kiddingthecity [dot] org

This blog is a further discussion linked to the pictures in my photoblog. The supporting ethos is in the basic idea that looking is not self-evident: we look but we do not see. How do we have to look then in order to see? How do we make the familiar level of our praxis strange? Also, if the city is a visual text, in the sense that is in a state of continuous metamorphosis, ephemeral, where few things stay how they look like, how do we image or frame it? Can we freeze it in the instant of a shot?

This is an occasion to put out some stuff I have been working on lately. In the next pages you will find abstract materials, notes from my research diary, reviews of books and articles, and of course my own papers and articles. I have often inserted lengthy captions or short phrases from the books and articles have been reading, fully adhering to W. Benjamin’s invite:

‘Only the copied text commands the soul of him [sic] who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text,…, because the reader follows the movements of his mind in the free flights of daydreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command. The Chinese practice of copying books was thus an incomparable guarantee of literary culture, and the transcript a key to China’s enigmas’ (from ‘One-Way Street’, ‘Chinese Curios’ entry).

By the way, I read a lot of stuff while traveling to/from work across London, as a lot of other Londoners do, I mean the other half who do not speak on the mobile. It took me time and training to learn how to concentrate and above all to realize that in fact I was the one at odds, pretending to study for a PhD on the public transport system! and yet, later on I found another helping hand by Walter Benjamin, who states in his ‘Writers technique’:

‘In your working conditions avoid everyday mediocrity. Semi-relaxation, to a background of insipid sounds, is degrading. On the other hand, accompaniment by an etude or a cacophony of voices can become as significant for work as the perceptible silence of the night. If the latter sharpens the inner ear, the former acts as a touchstone for a diction ample enough to bury even the most wayward sounds’ (from ‘One-Way Street’, ‘Post no Bills’ entry)

I was really dying to render (semi)public some thoughts for (re)view, because sometimes there is the sense that you are doing something and you don’t know how good or bad it is. I mean the feedback is vital in certain circumstances and am very keen in receiving some, about my research, my articles, and of course my pictures (for those there is plenty of room in the actual photoblog). It might sound a bit vain, but I feel this is the first step of a good prose: ‘a musical stage when it is composed’^[i].

So, why did I need to add a blog to the photoblog? Firstly because, even if pictures speak more that thousands of words, you still need some text to complement them, both in the poetic and the theoretic aspects of the visual representation: that is, the ‘why’ and the ‘how’, more than the ‘what’, which I happily leave to the viewer’s personal interpretation (no need of cheesy descriptive captions). And also because, like the filling station of Walter Benjamin’s Illumination, there is always a literary form more adequate to the times we are in, which reflects the current level of technology and especially the daily habits associated with it: this is the kind of language I feel appropriate to the present circumstances. And this cannot go without a practical exercise, ‘in strict alternation between action and writing’ (cit:45) , in my case the visual investigation. By the way, pace Benjamin, I am the kind of person that cannot carry a notebook with me^[ii] , I tried many different sizes and designs, but no. Just can’t do it. On the other hand, I am almost always around a computer, either at work or with my laptop, an embedded daily practice. Often, I have to hold on until a combination of computer and time is available, and by ‘delaying to write down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be in surrendering itself’^[iii] , at least so I hope.Also a good way to keep up with the famous 500 words a day…

It is all work in progress of course, it is bound to be in this ongoing fluctuating form (like cities or identities), but feel free to download, copy-and-paste stuff, participate to the discussion and be inspired by any of the themes exposed. I am aware that none of the knowledge produced is truly original, but it is build bit by bit. The researcher, like the collector, gathers quotes, opinions, thoughts, and ideas and reshuffles them all in a new analytic construction, so that a new archive never matches the old ones. On the other hand, I have grown increasingly aware that by producing knowledge, by legitimizing classifications, by deconstructing meanings, the scholar carries a big responsibility, not least towards the subjects involved in the research. Therefore, s/he must be accountable and responsible for what has been produced. ‘We are the authors and the lens grinders’, recalls Les Back^[iv] , we ‘set up the framework for what we know, the structure of knowledge, usually referred as epistemology, and [we] establish a claim to what we see and hear through this epistemological lens or sensor’.
In other words I believe in ‘the death of the author’, but because I would like to be famous before I actually die, I kindly ask any of my reader to put a link in their own publication to my photoblog if you liked (or disliked) any of the ideas exposed. This is the only way to make the Bazaar work versus the huge Cathedral of the academic practice or of the art galleries^[v] .

Make me famous, put me on the fashionable trail of the Web2!!!

Paolo Cardullo MA
PhD student in Visual Sociology
Dept. of Sociology @ Goldsmiths
University of London

1. W. Benjamin: ‘One-Way Street’, 1979:61 [↩]
2. ‘Let no though pass incognito and keep your notebook, as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens’ from ‘One-Way Street’, ‘Post no Bills’ entry [↩]
3. ibidem [↩]
4. ‘The Art of Listening’, 2007:171 [↩]
5. The Free and Open Source ideal is obvious as from E.S.Raymond’s The Cathedral & the Bazaar, 1999 O’Reilly [↩]