm buoys us along, sup- plying us with momentum to keep moving. (Where are we moving to?) In the comfortable system of daily habit, time does not pass but simply piles up. The Situationist experiments of the dérive were developed to allow one to break free from these “habitual axes” through unplanned journeys through the urban landscape.4 The dérive attempted to diverge from the prescribed triangle of urban existence, patterning new shapes upon the city and effectively inscribing new routes of pos- sibility, a legacy of action that this project will expand upon.
The Situationists redefined the city as theater. It was not, however, a theater of spectacular display, but a venue for experiments that would implicate the ordinary citizen and revolutionize his or her relationship with urban space. In this “New Theater of Operations in Culture,” movement itself became a performative activity with which to wrench daily life from routine (Fig. 1). Debord writes, “The construction of situations begins on the ruins of the modern spectacle....the most per- tinent experiments in culture have sought to break the spectator’s psychological identification with the hero so as to draw him into activity by provoking his capacities to revolutionize his own life.”5 The situation -- as opposed to the spectacle, which denies its own existence as a historical inven- tion -- hopes to re-integrate the city with its own history, in the form of a palimpsest upon the city’s “ruins.” A palimpsest, after all, is inscribed upon traces of visible former marks. It is through per- forming alternative modes of experience upon a still-visible past that historicity can emerge. And to view daily routine as a product of history and culture is to loosen its stranglehold.
If the concrete city was the Situationist theater, today’s stage is the screen. This is the theater in which my piece will take place. It is necessary here to underscore the reciprocal rela- tionship between real and virtual space, and point out the difficulty in separating the two. While Debord famously constructed psychogeographic maps delineating psychological interpretations of space, space as construed in a virtual world has been recently referred to as neogeography. In a 2010 article entitled Neogeography and the Palimpsests of Place, Mark Graham writes,
With the advent of the Internet, an entirely new dimension of layers has begun to be added to the palimpsest of place. The virtual Earth and digital places are being constructed at a blistering pace in cyberspace. These cyberplaces are not simple floating and static mir- rors of the physical world. They are instead often a component of the palimpsest of place. The virtual Earth and digital representations of place are often characterized by a reflexive relationship with their physical counterparts: they are shaped by, and in turn, shape the physical world.6
This new conception of space, made possible by the proliferation of user-driven databases and an incredible amount of non-hierarchically organized information, has lead to neogeographic practic- es that inscribe personal narratives upon public spaces. My project will similarly meld the personal with the public, but using its own specific interface rather than relying on pre-existing ones. In his article, Graham cites these existing interfaces, such as Google Maps, the OpenStreetMaps proj- ect, and the Wiki-Locals, to demonstrate the already widespread nature of the sourcing of private information for public use. The remarkable aspect of these mapping systems is that (albeit to vary- ing degrees), they accord equal relevancy to personal information and “official” data. This means that a local’s tip about the best hair salon in Rome may appear on the same map as the Coliseum. Other mapping projects incorporate entire narratives, like the new website Broadcastr, which al- lows users to click anywhere on a worldwide map and hear an audio clip of a personal story or recollection about a specific place.7
Beyond the conflation of public and private, mapping interfaces allow for an unprecedented melding of past and present. Maps like the New York Times’ “How Manhattan’s Grid Grew” display historical maps overlaid upon current ones, allowing users to compare the two in minute detail (Fig.2). This type of interaction allows for “virtual tourism” of remote places and remote times. With these tools, anyone can become a neogeographer. But what is particularly interesting here is the way that neogeographic practices have altered our spatial mindset, to the point that our relationships with all real space, even the small triangle of daily routine, are increasingly mediated remotely. The additional layer, or palimpsest, of virtual information upon real space, is in itself an- other unspectacular revolution. While in one sense the Situationist dream of an integrated relation- ship with history is now entirely possible, in another sense, we have begun to experience much of daily life virtually. It is the complex nature of this virtual experience that my project aims to investi- gate.
