flân3ur

 

 

 

 

The Image source: Typology Project, but it's relevant here because the photos were taken in GTA 5 using The Lucas Real VR Mod (before it was nerfed) to find liminal spaces within the digital environment obtained from parkour'ing on rooftops in Virtual Reality.

 The classical definition of the flâneur assumes a privilege to be able to wander, traverse & pick apart a space observing from within from a self-important complacency. It is this privilege & self-importance that lies the problem that flaneurs of old just shrug & chock up to "an art" or in contemporary wording "I'm just built different bro". It's from this sentiment that exudes and reveals the mask of the flaneur as the white, European man, that allows them to "disappear" within their environment or some other some poetic drivel. If an impressionist watched The Matrix in a vacuum where they had context to derive meaning from contemporary movies, they'd look at it and assume "ya that's me" missing entirely the sub-context of the trans experience because in the flaneurs eyes the world is entirely made by them for them. I don't mean to beat a dead horse on the obvious but it's a distinction that should be made in the topic that women, black, special populations, physically disabled, poc, & queer folk lack certain abilities to exist within the classical flaneurs world. Not exclusive to each other but these populations have their own world to which they may traverse but much of the early writing of the flaneur explains how taking a stroll all-day without the stress of getting mugged, raped, traversing able-bodied terrains or having to worry about financial stability at any given moment is merely a lack of "art" to being a flaneur and not an overarching problem from which the flaneur intends to overlook as an unbothered centrist & in extension oppressor.

Modern psychogeography aims to be critical about the systems and design of space influences and dissuades/persuades action or an audience. This is evident in overt ways like with conversation around the homeless spikes or uncomfortable benches that make rounds on the internet occasionally. Also, within less obvious ways like policy that forces people out of their homes & into the streets, and then from their geography that forces them out of sight and  funnels them into prisons with physical force in all steps of the way, with a healthy amount of stigmatization about their existence because of weakened mental/physical health options/knowledge/infrastructure & from their the homeless individual is perpetually demonized by the community, the city landscape, and the state. This is to say psychogeography can be used to critically assess the space and people who inhabit it & how to better equip the space for more populations (conversely this has been used to weaponize space like the war on homelessness populations as well, by oppressors). Be it better policy, or as simple as walking-buddy resources like on campus for those who can't walk alone unassisted, or as radical as "the capital crawl" that forced the hand of the government to action in requiring buildings to be ADA complaint to accommodate wheelchair users. Psychogeography is a necessary force that should be utilized to allow everyone to be a flaneur occasionally, (playing within the city and its surroundings) as play is a valuable right, and in extension we can apply many of the attitude’s thoughts towards making the internet as it's 'Townsquare' form a better place.

Some examples of internet-based calls to action from flaneurs include implementations for alt-text on photos for audio reading peripherals, visuals/text that accommodate multiple populations, designing with accessibility in mind like how the Video Game Accessibility Awards (VGAA) run by Alanah Pearce & Steve Spohn celebrates good design with accessibility in mind to try to incentivize the industry in the way of accessibility accountability. Also, valuable web 2.0 resources like twitter and ‘the real-time news feed/forum’ style of social media that is slipping out of grasp of the proletariat after the Musk buyout. Then the follow-up from Meta creating Threads that intentionally lacks a trending tab to dissuade public organization/discussion outside of their philosophical "shopping mall" idea that de-emphasizes news because they don't want to get caught with their hands in the cookie jar again by global governments (notably AUS, and CA, but also the US). There are also means we must protect as well like opensource/freeware that provides industry alternatives to streamlined software like GNUs GIMP is to Adobes Photoshop, as well as the recent controversy with Unity making their software inaccessible. Content must also be protected, like the war on internet archive & media archivists in general from mega-conglomerate copyright holders & video game companies, and lastly the rush for capitalist/get rich quick schemes like the allusive metaverse through which is vaporware about making VR hardware ad centric & biometric data ready to sell. All these issues are to say that we now have multiple realities (often mirroring cyberpunk literature) from which the modern flaneur must inhabit, understand, critically assess & take action when necessary.