“I like to think of myself as a flâneur, someone who wanders the corridors of culture in my life,” Wayne Koestenbaum said. “I am particularly in pursuit of experiences of bulge, glaze, pause, shock.”
via veloflaneur
“Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flaneur finds the world ‘picturesque.’ ” ~ Susan Sontag
Cycling is a deeply aesthetic practice. Riding transverses the city and country; it bridges the mechanical and the organic. Here readers will find some thoughts on the intersection of cycling and modernity from the relatively dispassionate and fleeting, yet productive position of the pedestrian or cyclist. This is not about racing. Velo Flaneur focuses on everyday, utilitarian riding, randonneuring, jaunts through urban and natural terrain and watching, listening, and feeling.
The flaneur observed the unfolding metropolis of the nineteenth century in a disconnected manner. Today, from behind the handlebars of a bicycle, one can survey architecture, society, art, politics, interaction, production, consumption, and the natural environment as a flickering rush of images.
via veloflaneur
Welcome to vélo-flâneur, my most recent discovery in an ongoing quest to identify intriguing flaneurs meandering the information superhighway.
Le jeune flâneur’s self portrait inverts subject and background, inserting the photographer and the viewer into intimate voyeuristic contact with this contemplative lady in Paris.
An urban flaneur is a wanderer who travels around the city as a casual observer and gives an interpretation of what s/he sees. An urban flaneur disdains the idea that one can encapsulate a city into a list of landmarks or dissect it into parts as one would a corpse. In this light, I am launching this new blog about experiencing the city in its totality. I welcome any relevant comments.
via The Urban Flaneur Guidebook
A new face on the flaneurial block. Welcome to Michael McAdams! Keep to great posts coming…
via blindflaneur.com
“I was a penniless poet living in a dilapidated water mill on the Little Miami River. She was Princess Caroline of Monaco. I had more hair then, none of it gray. She was a notorious wild child on the international celebrity scene. I took a chance on a 22-cent aerogramme. She never replied…” (Blind Flaneur)
Fête du Flâneur, An Urban(e) Party via Great City
I’m feeling envious of Seattle-based flâneurs who’ll be able to attend the Fête du Flâneur — billed as “an urban(e) party” — on February 25th at Melrose Market. The highlight, it seems to me is this: “Following the early reception will be a celebration of enlightened, if fanciful, urban living featuring music, open bar, hors d’oeuvres, silent auction, an address by Mayor Mike McGinn, crowning of the Great City-Cascade Land Conservancy Mustache Challenge champion, Flâneur-inspired art, dancing and DIY costumes.” It’s possible that the only thing cooler than a celebration of flânerie is a mustache contest. Since I’ve perfected the former, I’d better get to work on the latter! What sort of costume would you were to a flâneurs’ festival?
Charles Baudelaire,
flâneur originale
A flâneur, according to Webster, is “an idle man-about-town”. It’s pretty evident that a man who was compelled to log words and definitions day and night knew little about the art of flânerie (flâneury), French for strolling. For the flâneur is not merely a loafer gadding his short life away.
He or she is a creature so enthralled by the world that the internal yields to the external, so fascinated with the other that the self is temporarily forgotten. The flâneur is misunderstood by the non-flâneur who fails to recognize the endeavor in his art. For the flâneur is indeed striving toward a goal, making a concerted effort to become anonymous in the crowd — an undetected voyeur — and to sate a philosophical, an aesthetic and an almost spiritual fascination with the scene around him/herself.
“For the perfect flâneur, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow. To be away from home, yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the center of the world, yet to remain hidden from the world—such are a few of the slightest pleasures of those independent, passionate, impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define.” ~ Charles Baudelaire
The flâneur seeks communion with the other, and this requires a receptivity and a yielding to the bustle of the urban crowd.
“[Flâneurs] are opening their eyes and ears to the scene around them. They are not treating the street as an obstacle course to be negotiated; they are opening themselves up to it. They are wondering about the lives of those they pass, constructing narratives for them, they are eavesdropping on conversations, they are studying how people dress and what new shops and products there are (not in order to buy anything—just in order to reflect on them as important pieces of evidence of what human beings are about)… While cities bring together huge numbers of people, paradoxically they also separate them from each other. The goal of flâneur[s] is to recover a sense of community… To do this, they let down their guard, they empathize with situation they see. There’s a constant risk they will be moved, saddened, excited – and fall in love.” ~ Alain de Botton
“Flâneurs don’t have any practical goals in mind, aren’t walking to get something, or to go somewhere. What flâneurs are doing is looking. Opening their eyes and ears to the scene around them, wondering about the lives of those they pass, constructing narratives about the houses, eavesdropping on conversations, studying how people dress and street life in general. Flâneurs relish what they discern and discover.” ~ Alan Fletcher (The Art of Looking Sideways
)
“Flânerie… is immersion in an anonymous, spectatorial gaze that gives license to wandering and observing… It is an aesthetic action, art form, and social phenomenon… The flâneur… possesses a way of seeing the world and being in the world that intrinsically reveals meaningful, social commentary.” Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology
“The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life…” ~ Georg Simmel (The Metropolis and Mental Life)
Sometimes it’s best to step aside and let others swing at the piñata. Though none of the definitions/ruminations above precisely encapsulate my personal brand of flânerie, taken together they come close.
“I quote others only the better to express myself.” ~ Michel de Montaigne
My own flâneur précis remains a work in progress, but for now you’re welcome to meander through my piñata swings: virtualDavis: a Flâneur in the Digital Age.
Just another listless dreamer… (virtualDavis)
The earliest version of this page was coded into existence with clumsy, labored HTML around January 2000. It has dilated and contracted over the years like a stubborn accordion. From time to time I stuff in another tune, then — a month or a year later — I manage to pull it out again, usually adapting it into a standalone blog post (most can be found in the Flâneur category). What remains are a few of the most helpful sources I have found. If you’re looking for a source that has vanished from this page, try using the search function and you can most likely find what you want in a blog post. If not, contact me and I’ll try to help you out.
That image above is one of the “picture poems” I included in 40×41: Midlife Crisis Postponed and it combines contour drawings that I made in 1994 during my final year in college with abstractions from photographs that I took in Peru in 2011. I’ve previously posted elements of “Contours & Artifacts” in Choice (June 4, 2012) and Wonder (December […]