Along with the parallel existence of the virtual map and the real city comes the development of a dual nature of self. When notions of space are altered, so are conceptions of the body; the real and virtual bodies are no more extricable than the maps are. For instance, if I were to geo-tag myself standing on a street corner using a smartphone, a dot indicating my location would then appear on a digital map. Does this dot represent my real body in real space? What about when I cross the street and the dot remains stationary? Perhaps the dot represents the evidence of my real body leaving a trace in cyberspace. Or maybe I have just created a simulacrum of myself that now exists independent of my body. Any or all of these interpretations are plausible; in short, the ratio between real and virtual is not one-to-one.
Let us look at another map to illustrate. The German politician Malte Spitz recently got a court order forcing Deutsche Telekom to reveal all the location data it had collected from his mo- bile phone over the course of a year. Then the German newspaper Zeit used six months of this data, including over 35,000 location tags, to create a Google Map showing how Spitz’s move- ments were tracked over half a year (Fig. 3). On this map, it is possible to precisely locate Spitz’s range of movement at any given moment in the six-month span on a detailed virtual map. The remarkable mapping interface allows users to click almost anywhere on a timeline below the map and see his corresponding location, as well as a log of his phone calls and messages on the day in question. There are, however, chunks in the timeline when there is no data available, when Spitz is suddenly “off the map.” While the assumption about the reason for these empty hours should be that Spitz had perhaps turned off his phone or drove through a tunnel with no reception, strangely, the first thought that comes to mind is that during those blank spots he has ceased to exist. It is this uncanny realization, which crosses the mind in a flash, that reveals the enormous difference between the methodical diagramming of Debord’s Parisian student and the relatively new practice of virtual data mapping. The data produces such a near-perfect simulacrum for the real thing that it is only through the sudden gaps, or discrepancies, that it is possible to apprehend the slippage between the real and the virtual realms. It is with this understanding that I propose my project.
During six months prior to the event I will wear a small GPS device at all times, which will record my location hourly. At the end of this period, a statistical algorithm will select the locations that I have visited during the time period more often than can be accounted for by “chance.” Con- necting the dots between these places will form a shape superimposed upon the city (Fig.4). Rather than question the accuracy or relevancy of the particular shape that has been created, I will accept it as a fact, a scientific representation of my existence. I will disregard, for instance, all the interior movements normally made within the perimeter of this shape, as well as the fact that I have probably never actually moved between my locations in this particular order or pattern. In fact, the shape will not explain anything more about my personal experience than the map of Malte Spitz really says about his. It will be a representation of my life as expressed by data ac- cording to a particular algorithm. This powerful shape contains and reflects the history of its own creation, resting like a giant magnifying glass upon the city.
Once I possess this geometric representation of myself in space, I will be able to reproduce it by tracing its perimeter in another city over the course of an hour and twenty-three minutes. According to previous research concerning my routine in Berlin, I know that I spend an average of an hour and twenty-three minutes total commuting between various destinations each day, so this amount of time has been chosen specifically for the reproduction of my routine. However, the urban setting where the event will take place will be selected not by me but at random from a list of Berlin’s official “sister cities” (Mexico City, Paris, and Beijing, for example). Viewers will be able to fade between maps in order to compare locations while I try to walk the perimeter of the shape (Fig. 5).
In order to re-create the geometry of my Berlin life in another location, I will have to care- fully memorize my shape’s outline by repeatedly walking its course and counting my steps, effec- tively rehearsing the representation of my own life for presentation. No city’s streets will adhere perfectly to my shape’s perimeter; I will have to do my best to stick to it. During the journey, my wearable GPS device will transmit my location every minute to the virtual map that the audience is observing on-screen. The ultimate outcome of “re-playing” this choreographed routine from memo- ry in front of an audience in a remote location will be to vivify it; to enliven the banal through the- atrical re-enactment. Furthermore, the purpose of re-creating this map -- which was drawn in the first place using accurate technology -- via the inaccurate device of memory and the measurement of footsteps, will be to superimpose my physical existence once again upon my data-self. In the al- chemical transmutation of real to virtual to real again, discrepancies between the two will emerge. By trying to collapse the two spatial realities, I will in fact juxtapose them against each other.
