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As a graduate looking for his place in Poland right now, there are two things I must, willy nilly, pay attention to: furniture and politics. Oddly enough, these two - or rather, the way they are represented and sold to the average customer/voter - are similar on a strange level. I tried to put my finger on it, but couldn't; perhaps you'll see the point when it's illustrated, step by step.
1. Bo concept. A company whose furniture is elitist, modern, chic and (surely...!) expensive. Looking at their living rooms (click the squares above the pictures to scroll) is quite an experience - though, truth be told, they look better on photos than "live". What I feel is, first of all, anxiety. The furniture is, in each case, the focal point of the room, the actual inhabitant. In spacious interiors, it's easy to follow the uncompromising, simple lines of the design, easy to comprehend the closed, complete composition and find its centre. Easy to overlook the human: s/he would sit there, uneasy, temporary, afraid to touch anything.
2. IKEA. Still considered stylish and luxurious (which it is, when compared to the 1980s furniture in PL - there should be an investigation into communist crimes against aesthetics), but slowly falling into place (more of that later). The most important difference between this and Bo Concept is that it shows you its use and versatility. The next - the interiors chosen for the photos are much smaller. This is something I can relate to: I know what it's like, having to make the most of your 20 square meters. I want to know what to clean my sofa with, once the wine's been spilt.
Now the funny bit. There's a political campaign going on in Poland, before the local elections all over the country. Billboards are being filled with posters, new slogans are being invented...you know the stuff. In step with the Bo Concept philosophy, I give you:
1. "Citizen of the Fourth Republic", media campaign by the currently-ruling party "Law and Justice". What struck us in the photos (appearing in the headers across the site, but especially this lady...) is that you cannot see the "Citizens'" faces! Now, a complete lack of down-to-earth attitudes in politics is something we could get used to - but the blonde lady is a photoshop-ed cyborg, isn't she? The slogan says "closer to the people", but the outcome, in my opinion, is just the opposite - the personas used are, just like the Fourth Republic of Poland, a myth, a terrifying, not-quite-human construct you don't want to grow up to.

I wish for a political movement that would correspond with IKEA in the previous part of the comparison. It was not my intention to end up writing about politics; as I went on comparing and contrasting the two images, more and more analogies were presenting themselves. I wish for a time when the horrible communist furniture fades away. I wish for people choosing IKEA not because it's "prestigious", but because it's practical and suits their needs. I guess I wish for a geniune middle-class; right now, it's either post-communist relics or Bo Concept. Which makes IKEA a luxury indeed. I wish for it to become a mere convenience.

I was thinking about time and technology quite frequently lately (my MA thesis was, in part at least, about similar issues), but couldn't put my finger on the thoughts I've been having until we watched Raise the Red Lantern. There is a scene, somewhere in the middle of the story, of two youger wives and two men playing mahjongg. One of them stands up to play a record on a phonograph - she is an ex-singer, and she plays a piece from a Chinese opera she used to sing.
This, to me at least, was the first clue about the time at which the events were happening. Up to that point, nothing gave the time frame away: the setting was either rural or traditional Chinese (which I knew nothing about - and anyway, the whole film used the surroundings modestly), the costumes also refused to clue me in. The phonograph offered instant, if approximate, time reference: I don't think that any other such clues followed.

If the story was set in a European context, things would be different. I could recognize clothing styles, hairdos, mannerisms, relate to what was shown and judge - or guess, at least - about the time. In Raise the Red Lantern, all was unfamiliar, either scarce or explicitly ritualized. I suppose that, for an expert in the field, there was a multitude of visual clues: clothing, accesories, styles of writing or speech. For me, sadly and curiously, watching a Chinese movie is a trip into the Never-Never, be it a "serious" production like RTRL or a beat-em-up fantasy like The House of the Flying Daggers.

The phonograph changed it, and put it in perspective. Suddenly I became aware of when things were happening. It's not that I needed that knowledge: rather, I realized that without such references, what I see remains timeless, similar to a fable of sorts. Cramming the scene with mixed-up artifacts, like in Blade Runner street sequences, does the same for me: I no longer know, nor care, about where and when.

