Paris cafe and drawing lines

I have been using Paris as a meeting place, a cafe, a meeting place for people and cities. I have met people in Paris and took walks with them, discussing Paris - why they are here? how long for? why? whats it like? in comparison with where they are from or have been? will you stay? gradually building up a complex opinion about Paris' network of people. I have always been interested in why people do things, the rationale behind action, the task. The usual response to 'Why Paris?' is 'Why not?'. When i discuss these questions i like to walk, a way of connecting the psychological to the geographical, almost to confirm the information by giving it a place in the city, a kind of take of psycho geography. also as method of remembering...i can retrace these walks and therefore retrace the conversation. These meetings have also felt like meetings with other cities, asking people to tell me about their city, San Paulo, Seville...it has become apparent that this context is important, as location is a point of view, it effects the initial image of Paris...from a big city it looks small, from the french countryside it looks horrible...i am interested in this changing image of Paris. Common topics raised in discussion are about the tension between the suburbs and the city, how Paris doesn't include its suburbs as the city, the 'fake' Paris, the tourist Paris, the functions of Paris - practical reasons to stay (education, culture, job opportunity).

I have also been meeting my friends and colleagues in Paris by organising and performing simultaneous derives - an idea taken from the situationist. I am fortunate enough to have friends in many places at the moment, so took this as an opportunity to connect places through simultaneous action. I like to perform the same action in many spaces as away of connecting them, forming a collection, a map. In these simultaneous derives i contact a friend, organise a time to start (taking time difference into consideration) and duration for the walk and a mode of recording the walk that is specific to them...

Walk with Beatrice lane in Portland (1 hour walk) - every 10 minutes write a word to form a performance score

Walk with Lisa Caddy in Wellington (2 hour walk) - write four songs in response to 4 places you pass through, write these songs on postcards and post along the way

Walk with Natalie Clarke in Memphis (2 hour walk) - take a spoon for a walk, use it to take photos This has become a form of collaboration, using my walk as a form ( a carrier), a means of carrying out their creative activity. I am concerned that this has taken attention away from the act of walking as the focus lays in the output...this may have to change. These walks make it possible for me to overlay cities, play with the map of the world, move places against geographical laws. Scoop Memphis up on a spoon and let it fall over Paris.

I am here building my own Urban Fabric, sewing together scraps of map, pieces of Paris i discover each day through wandering along side scraps of map from other places that i explore imaginatively when they are described to me...in conversation of after a simultaneous derive.

urban fabric - cities have a feeling of 'lacking a place', relationships and situations and place intertwine to create a urban fabric, which is then placed under the mysterious name of 'city'.

i am documenting how i create this urban fabric, how i build a context for myself in this city. starting with the unknown, a black canvas (almost, as i too have a place i have come from). By drawing/mapping out my wanderings and walks i have created maps that visually show this process of acquainting myself with a new place.

similar to the artist Dan Bellasco Rogers who says;

'I do not consider the drawing of my life more important or more interesting than anyone elses. i want to record mine because it's mine.'

I am filling the city with words lines patterns of my time here. The outcome of a walk for me is usually a line on paper. a red line. This has become important as i know look at a map of the world and see it covered in many lines, my line, and the millions of others branching across countries and cities. I have begun to think about life as a walk, as the making of a line. walking as drawing. Tim Ingold writes well about lines;

'it takes only a moments reflection to recognise that lines are everywhere - walking, talking - humans generate lines wherever they go. They appear in all aspects of everyday human activity and in so doing, brings them together into a single field of inquiry.'

My mum once told me how she told someone the story of her life and how satisfying it was to do...similar to the satisfaction of following a well engraved grove in a hard surface or pulling a long piece of thread between your fingers...i thought.