Much of my work finds ways to re-punctuate the system of everyday life, to locate the ellipti- cal pauses, commas, and asides in routine and to investigate them--to give them weight through the creation of narratives. At the heart of this system of investigation is a belief in the physical body’s inextricable relationship with the intellectual mind, which manifests as an attempt to decon- struct conventional notions between the sensual and the cerebral through material-based experi- ments. These experiments in transformation, or what DeLanda might call “shifting states,” often investigate their own documentation and temporal visibility. In a similar process of embodiment, the proposed project will attempt to substantiate the negative space between the actual destina- tions that necessitate routine travel. It highlights not the apexes of the triangle of habit (home, school, job), but the in-between spaces. Rem Koolhaas identifies these areas -- the eternally for- gettable commute, the unidentifiable passageway -- as “Junkspace.” He writes, “Because it cannot be grasped, Junkspace cannot be remembered. It is flamboyant yet unmemorable, like a screen saver; its refusal to freeze ensures instant amnesia.”8 It is the “instant amnesia” of the daily routine and of the screen that this project tries to counteract, or arrest. In a double palimpsest, the project collapses several temporal experiences into one singular performance, delivering its message and then subsuming itself.
A model for this process, Philippe Parreno’s Snow Dancing, is a project that simultaneously precedes and documents its own existence. In 1994, Philippe Parreno dictated to Liam Gillick and Jack Wendler a description of an imaginary party that had not yet occurred. The following year, GW Press printed the book Snow Dancing, a verbatim record of the dictation describing this party. Two months after the book was printed, several hundred people were invited to participate in an event at the Consortium in Dijon, enacting (or re-enacting) the scenario described in the text. The party lasted for an hour and a half, the same amount of time it had taken for Parreno to narrate it, and about as long as it takes to read the book. The dictation of the Snow Dancing event preempts its own documentation, which in turn presupposes its realization -- the project invents itself, begin- ning with memory and moving backward from the document to the action. My project is likewise an invention, though it is just as much an invention of a computer’s algorithm as of mine. The fiction of the project is only made possible through the tools, and the mindset, of a virtual world. Yet all fictions are, to some extent, virtual realities. Italo Calvino writes:
The ancients built Valdrada on the shores of a lake, with houses all verandas one above the other, and high streets whose railed parapets look out over the water. Thus the traveler, arriving, sees two cities: one erect above the lake, and the other reflected, upside down. Nothing exists or happens in the one Valdrada that the other Valdrada does not repeat, because the city was so constructed that its every point would be reflected in its mirror... At times the mirror increases a thing’s value, at times denies it. Not everything that seems valuable above the mirror maintains its force when mirrored. The twin cities are not equal, because nothing that exists or happens in Valdrada is symmetrical: every face and gesture is answered, from the mirror, by a face and gesture inverted, point by point.9
The narrative aspect of the project will allow the audience to literally listen as my fictional routine subsumes my “real” one. As in Calvino’s Valdrada, each of my movements in the real city will be reflected, point by point, in the re-enactment. At the end of the hour and twenty-three min- utes during which the event takes place, the recorded narration of my original routine, as well as the map of my routine in Berlin, will disappear; all that will remain online will be the new map and the new narration. Time markers correlated to geo-tags will allow website visitors to listen to the new narration at any point and see my corresponding movement on the map. At this point, trans- formation complete, the website will become user-inhabitable: the map will no longer be mine. Visi- tors will be able to add shapes corresponding to their own spatial habits and sound clips narrating their own routines (Fig. 6). Layer upon layer, an infinite number of virtual spatial realities will begin to emerge. As the fictions multiply, it will become increasingly harder to distinguish between the real city and its reflection. Elvia Pyburn-Wilk, 2011
Endnotes 1 Philippe Parreno. Snow Dancing. (1995; reprint, Kaleidoscope Press: 2010), 64. 2 Simon Schama. Landscape and memory. (Fontana Press, Harper Collins, London: 1996), 61. 3 Guy Debord. “Theory of the Dérive,” Internationale Situationniste #2 (December 1958), in Situationist International Anthology, ed. Ken Knabb (Bureau of Public Secrets: Berkley, CA, 1981), 50. 4 Debord, “Dérive,” 51. 5 Guy Debord. “Toward a Situationist International,” (June 1957), in Situationist International Anthology, 695. 6 Mark Graham. “Neogeography and the Palimpsests of Place: Web 2.0 and the Construction of a Virtual Earth.” Tijdschrift Voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Volume 101, Issue 4 (2010), 423. 7 Broadcastr Beta. http://beta.broadcastr.com/ 8 Rem Koolhaas. “Junkspace,” October, Vol. 100, “Obsolescence.” (Spring 2002), 177. 9 Italo Calvino. Invisible Cities. (Harcourt Brace: 1978), 53.