Things are different in Western flicks: I could be given a jumble of James Bond scenes, for example, and be able to arrange them in a coherent chronology, if only the gadgets were there. I'm sure there are people who could do the same, relying on clothes that are worn in the movies (not to mention James' girlfriends).

The places where I live seem to get more than their fair share of media attention recently. And, sadly, the reasons are nothing to be proud of. The first instance - a roof collapse in Katowice, where over 60 people were killed - was something huge (you could feel the buzz is over when the journalists from all over the world ran out of material and started interviewing one another), but the second reason - a kid going missing in the suburb of a city where I live - was, at first, nothing major. First, on Monday, the boy didn't return home. Around Thursday, posters were hung and the search was well under way. Then, on Saturday, a TV crew appeared. And on Sunday, another one - with a well-known reporter and a penchant for quasi-sensational stories where somebody is usually found guilty by the way the show is presented.
In both cases, it felt really strange to see familiar places and landscapes transformed in a particular way, with some things added and some things lost in the process, but very few things remaining as I used to see them. A certain kind of continuity had to be shattered and replaced by another, as the images had to make sense, but couldn't possibly convey my sense.
When a place you know becomes news, it becomes a thing to be explained. It is assumed that people want to know about the place, and that the footage is usually not enough. Like most things that require explanation, the place is in need of a context, a story to wrap it up with.
This, in a way, is what everybody makes of their familiar places. Contextualizing. Connecting streets and sounds, houses and smells, finding convenient passages and avoiding unpleasant areas (after finding out first that they are indeed unpleasant). "Exploring by legwork". The context created in this way is personal, immediate and forever present.
Obviously, there is no way to make such context understandable through any medium. A piece of information regarding, say, a street and a particular shop in it where you know a friendly salesperson and get a free apple now and again - this might seem vital to you, but would be a waste of time on TV. What you need on TV is something anyone can take in, without moving, at once. Something impersonal, virtual, timeless.
The place which becomes news is placed within a broader spatial context. A map is used: a city plan on regional TV, a map of the region on national edition, and - if the news hits global network - a map of the country, with the capital and the place clearly marked. There is usually a verbal description of the place: if my suburb hits the news again, it will probably be a "peaceful, a bit remote part of town".
People are interviewed, usually in the street or at their offices. Their answers are, obviously, too long and fuzzy, and have to be cut down to be of any relevance. Their names are mixed up, or misspelled - unless they are experts or officials appearing in the coverage. If what is covered is a controversial issue, usually spokespeople are found for both opposing views, in order to remain neutral.
Lastly, similar events are dug up to prove that the news is, actually, nothing new. In case of Katowice, the media have compared it with other instances of this winter's roof collapses (worldwide), other construction disasters (in Poland) and, generally, bad things that have happened to the region in the past.
To a local, none of this makes any sense. the plan of my suburb, if it were broadcast, would leave blank the space crucial to the issue of a lost kid: a stretch of unused land, where shortcuts are devised to get downtown faster, a tricky, dangerous place even in the daylight and when it doesn't snow. The people here would probably say different things in front of the camera than in private (it is rumoured that a local hairdresser made a small fortune on the ladies who couldn't wait to be interviewed). A celebrity detective, appearing competent on TV, made a fool out of himself in our eyes.
I didn't think I could ever agree with Baudrillard, but recently - as the "real" places became virtual and vice versa - I've been treating him with more and more respect.

1. Feel the flow

"Some things are just more fun" - this groundbreaking discovery is, in most cases, all we may arrive at when trying to express that elusive feeling of enjoying things. Dean Moriarty ("On The Road") was getting his kicks, his crazy existence consisting of fits and starts mostly. Today, however, the metaphor is "flow": "like being carried away by a current, everything moving smoothly without effort." An attempt at definition was made in a book "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and apparently the ideology of flow has been rediscovered recently.
The feeling itself should be anything but exotic. Engaging in an enjoyable activity makes you forget about anything which doesn't belong to the task:

"The well-matched use of skills provides a sense of control over our actions, yet because we are too busy to think of ourselves, it does not matter whether we are in control or not, whether we are winning or losing. Often we feel a sense of transcendence, as if the boundaries of the self had been expanded. The sailor feels at one with the wind, the boat, and the sea; the singer feels a mysterious sense of universal harmony. In those moments the awareness of time disappears, and hours seem to flash by without our noticing."

