the beginning

starting a blog about a project i have already been intensely involved with for 3 weeks is difficult to start.

i was firstly interested in travel, the link between travel and art, how other practictioners use travel - either as subject, to alter their point of veiw or to build international connections. i enquired into how discovering other cultures ultimatelty leads to discovering your own, how distance gives perspective - how location is just a point of view and that travel is simply the relationship between space and time. in direct connection to artists i discovered the idea of the artist needing to be in continous exile in order to create, to be shocked by displacement, be voluntarily estranged. this idea intrigued me so i investigated singular figures of travel, the concept of being alone...it feels like a very out-dated picture of the artist...especially when i read about the post-modern condition 'a self does not amount to much, but no self is an island; each exists in a fabric of locations (relations) that is now more complex and mobile than ever before', and so i felt that travel can at the same time put us into exile, becoming the outsider, but ultimately adds to our network of locations and relationships that connects us to thousands of others. i am interested in how a self can be at once a singular figure and part of the masses. here comes the Flaneur. a male character from 19th century paris who drifts through the beautiful architecture of Paris gets lost in the masses but distances himself by observing them. The Flaneur landed my project in Paris and began a summer long of researching the flaneur, walking as arts practice, the situationists, alternative tourism, current walking and urban investigation companies and practitioners, theories of getting lost and mapping. all of this i have brought with me to Paris and have begun walking....