The New And The Always Same: Toward New Geographies of Habit
“The street signs for our event are all hand-written. The directions are painted over signs from past events. These handwritten signs are like the bus line that no longer runs.”1 --Philippe Parreno, Snow Dancing
For this project I will perform a re-enactment of my own daily routine, according to a dia- gram of my movements formulated by GPS data over a period of six months. Without using a map, I will attempt to navigate an unknown landscape according to memory of my own habitus. The event will take place during an hour and twenty-three minutes in front of a live online audi- ence, who will track my progress in real time upon two virtual maps superimposed upon one an- other. One is a map of my home city, Berlin, and the other is a map of the location where the event is taking place. The audience will also be able to toggle between soundtracks for two narratives: the experience I am describing while I walk, and a pre-recording of myself narrating my own rou- tine journey through my own city. Simon Schama writes, “Landscapes are culture before they are nature; constructs of the imagination projected onto wood and water and rock.”2 Cultural spaces are naturalized through routine, but through this process of superimposition I will “de-nature” the urban landscape, in an attempt to locate meaning within the arbitrary or the banal and to question the singular nature of experience. Further, the act of performing a simulation of my own routine will expose the fissures, or spaces of discrepancy, between the real and the virtual.
In Theory of the Dérive, Guy Debord cites a 1952 study in which the movements of a stu- dent living in Paris’s 16th arrondissement were diagrammed over the course of a year: “Her itiner- ary delineates a small triangle with no deviations, the three apexes of which are the School of Po- litical Sciences, her residence and that of her piano teacher.”3 Habit confines us to an astonishingly diminished sector of our environments. The daily travel routine that presents itself as a means to an end is in fact an end itself: going places gives us purpose. The rhythm buoys us along, sup- plying us with momentum to keep moving. (Where are we moving to?) In the comfortable system of daily habit, time does not pass but simply piles up. The Situationist experiments of the dérive were developed to allow one to break free from these “habitual axes” through unplanned journeys through the urban landscape.4 The dérive attempted to diverge from the prescribed triangle of urban existence, patterning new shapes upon the city and effectively inscribing new routes of pos- sibility, a legacy of action that this project will expand upon.
The Situationists redefined the city as theater. It was not, however, a theater of spectacular display, but a venue for experiments that would implicate the ordinary citizen and revolutionize his or her relationship with urban space. In this “New Theater of Operations in Culture,” movement itself became a performative activity with which to wrench daily life from routine (Fig. 1). Debord writes, “The construction of situations begins on the ruins of the modern spectacle....the most per- tinent experiments in culture have sought to break the spectator’s psychological identification with the hero so as to draw him into activity by provoking his capacities to revolutionize his own life.”5 The situation -- as opposed to the spectacle, which denies its own existence as a historical inven- tion -- hopes to re-integrate the city with its own history, in the form of a palimpsest upon the city’s “ruins.” A palimpsest, after all, is inscribed upon traces of visible former marks. It is through per- forming alternative modes of experience upon a still-visible past that historicity can emerge. And to view daily routine as a product of history and culture is to loosen its stranglehold.