In discussing the concept of flow, Rob Jellinghaus notes that certain people and activities are particularly "flowful". It is easier to experience flow in an environment abundant in "immediate feedback, commensurate challenges and skills, and clear goals", and goal-oriented people are likely to benefit from flow more often. In this context, I think it's interesting to examine particular ways of moving in urban space as potentially flow-inducing.

2. Le Parkour

"Parkour is said to be l'art du déplacement, or the art of moving (from A to B), consisting of uninterrupted forward motion over, under, around and through obstacles (both man-made and natural) in one's environment. Such movement may come in the form of running, jumping, climbing and other more complicated techniques. The goal of the practice of parkour is to be able to adapt one's movement to any given situation so that any obstacle can be overcome with the human body's abilities."

Uninterrupted forward motion; the swiftness and grace of a traceur; the flow. The environment - in most cases, a city - is, on the face of it, not a flowful one. All the expected, allowed movement in the city takes place along determined lines. A pedestrian, a cyclist, a driver stick to their zones, and when the zones overlap, they are immediately arranged in a hierarchy. Rules, zones, hierarchies: all of this makes the city a dull place if you keep to the safe side, and makes it quite deadly if you don't.
A free runner would not question all the rules. A barrier separating a sidewalk from a busy street cannot be a source of flow, as overcoming this obstacle is bound to result in a brutal interruption of a runner's movement. However, any obstacle that impedes progress can and should be reinterpreted as a flowful challenge: "Parkour is often connected with the idea of freedom, in the form of the ability to overcome aspects of one's surroundings that tend to confine - for example, railings, staircases, or walls". Just as drivers would jump at the possibility of a shortcut but shrink from invading sidewalks, free runners would concentrate on the boundaries present within their environment.
What is discussed here is a new idea of a "pedestrian". Instead of being treated as inferior to car users, she now refuses to be caught in such hierarchy. The obstacles which were designed to direct, conceal and impede her progress are the source of her joy: overcoming those, she becomes visible, beautiful, and endowed with her own speed.

3. Punk movement

In his essay, David Porush recalls his juvenile adventures in Brooklyn. He and his gang used to go rollerskating and try to hitch a ride, catching the buses' bumpers. It soon became dangerous: "Then came the bumper wars. Gangs challenged us as we rolled through stops in their territory. And then came deaths. Kids rolling under buses or slingshot into traffic." Porush argues that this type of movement through the city can be termed "punk": "primitive lizard-brain passion clawing its way through the cerebrum of urbanity. The emotive electric acidjuice of adolescence decoding the palimpsest of civilization, stripping it away to expose deeper codes."
His definition is then taken away to cyberpunk, and indeed, out of a host of cyberpunk protagonists, Neal Stephenson's Y.T. (a skateboarder/messenger) seems to be the most empowered. Her capability of hitching a ride behind just about anything makes her incredibly mobile - and translates into a prominent role in the novel. Her movement stands in contrast with the preferred way of moving in the novel's cyberreality, the Metaverse, where maximum speeds and rapid halts come at little expense. Y.T. is constantly fighting for speed, stealing it: as Porush would call it, she "seeks to burn through the surface of the imposed technosystem to battle what the London street folk in their wisdom call "the filth".
Such type of movement, like the Parkour, generates flow by overcoming obstacles. This time, however, the boundaries crossed are not only the visible ones - barriers, fences or walls. Flow seems to be obtained here from breaking an invisible, social boundary: from being where one shouldn't be, moving like one shouldn't move. The movement itself is far from being fluid: rather, like Dean Moriarty's, it consists of periods of immobility followed by spells of illicit, excessive speed.

