Prologue
 
 

This project, entitled 'Exploration', took concrete shape at first in the form of a letter to my friend Zahr.

I was searching for an interdisciplinary mission
that would combine academic discourse and physical activity. I wanted to conceive of a research topic that would allow for critical reflection and active participation. Fieldwork sounded tempting, and fieldwork in New York City was a sure hit.

Fortunately, connections between a weekend in the Big Apple and the intellectual framework of my course "Cartographic Fictions" were easily established.

A project idea emerged, which I shared in heated anticipation with Zahr:
 
 

"Hi Zahr,
How are you? And Mao? Can you watch her grow?

Anyway, I have an idea for a project, and I'd like to hear your opinion
about it.

Here's the rough plan, but if we meet I can tell you a little more about
it, and you could give me your feedback.
Here's what I have in mind:

Some of critical theory (I'm thinking here of Situationists, de Certeau,
Foucault, and also artists and writers; i.e. Kawara, Cortazar, Borges(?))
has argued that socio-cultural circumstances of late capitalism have
produced conditions of alienation and spectacularization, in
which experience and life in general collapses into the idea, the image,
the representation of life and experience while the 'authentic' is fading
and continuously recedes into the background -or in other more drastic
accounts - is already on the verge of being forever out of touch.

But there are ways to transcend the imaginary world of representation, to
go beyond the spectacle into the real.

Some of these theorists propose games, especially games of
defamiliarization, in search of a moment of truth, the 'real', and
happiness.

If one dislocates oneself enough from the arbitrary but omnipresent
systems governing our perception and practice in contemporary culture, one
will find a gap, a vacancy in which stories are unfolding, experience is
authentic, and life is real. This vacant space is the ground upon which
one can reappropriate existence as an aesthetic experience, a fusion of
art and life constituted in terms of the authentic.

This is all obviously a summary of things we've already talked about - but
let me carry on:

The work of these intellectuals proposes games such as the derive, textual
play like that of the OuLiPo (was that their name? Something inside me
wants to call it OuLiPain or so...), and generally arbitrary
reorganization of culturally and historically established taxonomies and
structures of practice (i.e. Cortazar: life in parking lots, subway
systems etc.).
This particular activity or multiple activities apparently hold the key
to the "real". Although - or especially since - the theorists remain very
vague about the effects and successes of their experiments, I suggest:
Let's play!

And here's my project:
I want to go on a field trip to NYC (Can you think of a better place to
play than "the city that never sleeps"?) and play as many games of
dislocation as I can come up with. They will be practices that coincide
with the parameters of games established in the particular intellectual
tradition we are exploring in order to arrive at expected (or even
unexpected) points of dislocation (from which, then, a moment of truth
should become visible).

The parameters are threefold (at the moment...maybe I'll come up with
more): dislocation from conventional relations with/ of  space, time, and
practice.
I'll try to drift, visit non-places, and approach the places created by
"the forces of instrumental rationality" with a smug grin of irony and a
big bag of tricks (or shall we say tactics) up my sleeve (whatever that
can mean).

I'll adopt seemingly senseless systems, entirely arbitrary but still
structured, governing my practices: For example: Someone else - but only
children - makes my decisions, I'll have to speak with every tenth
brunette about the political events currently unfolding in North India /
Pakistan, I'll hop on a cab and go to the driver's borough or home, etc.
The exact games still have to be determined/ conceived of, but I'm
sure you get the picture. Every time that I am under the impression that
I have an experience, I'll take a photo and document the events in great
detail.
Thus I hope to accumulate a certain amount of raw material, which I can
then investigate in relation to the critical theory discussed.

So, have I - through my various games - experienced life and the
authentic? Or not? How can you tell? What constitutes the moment of truth
in relation to the spectacular, the imaginary? Do the practices suggested
by the various writers 'work' or not? Their own deliberations upon their
achievements (through play) are suspiciously thin...

What are the implications - if any - of this fieldwork (or better:
"fieldplay") for the conceptualization of contemporary culture and life
within it?

My project aims to deliver a lived experience (temporal, of course) of
'undoing' of conventional categories of time, space, practice, more
generally, experience, in order to defamiliarize myself to the point of
authenticity.

This is the first step, which leads into discussions of
the issues raised above. Maybe during or after the experiment additional
points emerge that would be interesting to examine. We'll have
to see.

But this is my preliminary layout...

What do you think?

Take care,
Boris"

Zahr thought the idea had potential and only days later, I found myself in a ten-seater Chinese shuttle bus cruising from Chinatown Boston to Chinatown New York, armed with a spiral notebook, two rolls of film, and a blunt pencil.

Welcome to 'Exploration'...

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