If the concrete city was the Situationist theater, today’s stage is the screen. This is the theater in which my piece will take place. It is necessary here to underscore the reciprocal rela- tionship between real and virtual space, and point out the difficulty in separating the two. While Debord famously constructed psychogeographic maps delineating psychological interpretations of space, space as construed in a virtual world has been recently referred to as neogeography. In a 2010 article entitled Neogeography and the Palimpsests of Place, Mark Graham writes,
With the advent of the Internet, an entirely new dimension of layers has begun to be added to the palimpsest of place. The virtual Earth and digital places are being constructed at a blistering pace in cyberspace. These cyberplaces are not simple floating and static mir- rors of the physical world. They are instead often a component of the palimpsest of place. The virtual Earth and digital representations of place are often characterized by a reflexive relationship with their physical counterparts: they are shaped by, and in turn, shape the physical world.6
This new conception of space, made possible by the proliferation of user-driven databases and an incredible amount of non-hierarchically organized information, has lead to neogeographic practic- es that inscribe personal narratives upon public spaces. My project will similarly meld the personal with the public, but using its own specific interface rather than relying on pre-existing ones. In his article, Graham cites these existing interfaces, such as Google Maps, the OpenStreetMaps proj- ect, and the Wiki-Locals, to demonstrate the already widespread nature of the sourcing of private information for public use. The remarkable aspect of these mapping systems is that (albeit to vary- ing degrees), they accord equal relevancy to personal information and “official” data. This means that a local’s tip about the best hair salon in Rome may appear on the same map as the Coliseum. Other mapping projects incorporate entire narratives, like the new website Broadcastr, which al- lows users to click anywhere on a worldwide map and hear an audio clip of a personal story or recollection about a specific place.7
Beyond the conflation of public and private, mapping interfaces allow for an unprecedented melding of past and present. Maps like the New York Times’ “How Manhattan’s Grid Grew” display historical maps overlaid upon current ones, allowing users to compare the two in minute detail (Fig.2). This type of interaction allows for “virtual tourism” of remote places and remote times. With these tools, anyone can become a neogeographer. But what is particularly interesting here is the way that neogeographic practices have altered our spatial mindset, to the point that our relationships with all real space, even the small triangle of daily routine, are increasingly mediated remotely. The additional layer, or palimpsest, of virtual information upon real space, is in itself an- other unspectacular revolution. While in one sense the Situationist dream of an integrated relation- ship with history is now entirely possible, in another sense, we have begun to experience much of daily life virtually. It is the complex nature of this virtual experience that my project aims to investi- gate.
Along with the parallel existence of the virtual map and the real city comes the development of a dual nature of self. When notions of space are altered, so are conceptions of the body; the real and virtual bodies are no more extricable than the maps are. For instance, if I were to geo-tag myself standing on a street corner using a smartphone, a dot indicating my location would then appear on a digital map. Does this dot represent my real body in real space? What about when I cross the street and the dot remains stationary? Perhaps the dot represents the evidence of my real body leaving a trace in cyberspace. Or maybe I have just created a simulacrum of myself that now exists independent of my body. Any or all of these interpretations are plausible; in short, the ratio between real and virtual is not one-to-one.
