Literature review: Flâneur as a mobility practice

The rich metaphor of flâneur is a recurring motif in literature, sociology and art of the urban (Tester, 1994, p 1) and a multi-faceted subject.  Boulton and Zook (2013) and Featherstone (1998) suggest we can observe a similarity between Walter Benjamin’s wandering flâneur of the Parisian Arcades and the emerging technologies that create the conditions of possibility for a corresponding ‘anonymous wandering detective’ (Boulton and Zook, 2013, p 443).

In this research project I have adopted the ‘art-based research practices that utilize flânerie as an ideal embodied method to sense and explore urban environments’ (Kramer and Short, 2011, p 332). Molz (2011) suggests that to reflect on mobile methodologies is to reflect on movement, in its various forms, not only as an object of knowledge but also as a mode of knowing.  Knowing a city through a social media app such as Trover is knowing its graffiti. Cresswell (2006) uses the term ‘Geosophy’ (originally coined by J.K. Wright in 1947) in which he suggests that the process of movement becomes mobility. This implies that when movement is meaningful  we may observe  ‘ideologies of mobility that become implicated in the production of mobile practices’ (Cresswell, 2006, p 21). I would like to align this with a  flânerie practice and with the ‘geographical imaginations [which] are not simply colourful mental maps confined to the world of ideas. Rather they are active participants in the world of action’ (Cresswell, 2006, p. 21). This I would propose, further supports the Deleuzian machinic and collective assemblage observed in the social media art curating.

The practice of walking is intricately linked to the curating of graffiti and the associated knowledge of urban explorations. Through my explorations of Edinburgh and Granada for instance, I gained a practice which gave me an ethnographic understanding as a researcher, but also as a visitor of the city, with knowledge that is now interwoven. As Kramer and Short (2011, p 399) conclude my ‘ flânerie translates [my] wanderings into a combination of art and social sciences, merging geographic, ethnographic and aesthetic attention into a unique mode of analysis.’

The virtual flâneur is no longer slow ambling but ‘an electronic flâneur [who] can, so to speak, jump out of the street into another street at any time.’ (Featherstone, 1998, p. 921).  Jennie Molz (2011) juxtaposes the 21st century internet-connected traveller with the detached 19th century Baudelairian Parisian strolling male,  a solitary character who epitomizes the intellectual nature of his explorations, who had a critical perspective, and used mobility as a main characteristic. Molz’ contemporary traveller makes sense of their online practices and mediated social interactions through a matrix of electronic and social connectivity. 


The potential aestheticized experience absorbed into the walking, with the physically tuned into the scopic interface of the smartphone is a way of engaging with the environment. This practice is immersive in that the user tunes into the Wi-Fi surrounds and absorbs the data from the organic into the software coded counterpart. Through the temporary act of walking, the deposited data transfers into the digital realm of permanence and replicability.

Summary
In this literature review I focused on how the concept of assemblage can be seen as informed by participatory, hybridised and haptic conditions. The mobilities/mooring dialectic affects the practice of gathering artworks whilst curators are moving through online and offline landscapes.

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