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Revised Version of Paper
Paper First Delivered at Conference on "Bridge The Gap"
Fukuoka, Japan 24-27 July 2001 Organized by
City of Kitakyushu and the Centre for Contemporary Art, CCA, Kitakyushu
The flaneur is by tradition defined as 'an idle man-about-town', endowed with enormous leisure. He is someone who can take off a morning or afternoon for undirected ambling, since a specific goal or a close rationing of time is antithetical to the true spirit of the flaneur.
The flaneur refuted any driving desire to see everything and meet anyone of recognized value, but rather, as Walter Benjamin explained, the flaneur was in search of experience, not knowledge. Most experience ended up interpreted as -and replaced by - knowledge, but for the flaneur the experience remains somehow pure, useless, raw. In BenjaminÕs words: "intoxication comes over the man who walks long and aimlessly through the streets. With each step, the walk takes on greater momentum; even weaker grow the temptations of shops, of bistros, of smiling women, even more irresistible the magnetism of the next street corner, of a distant mass of foliage of a street name."
The contemporary flaneur is in the realm of the unreal. He exists in the condition of the Post Modern. His timeless gaze elevates the sub-conscious and the irrational. His experience energizes the understanding the subalterns and urban discontents. It gives new meaning to chaos, rumours and surprises, as well as to deviant behaviours and new lifestyles of the young . Can the contemporary flaneur effectively function in the contradicting world of the cosmopolitan city? What mechanisms should he equip or not equip himself with to glocalize the pace of his existence amidst the time compression of late capitalism? Spaces of indeterminacy might provide some of these answers. It is here where the flaneur fully takes flight.
Rapid urbanization, particularly in the Asian region, has necessitated the substantial physical extension with urban statements based on modernist planning theories. Planners systematically remove or destroy existing city fabrics that have acted as containers of history and societal-bound values and cultures. At the same time, over the last decades, conservation of historical areas has gained increasing acceptance. However, these areas have often been gentrified and more recently commodified with themeparkism .
When properties are no longer considered economically viable or become dilapidated, they are inevitably subjected to demolition and reconstruction. In the context of the modern narrative, especially in the capitalist society, their physical existence is therefore only tolerated as remnants of the past. However, these spaces are often unique and chaotic. They are rugged in nature and are able to withstand rapid usage changes, fragmented idiotic design expressions and uncompromisingly irrational spatial arrangements. This random impulsive self-regulated environment continuously adds chaos to chaos in the most exciting and surprising manner. If left alone, they are conditioned to withstand the impact of globalisation.
Such spaces of indeterminacy exist in all major cities, even in Singapore, where Rem Koolhaas has dramatically highlighted its tabula rasaÕs conditions . Areas like Geylang and Katong have still remained resilient to the transformation of the urban conditions around it. These spaces are often possessed by the old, the frail and the weak, as well as the marginalized and the subalterns. They provide alternative lifestyles and a natural resistance to the Fordist and global forces of rational conformity. Furthermore, the social and economic plight of the subalterns and the under-class has to be addressed in the context of equity and social justice.
However, urban and infrastructure interventions, when not undertaken with care, also affect the survival of such spaces. Over densification, tall buildings, road enlargements and single usage zoning etc - the standard instruments of modernist planning - are devastating to the survival of such sites.
The influence in modernist planning, however, is rapidly eroding . In its place, Glocalization, a new style of interpretation emerges. It embraces the extrinsic amoral values of globalisation - network society, US style late capitalism, mergers - with the intrinsic site-specific values of the local where the ethics of equity and social justice must be integrated. This is essential in order to provide equitable development and benefits to the community as a whole.
Spaces of indeterminacy are anchored in the post modern. They are pluralistic, fuzzy and complex. The scale of such spaces vary greatly: from substantially large areas like the West Side of Taipei , to the in-between spaces - the cracks and gaps of new urban projects and major infrastructure development, like strips of disused land under highways.
The unexpected can sometimes be realized in the transformation of the cracks and gaps from dead zones to extraordinary vibrant sites. Three recent examples are: First, a dilapidated row of low-rise terrace houses along Mohamed Sultan Road in over-regulated Singapore has been transformed with self-generated energy into an exciting night-spot for the young . Second, since 1975, Villaggio Globale, in the centre of Rome, was a squattered building and ex-slaughter house and abattoir. Today, the complex is a Mecca for the young and alternative art and music scene in Rome . Third, Dongdaemun market in Seoul has been totally transformed during the recent recession. "Bright young entrepreneurs are turning the age-old rag trade upside down, churning out daring new designs over two to three days to attract young shoppers. Their throw away creations and speedy business approach are transforming KoreaÕs copycat garment industry, once heavily reliant on producing fakes, into an innovative regional trailblazer" .
Together, these spaces are more than life-theatres: they offer the potential to become effective instruments of contemporary intellectual, artistic, cultural and sociological discourses. Here, much creative energies are generated. Unstructured interdisciplinary ideas, concepts and notions collide with and constantly undergo a process of fragmergration - a cyclical state of fragmentation and integration -that shift minds in and out of confusion and clarity.
However, these spaces sometimes fizz under the careless manoeuvring of late capitalist-style globalisation. By forcibly promoting consumer-orientated materialism and commodification, they have served only to enhance the rationalization of the urban landscape as quantifiable commodities, especially in downtown historical districts, often considered as high-value real estate. One such example is the area of Montmartre in Paris. The centre of seedy nightlife during the pre-war years. Montmartre was long associated with the artistic community; and the arts are inseparable part of life of the district. It was the Mecca for artists, writers and poets. However, due to increasing upgrading to increase its economic viability, the place gradually lost its charm, degraded local culture and de-territorised its traditions. Another example is Times Square, New York and its environs. With deliberate gentrification and themeparkism, it suffers a similar fate.
