An Urban Verse
In The Practice of Everyday Life Michel de Certeau discusses the phenomenon of a city’s inhabitants “writing” the city:
“They are walkers, Wandersmänner, whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban “text” they write without being able to read it. ...The paths that correspond in this intertwining, unrecognized poems in which each body is an element signed by many others, elude legibility….The networks of these moving, intersecting writings compose a manifold story that has neither author nor spectator… A migrational, or metaphorical, city thus slips into the clear text of the planned and readable city.”This quote gets at the core of inhabitants inadvertently contributing their own part to the urban symphony. In the following blog, I will tie together three cities -- Berlin, Mumbai, and Moscow -- and I will connect them with the theme of verses. I explore the idea of intentional and unintentional verses. There is the intentional text of a city, the general grid or system conducive to certain ways of moving and living. A map equates to this “score” for the symphony, as we will explore was the case for the Bombay map I wrote about previously. Then there is the unintentional text of a city, the experiences of the humans inside of the city walls, and their behavior. Humans act as components of an orchestra performing a symphony (such as that which we saw in the Ruttman film in class) as they move along their daily lives, unknowingly contributing to the song of the city. In Moscow, we will explore the combination of literally written verses from Marina Tsvetaeva, but their interaction with the de Certeauian unintentional text of a city. Finally, we will conclude with the idea of the conductor of the city symphonies and the elements of volume and tempo.