Working Questions:
Re A Discourse analysis of the Academic Discussion of Derive - a part of the PHd text of Garrett B "Place Hacking -Tales of Urban Exploration" could be used,
this is termed 'Urban Exploration' but he relates it to Derive .
eg
Re A Discourse analysis of the Academic Discussion of Derive - a part of the PHd text of Garrett B "Place Hacking -Tales of Urban Exploration" could be used,
this is termed 'Urban Exploration' but he relates it to Derive .
"Perhaps more problematically, the term “exploration” conjures up a host of imaginaries pulled from the cultural baggage the term carries around; visions of colonial expeditions, invasions, subjugated populations, disease and occupation (Johnston, 2000). It is language of conquest. Given the (I think mostly unintentional) exclusionary and relatively masculine nature of the practice outlined above, the use of the term becomes especially foreboding.
But here I would point to the reappropraition of the term by SI (Debord, 2006a) who made aimless urban wandering and pointless exploration for the sake of exploration into an alternative practice, set in the context of the urban everyday. I might also suggest the writings of radical geographer Bill Bunge (1969) who worked with local communities in the 1960s to explore areas important to them in the American Midwest. More recently, the wandering local narrative of Londoner Raphael Samuel (1994) also serves to bring exploration back to more Dickensian
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Place Hacking Bradley L. Garrett roots, building narratives from the ground up through alternative explorations of
areas of everyday experience (Harrison, 2000). Finally, we might look to Driver and Jones (2009) who have worked on hidden histories of exploration, getting behind the scene to relocate and celebrate those individuals who have been largely excluded from those narratives. All of this work points to what I would argue is a post-‐colonial populist reimagining of exploration.
The explorer and journalist Matthew O’Brien, author of the book Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas spent two years interviewing homeless people living in storm drains under the city as he explored the entirety of the system (O'Brien, 2007). He now runs a non-‐profit organization called Shine a Light,11 devoted to helping the homeless community in the tunnels. Urban explorer Steve Duncan has done similar work along with National Public Radio (NPR) in the occupied abandoned train tunnels of New York (Lynden, 2011 also see Toth 1993).12 And in Italy, a crew called the Associazione Brescia Underground have legitimized their explorations and now run formal tours of the sewer system.13
Although these projects may not release the notion of “exploration” from that historical baggage, I contend that they do at least break up the epistemological bounding of the term enough to warrant a re-‐assessment. In the end, when I asked “Gary” if he objected to the term, he told me, “call it whatever you want, you still don’t know what it is until you do it” (“Gary” August 2010). “Gary” could not be more correct, Crang and Cook support his assertion when they write “there is a danger of reifying categories until they become what the exercise is about” (Crang
11 http://www.beneaththeneon.com/shine-a-light.asp (accessed 12 November 2011).
12 http://www.npr.org/2011/01/02/132482428/into-the-tunnels-exploring-the-underside-of-nyc (accessed 12 November 2011).
13 http://www.bresciaunderground.com (accessed 12 November 2011).
areas of everyday experience (Harrison, 2000). Finally, we might look to Driver and Jones (2009) who have worked on hidden histories of exploration, getting behind the scene to relocate and celebrate those individuals who have been largely excluded from those narratives. All of this work points to what I would argue is a post-‐colonial populist reimagining of exploration.
The explorer and journalist Matthew O’Brien, author of the book Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas spent two years interviewing homeless people living in storm drains under the city as he explored the entirety of the system (O'Brien, 2007). He now runs a non-‐profit organization called Shine a Light,11 devoted to helping the homeless community in the tunnels. Urban explorer Steve Duncan has done similar work along with National Public Radio (NPR) in the occupied abandoned train tunnels of New York (Lynden, 2011 also see Toth 1993).12 And in Italy, a crew called the Associazione Brescia Underground have legitimized their explorations and now run formal tours of the sewer system.13
Although these projects may not release the notion of “exploration” from that historical baggage, I contend that they do at least break up the epistemological bounding of the term enough to warrant a re-‐assessment. In the end, when I asked “Gary” if he objected to the term, he told me, “call it whatever you want, you still don’t know what it is until you do it” (“Gary” August 2010). “Gary” could not be more correct, Crang and Cook support his assertion when they write “there is a danger of reifying categories until they become what the exercise is about” (Crang
11 http://www.beneaththeneon.com/shine-a-light.asp (accessed 12 November 2011).
12 http://www.npr.org/2011/01/02/132482428/into-the-tunnels-exploring-the-underside-of-nyc (accessed 12 November 2011).
13 http://www.bresciaunderground.com (accessed 12 November 2011).
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Tales of Urban Exploration Bradley L. Garrett and Cook, 2007: 148). As a result, I am content to present this research as a
scholarship of evocation rather than definition (Solnit, 2001), and to move into unpacking the practice without attempting to define and bound it to a great degree. The urban exploration community, again like hackers, have “a cultural sensibility that, in practice, is under constant negotiation and reformulation and replete with points of contention” (Coleman and Golub, 2008: 255). And so, frustrating as people may find it, urban exploration will remain a term under constant contention. 14
scholarship of evocation rather than definition (Solnit, 2001), and to move into unpacking the practice without attempting to define and bound it to a great degree. The urban exploration community, again like hackers, have “a cultural sensibility that, in practice, is under constant negotiation and reformulation and replete with points of contention” (Coleman and Golub, 2008: 255). And so, frustrating as people may find it, urban exploration will remain a term under constant contention. 14
Theoretical Position :Post Structural?
Research Question: What is the positive/negative academic discourse around random journeying as a form of inclusive listening
Public discourse
Subject positions, Exclusion/Binary oppositions
My concern is with inclusive listening hence my own motivations are towards the popularization of random journeys in a sensitive / spiritual sense c.f. the"(I think mostly unintentional) exclusionary and relatively masculine nature of the practice outlined "a post-‐colonial populist reimagining of exploration."
My concern is with inclusive listening hence my own motivations are towards the popularization of random journeys in a sensitive / spiritual sense c.f. the"(I think mostly unintentional) exclusionary and relatively masculine nature of the practice outlined "a post-‐colonial populist reimagining of exploration."
A concern with construction in the context of free space this is based linguistic constructivism.
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