Notwithstanding the rapid pace of urban expansion, many Asian cities are able to set up different narratives in response to the impact of global capitalism. By respecting existing roads and built structures, new construction is located along major transport arteries, while much of the existing environment and narrow back streets behind these modern buildings are left intact. The scale of the traditional environment with its memories and built structures of the past - is undisturbed by this skin-deep high-density development .
We must preserve the inherent quality of the spaces of indeterminacy and the significance of these places, such as the time dimension quality exhibited in the Bund of Shanghai. In that single physical space, the Bund has become a repository of collective memory - one that transcends across layers of history from colonialization by its European Masters, the Marxist revolution, the Cultural revolution to the revitalization of the economy and the new spirit of China in more recent times .
Layers of memories that once de-linked the historical events are decompressed and reconstructed, it becomes an arena where only flashes of everyday life sometimes allows us repeated moments of recognition. Walter Benjamin recognized the paradoxically full and yet empty moments where 'the past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again'. The haunting of remembering takes not of a nostalgic but a transient form, giving meaning to existence and orientating us in new and unexpected spatial and temporal dimensions. However, the rapidly modernizing cities of Asia appear to have little time and no place for nostalgia anymore. Arthur Yap, a well-known Singapore poet lamented eloquently
'There is no place in nostalgia
And certainly no nostalgia in the future of the past
Now, the corner cigarette-seller is gone, is perhaps dead
No, definitely dead, he would not otherwise be gone
He is replaced by the stamp machine
The old cook by the pressure cooker
The old trishaw-rider's stand by a fire hydrant
The washer-woman by a spin dryer
And it goes on
In various variations and permutations
There is no future in nostalgia'
Religious sites, festivals, rituals and cemeteries provide a spiritual anchorage for the community. Once assumed as a myth of traditions, ghosts have (re)surfaced as a subject of increasing academic discourses . These have become counter-narratives to the increasing modernist imagery that leads us to the realm of the unknown. Rich in urban legends, they texture the cities with notions of the invisible. Cemeteries are physical reminders of a presence in the public space, where death is remembered and integrated as part of the living experience. The preservation of cemeteries is not about nostalgia of the dead, but rather an individual and collective remembrance by the living. Geomancy, another order of the unknown, plays important roles that affect the orientation of buildings and the urbanscape in Asian cities.
Spaces of indeterminacy, where fragmentation is celebrated, offer the contemporary flaneur extraordinary spectacles to experience the immensely complex relationship of the participants. The prostitutes and often the queers treat their own bodies as capital in the fetishization or to heighten the intensity of desire. With the ever-ready helping hands of bartenders, club-doormen and pimps, pleasure-seekers, drinkers and dancers are intoxicated in the mingling atmosphere of sensuous delights. These inexhaustible spatial configurations of the sensuous have often become the favourite hangout of the avant-garde and the art circle that have invested great amount of time and energy in such places. Collectively, they provide unique character to and form the urban and spatial quality of all that already exists much more radically than any rationally planned action. Together with the marginalized and subalterns, they create a potpourri of spontaneity and chance encounters.
These complex environmental areas of great cities have historically been the breeding ground for great creative energy. Desire becomes a facilitator for inspirations and narratives. The flaneurÕs slow pace stimulates the fuzzy energy of the subconscious. The dialectics of arts and desire are at once articulate and mystical as well as desirable and irrational. Together - breaking the mould of expected normalcy, heightening the desire of the city and providing greater texture to everyday life - they attempt to bridge the cultural, social and intellectual gaps of the globalized citizens.
Spaces of indeterminacy have added a new creative and participatory spatial environment to JamesonÕs brilliant synthesis in the convergence or dedifferentiation between economics and culture where culture becomes increasingly economic and economy increasingly cultural Koolhaas' over-dramatised observation of Asian cities and his controversial gaze of Lagos are clearly occidental based readings . This focuses on the urgent need for further investigation into the agenda bias of cross-cultural discourse. To quote a Chinese literary critic: "... the otherness could not be allowed to remain as otherness, for in order for Western audiences to appropriate it in some way, the strange had to be made familiarÉ" A reworked and reconstructed narrative on aspects of Taoism, Buddhism and Shintoism such as: time / timelessness, and cyclical (non)progress, as well as perpetual stages in transitions and indeterminacy can offer new insights towards the qualitative transformation from modernity to postmodernity.
If the significance of spaces of indeterminacy is not effectively demonstrated, we lose the opportunity to provide resistance to destructive urban interventions. Common traits may exist in these spaces. However, they are inherently site specific and their characteristics will inevitably differ from each other, making them highly unique and reflective of the local culture.
Such spaces are people-oriented. They are democratic spaces where users and participants can identify with and even take psychological possession of without the need for legal ownership. Spaces of indeterminacy need to go beyond the boundaries of the standard democratic formality. They could become the sites of Hsia's vibrant contested spaces of heterotopiasÉ' To empower the grassroots communities (and) to nurture the capability of reflexivityÕ and could act as key elements in SassenÕs microsites in their dynamic transitioning . In the final analysis, it is about the pluralistic, the tolerance of differences and creative rebelliousness - the essence of the Post-Modern.
The article is revised and amended based on the numerous feedback from my colleagues. I particularly wish to thank Rustom Barucha, John Clammer, Jon Lang, Arnold Koerte, Rodolphe De Koninck, Rahul Mehotra , Kevin Tan, Wee Hiang Koon, Yeo Wei Wei and Zhu Jianfei, for their invaluable comments.
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The word 'queer' is no longer a derogatory remark. Recently, there is a re-imaging of this term, as representing a respectable, alternative lifestyle.
Hardt Michael & Weeks Kathi (eds) (2000), The Jameson Reader, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
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2 October 2001
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