walkscape osu

http://walkscapeosu.blogspot.com/



Walkscape is inspired by a book of the same name by Francesco Careri (Barcelona, 2002). Writing as an architectural and urban theorist, Careri examined a series of moments in the history of 20C art when artists turned walking--bodily movement through space--into a critical and creative gesture. Dissatisfied with the conventional and institutional enclosures of art--the frame, the studio, the museum--they took to the streets, looking for new ways to see.

In a line that stretches (circuitously) from the Dadaist "excursions" through Surrealist "deambulation," Situationist "drifting," Richard Long's "A Line Made by Walking" (1967) and the work of OSU's Robert Ladislas Derr, the walking body turns into a means of both creating and resisting meaning: resisting prescribed itineraries, thwarting predictable outcomes, opening new points of access and surprising vistas. What emerges from these bipedal experiments, Careri suggests, are a range of alternative ways of evoking and inhabiting space: practices of pilgrimage, dreamscape, playscape, heterotopia.

*****
Join the campus-wide experiment in creative bipedalism by going for a walk. Visit new places, take new routes, look with a fresh eye: walk by yourself, in pairs, in small groups, en masse. Document your experience somehow and contribute to the Walkscape Scroll on the Oval from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Wednesday (5/20). Sponsored by One Creative University: A project of Arts Initiative and the Institute for Collaborative Research and Public Humanities. Contact: mailto:Livingston.28@osu.edu. Read more: http://walkscapeosu.blogspot.com

psychogeographic project

i've been inspired by the following youtube video (at the bottom) where a co-worker is given a simple algorithm to follow on a lunch-time dérive.

my proposal:
1) you are here identifies a group of people we want to dérive (CS grad students, in example)
2) we draft up a set of simple algorithms (in the video they had a a few directions on a 3x5 card: '2nd street right, 2nd right, 1st left, repeat') w/ a few instructions and contact info (if you feel you would like to break from the algorithm, please do).
3) anonymously deliver said instructions (mailboxes, &c.)



who's with me?

parkour

Parkour

(sometimes also abbreviated to PK) or l'art du déplacement^[1] (English: the art of movement) is an activity with the aim of moving from one point to another as smoothly, efficiently and quickly as possible, using principally the abilities of the human body.^[2] It is meant to help one overcome obstacles, which can be anything in the surrounding environment—from branches and rocks to rails and concrete walls—and can be practiced in both rural and urban areas. Parkour practitioners are referred to as traceurs, or traceuses for females.^[3]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_iGordDDpw&feature=related

So Much Hubabaloo About the Swine Flu

Guess what folks - not so worried about the swine flu. Not only is that shit under control but you're more likely to get killed by a car home on the way home tonight.

The explosion of images and thoughts triggered in the cultural imaginary has been amazing, however!

Here's one of my favorites -- a review of a few badass art projects that will blow you mind into a million tiny pieces, enjoy.

a house for pigs and people :: via metastable equilibrium

sneaks:


&

Sacre du Printemps, one that doesn't involve sacrificing virgins

I think Robert Frost or somebody wrote a poem about how a derive in springtime is always a magical experience. Maybe it was Walt Whitman? Anyway, I would recommend it, if you have the opportunity. Walking through alleys in Clintonville would be my suggestion. Maybe balance that out with a stroll down the railroad tracks next to I-71. It's a snapshot in time, but the psychogeographic contours of the city seem much more inviting than other times of year.

Ohio Union Activities Board at OSU Sponsoring Misogynist

Women’s Group (at OSU) Demands Cancellation of Rape-Promoter Tucker Max

Sexual Assault Awareness Month has barely come to a close, and already The Ohio State University is choosing to create a hostile environment for women, violating its own non-discrimination policy as well as state and federal law. On Monday, May 11th OSU will be sponsoring the rape-celebrating Tucker Max as a speaker, using OSU students’ dollars. [an example] From a Tucker Max story describing his several-week persistent coercion of a woman into anal sex, “I was going to **** her in the butt and film it without her consent.” Also, from his own website;

My name is Tucker Max, and I am an asshole. I get excessively drunk at inappropriate times, disregard social norms, indulge every whim, ignore the consequences of my actions, mock idiots and posers, sleep with more women than is safe or reasonable, and just generally act like a raging
dickhead.

At the same time The Ohio State University is paying for Tucker Max to come to campus, university officials are telling students that there is "no money" to set up a fund for OSU students who are raped/sexually assaulted. The fund would help cover the high costs of seeking medical attention after such an attack, which can cost survivors hundreds and even thousands of dollars before it's all said and done... So there is money for rape-promoters but not for women?

ATTRACTIONS.JORDAN+CRANDALL.HOTEL.042209

My hotel room is perched at the intersection of two freeways, and, with the window open to let in the hot summer air, I can hear the comforting hum of traffic. I have just gotten out of the shower and am staring at myself in the mirror, deciding whether or not to shave. I hear a knock on the door: it must be room service. With a towel around my waist, I open the door for the waiter, who wheels in my breakfast cart. At the opening of the door, the curtains billow and the warm breeze animates the room. The waiter nervously fusses with the plates and flatware. I sign the check and thank him. He opens the door to exit the room. But the breeze does not stop, and out of the corner of my eye, I notice that he is closing the door very slowly, in order that he can watch my reflection in the hallway mirror. The wind channel remains open. Momentarily, I catch a glimpse of his eye in the mirror and I sense the intensity of his attraction. Does his desire arise because of, or in spite of, the limits placed on it - by the social contract, and by his employer? Still in my towel, I take my breakfast plate from the cart and walk over to the chair. As I approach the seat, I realize that my towel has loosened. I am holding the plate with both hands and so I do not catch the towel. Rather, I let it fall. Standing, plate in hand, with my back to the door, I feel the gaze of the waiter upon me. I bask in the familiar glow of this look. Like the warm sunshine beaming in from the window, cast against my skin, it affords me a blanket of comfort. Yet at the same time it dispossesses me. Centeredness and dispersal, life and death, as part of the same circuit. I sense the struggle is which he is engaged - how long can he remain, peering through a gap in the door, before he is discovered, whether by me, another hotel guest, or his boss? Embodying the struggle, he monitors himself. A space of tension has opened up, a gap that only assumes its potency through the impending threat of its closure, and of its subject's exposure. Perhaps his body takes shape, as mine does, through the contouring properties of this space. It informs him, gives form to him. Like the billowing curtains, shaped by the morning breeze - arising only because of the wind channel established by the open window and the cracked door. Self-consciously, I stand there, and slowly begin to eat from my plate. The curtains undulate. The clacking of my fork beats time like a metronome, as the erotic energy - always compositional, rhythmic - circulates through the room with the hot summer air.

via version.org