4. Conclusion: decoding the city

Both types of movement are obviously a source of "flow" for their practicioners. In both cases, the flow seems to stem from a set of simple functions the movement accomplishes, in that both movements can be said to "decode" the city and question the existing divisions.
Parkour, as we have seen, refuses to be subject to any urban hierarchy. A free runner remains, in essence, a pedestrian. It is within the "pedestrian" zone that the evolutions occur: by questioning and overcoming the obstacles which impede graceful and fast movement, a free runner redefines himself not in relation to drivers/cyclists etc., but against a stereotypical "herd of footmen" and his immediate surroundings.
What I have called "punk movement" is a bit more radical in that it encroaches upon "alien turf", and struggles for speed and power in a completely hostile environment. The changes it introduces into the fabric of the city are radical and profound, yet - as with most revolutions - they may easily be quenched. If successful, the act of trespass is copied (D.U. is one of many such skaters). If dangerous enough - it is fought against (bumpers, Porush recalls, have quickly been taken off city buses, and hitchin rides became impossible).
Taking a car out on the road may well be a great way to get your kicks. Once a road becomes a street, however, the relations change: those who find new ways of moving through urban space, sometimes placing themselves beside existing divisions, sometimes actively challenging them - those people seem to enjoy the streets, and the challenges they bring.

Follow:
Flow - an essay by Rob Jellinghaus
Flow / Wikipedia
Le Parkour / Wikipedia
"What Puts the Punk in Cyberpunk" - David Porush
Snow Crash / Wikipedia

"[S]triated space. The space of pillars. It is striated by the fall of bodies, the verticals of gravity, the distribution of matter into parallel layers, the lamellar and laminar movement of flows. ...Smooth space is a field without conduits or channels. A field (...) wedded to a very particular type of multiplicity: non-metric, acentered, rhizomatic..."
Deleuze/Guattari, "Nomadology: The War Machine"

"The playgrounds that are full all the time in the city are like those at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Third Street, places kids reach by subway as well as on foot. ... Here (...) is a space where time can begin. Linear spaces may be defined as those spaces in which form follows function. Narrative spaces are, instead, spaces like this playground, places of displacement."
Richard Sennett, "The Conscience of the Eye"



A frozen city: hopelessly and incorrigibly smooth. Snow melts during the day and freezes by night. Your every step has to be taken very, very carefully. Pedestrians choose the road - it's black and safer than treacherous sidewalks, where you can smash your knee or get spiked down your neck with a falling icicle. Cars invade the sidewalks: a few days ago, a young driver in Warsaw lost control of the car and hit the bus stop, killing five people.
The thing that really gets on your nerves is that this is not what you expect. You're supposed to walk on the sidewalks and drive on the streets. You expect a striated space in the city at all times: a space where paths are designed to enable you to move. In summer, or in a foreign city, you want to be a nomad, thinking little of the paths usually trodden, you strive for freedom, and - if it's not to be had in the city - you choose the sea, the road, the wild. Winter in your home town makes you yearn for an organizing power, demand order and warmth, enjoy the crowd, follow the safe paths (often the only ones).
Forget moving fast, knowing the connections by heart, getting everywhere in a flash. All of this works just fine in a striated space, where people, things and emotions are hurled down pre-existing paths. You only move because streets, rails, pathways allow you to. But now that winter has come, everything changes. Channels are messy, slippery, faulty. Sometimes they cease to exist at all. Sometimes new ones are created. Trying to find a parking space beneath the snow, struggling for a grip on a deadly sidewalk, hoping for a tram to come on time - to come at all - you realize that your imagined, "nomadic" freedom always means "free to travel along the paths provided" and will always depend on the infrastructure. Once the city freezes over, you become its slave.

We were waiting for a tram uptown. It was nearly 10pm, -20 degrees Celsius. On the tram stop, two coke braziers were placed, and fire was still burning in one of them. We gathered around it, a bunch of frostbitten fingers, a herd of tired passengers. It made us into a "we" all of a sudden: gathered around the fire, we smiled at each other and moved over to make room for new arrivals. It was one of these places where, in Sennett's words, something can begin. One of the places where, as long as you could see the fire, feel its warmth, you and your world made sense, you were going somewhere. Just like you would need a fire in an unknown territory by nightfall, we needed and appreciated that one in a frozen city.
An old, rickety tram came, but it was not the one: the number of the line was all wrong, and it shouldn't even have been there. A few of us climbed in, and asked the driver. It turned out that he was going uptown anyway. We hurried inside, the driver closed the doors and off we went. Nobody bothered to ask what happened to the other trams, what happened to the timetable and how come no. 12 go where no 12s have gone before.