Let us look at another map to illustrate. The German politician Malte Spitz recently got a court order forcing Deutsche Telekom to reveal all the location data it had collected from his mo- bile phone over the course of a year. Then the German newspaper Zeit used six months of this data, including over 35,000 location tags, to create a Google Map showing how Spitz’s move- ments were tracked over half a year (Fig. 3). On this map, it is possible to precisely locate Spitz’s range of movement at any given moment in the six-month span on a detailed virtual map. The remarkable mapping interface allows users to click almost anywhere on a timeline below the map and see his corresponding location, as well as a log of his phone calls and messages on the day in question. There are, however, chunks in the timeline when there is no data available, when Spitz is suddenly “off the map.” While the assumption about the reason for these empty hours should be that Spitz had perhaps turned off his phone or drove through a tunnel with no reception, strangely, the first thought that comes to mind is that during those blank spots he has ceased to exist. It is this uncanny realization, which crosses the mind in a flash, that reveals the enormous difference between the methodical diagramming of Debord’s Parisian student and the relatively new practice of virtual data mapping. The data produces such a near-perfect simulacrum for the real thing that it is only through the sudden gaps, or discrepancies, that it is possible to apprehend the slippage between the real and the virtual realms. It is with this understanding that I propose my project.
During six months prior to the event I will wear a small GPS device at all times, which will record my location hourly. At the end of this period, a statistical algorithm will select the locations that I have visited during the time period more often than can be accounted for by “chance.” Con- necting the dots between these places will form a shape superimposed upon the city (Fig.4). Rather than question the accuracy or relevancy of the particular shape that has been created, I will accept it as a fact, a scientific representation of my existence. I will disregard, for instance, all the interior movements normally made within the perimeter of this shape, as well as the fact that I have probably never actually moved between my locations in this particular order or pattern. In fact, the shape will not explain anything more about my personal experience than the map of Malte Spitz really says about his. It will be a representation of my life as expressed by data ac- cording to a particular algorithm. This powerful shape contains and reflects the history of its own creation, resting like a giant magnifying glass upon the city.
Once I possess this geometric representation of myself in space, I will be able to reproduce it by tracing its perimeter in another city over the course of an hour and twenty-three minutes. According to previous research concerning my routine in Berlin, I know that I spend an average of an hour and twenty-three minutes total commuting between various destinations each day, so this amount of time has been chosen specifically for the reproduction of my routine. However, the urban setting where the event will take place will be selected not by me but at random from a list of Berlin’s official “sister cities” (Mexico City, Paris, and Beijing, for example). Viewers will be able to fade between maps in order to compare locations while I try to walk the perimeter of the shape (Fig. 5).
In order to re-create the geometry of my Berlin life in another location, I will have to care- fully memorize my shape’s outline by repeatedly walking its course and counting my steps, effec- tively rehearsing the representation of my own life for presentation. No city’s streets will adhere perfectly to my shape’s perimeter; I will have to do my best to stick to it. During the journey, my wearable GPS device will transmit my location every minute to the virtual map that the audience is observing on-screen. The ultimate outcome of “re-playing” this choreographed routine from memo- ry in front of an audience in a remote location will be to vivify it; to enliven the banal through the- atrical re-enactment. Furthermore, the purpose of re-creating this map -- which was drawn in the first place using accurate technology -- via the inaccurate device of memory and the measurement of footsteps, will be to superimpose my physical existence once again upon my data-self. In the al- chemical transmutation of real to virtual to real again, discrepancies between the two will emerge. By trying to collapse the two spatial realities, I will in fact juxtapose them against each other.
Much of my work finds ways to re-punctuate the system of everyday life, to locate the ellipti- cal pauses, commas, and asides in routine and to investigate them--to give them weight through the creation of narratives. At the heart of this system of investigation is a belief in the physical body’s inextricable relationship with the intellectual mind, which manifests as an attempt to decon- struct conventional notions between the sensual and the cerebral through material-based experi- ments. These experiments in transformation, or what DeLanda might call “shifting states,” often investigate their own documentation and temporal visibility. In a similar process of embodiment, the proposed project will attempt to substantiate the negative space between the actual destina- tions that necessitate routine travel. It highlights not the apexes of the triangle of habit (home, school, job), but the in-between spaces. Rem Koolhaas identifies these areas -- the eternally for- gettable commute, the unidentifiable passageway -- as “Junkspace.” He writes, “Because it cannot be grasped, Junkspace cannot be remembered. It is flamboyant yet unmemorable, like a screen saver; its refusal to freeze ensures instant amnesia.”8 It is the “instant amnesia” of the daily routine and of the screen that this project tries to counteract, or arrest. In a double palimpsest, the project collapses several temporal experiences into one singular performance, delivering its message and then subsuming itself.
