This blog is a further discussion linked to the pictures in my photoblog: it claims an attachment to the real, in the sense that the photographs are about what I see in my almost daily walks. There are about people in flesh and bones, real people and objects I met during the walks. But they are also the outcome of theoretical readings and analysis. In this sense, they are not neutral, and actually they problematize the relationship between reality and knowledge: 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? In this sense, there is less an urge to depict a truth, or to represent an outcome, than an ability to describe, putting to the fore what is overlooked, concealed, and misrepresented.
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 phases 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 (used to) 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)
To be honest, it is not just the soundscape that intrudes or distracts me on the bus journey: also the smell of vinegar or sweat (sometimes perfumes), the cityscape unfolding below (as I always sit upstairs), often the guy next to me trying to gain half an inch risking to get too ‘tactile’, in a truly overwhelming and democratic sensorial experience. As it has been suggested, there are two different ways to ride the bus (this is more a flavour of the North-American geographically and ethnically distinct urban landscape rather than London, though).
‘One is to look out the window of the bus and see the neighborhoods as you go by. Another way is to look inside the bus. You have all these different populations, which are constantly mixing as people get on and off the buses, depending on where you are along the Avenue’ (J. Krase).
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 ‘One-way Street’, there is always a literary form more adequate than books 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 it is 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. Thirdly, but not least importantly, because it is a work in-between fields of knowledge, or interdisciplinary. This can be a safer space, as people in your discipline feel more tolerant because you represent less than a threat. On the other hand, they are willing to recognise you with less authority, ‘a pejorative sense of non-belonging’[i] .’
By the way, pace Benjamin, I am the kind of person that hardly can carry a notebook[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 built bit by bit. The researcher, like the collector, gathers quotes, opinions, thoughts, and ideas and reshuffle 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! (before the W3 starts!!). 
kiddingthecity.org by Paolo Cardullo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Paolo Cardullo MA
PhD student in Visual Sociology
Dept. of Sociology @ Goldsmiths
University of London
- M. Miles, ‘Urban Avant-gardes, 2004, Routledge [↩]
- ‘Let no thought pass incognito and keep your notebook, as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens’ from ‘One-Way Street’, ‘Post no Bills’ entry [↩]
- ibidem [↩]
- ‘The Art of Listening’, 2007:171 [↩]
- The Free and Open Source ideal is obvious as from E.S.Raymond’s The Cathedral & the Bazaar, 1999 O’Reilly [↩]