A model for this process, Philippe Parreno’s Snow Dancing, is a project that simultaneously precedes and documents its own existence. In 1994, Philippe Parreno dictated to Liam Gillick and Jack Wendler a description of an imaginary party that had not yet occurred. The following year, GW Press printed the book Snow Dancing, a verbatim record of the dictation describing this party. Two months after the book was printed, several hundred people were invited to participate in an event at the Consortium in Dijon, enacting (or re-enacting) the scenario described in the text. The party lasted for an hour and a half, the same amount of time it had taken for Parreno to narrate it, and about as long as it takes to read the book. The dictation of the Snow Dancing event preempts its own documentation, which in turn presupposes its realization -- the project invents itself, begin- ning with memory and moving backward from the document to the action. My project is likewise an invention, though it is just as much an invention of a computer’s algorithm as of mine. The fiction of the project is only made possible through the tools, and the mindset, of a virtual world. Yet all fictions are, to some extent, virtual realities. Italo Calvino writes:
The ancients built Valdrada on the shores of a lake, with houses all verandas one above the other, and high streets whose railed parapets look out over the water. Thus the traveler, arriving, sees two cities: one erect above the lake, and the other reflected, upside down. Nothing exists or happens in the one Valdrada that the other Valdrada does not repeat, because the city was so constructed that its every point would be reflected in its mirror... At times the mirror increases a thing’s value, at times denies it. Not everything that seems valuable above the mirror maintains its force when mirrored. The twin cities are not equal, because nothing that exists or happens in Valdrada is symmetrical: every face and gesture is answered, from the mirror, by a face and gesture inverted, point by point.9
The narrative aspect of the project will allow the audience to literally listen as my fictional routine subsumes my “real” one. As in Calvino’s Valdrada, each of my movements in the real city will be reflected, point by point, in the re-enactment. At the end of the hour and twenty-three min- utes during which the event takes place, the recorded narration of my original routine, as well as the map of my routine in Berlin, will disappear; all that will remain online will be the new map and the new narration. Time markers correlated to geo-tags will allow website visitors to listen to the new narration at any point and see my corresponding movement on the map. At this point, trans- formation complete, the website will become user-inhabitable: the map will no longer be mine. Visi- tors will be able to add shapes corresponding to their own spatial habits and sound clips narrating their own routines (Fig. 6). Layer upon layer, an infinite number of virtual spatial realities will begin to emerge. As the fictions multiply, it will become increasingly harder to distinguish between the real city and its reflection. Elvia Pyburn-Wilk, 2011
Endnotes 1 Philippe Parreno. Snow Dancing. (1995; reprint, Kaleidoscope Press: 2010), 64. 2 Simon Schama. Landscape and memory. (Fontana Press, Harper Collins, London: 1996), 61. 3 Guy Debord. “Theory of the Dérive,” Internationale Situationniste #2 (December 1958), in Situationist International Anthology, ed. Ken Knabb (Bureau of Public Secrets: Berkley, CA, 1981), 50. 4 Debord, “Dérive,” 51. 5 Guy Debord. “Toward a Situationist International,” (June 1957), in Situationist International Anthology, 695. 6 Mark Graham. “Neogeography and the Palimpsests of Place: Web 2.0 and the Construction of a Virtual Earth.” Tijdschrift Voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Volume 101, Issue 4 (2010), 423. 7 Broadcastr Beta. http://beta.broadcastr.com/ 8 Rem Koolhaas. “Junkspace,” October, Vol. 100, “Obsolescence.” (Spring 2002), 177. 9 Italo Calvino. Invisible Cities. (Harcourt Brace: 1978), 53.