“The user of a city picks out certain fragments of the statement in order to actualize them in secret.”'
I like this idea of the pedestrian as a "user" of the city--it seems to me like the city exists for the pedestrian to use and create meaning from, even if this process of creating meaning (ex. choosing a route) does not alter the city itself
network of residences temporarily appropriated by pedestrian traffic,
On page 97, de Certeau refers to pedestrians as a network whose existence makes up the city, but it seems here that the pedestrians do not have any personal or individual claim to the city; they're just a collection of people wandering the streets in search of something else
One’s body is no longer clasped by the streets that turn and return it according to an anonymous law;
For me, all the looming skyscrapers are precisely what make NYC feel maze-like and claustrophobia-inducing to me at times--funny to think that we need to build taller and taller towers to be able to escape and "rise above" the chaos of the streets
The omnipresence of emptiness, of abandoned housing and imminent demolition gave me the freedom to experiment with the multiple alternatives to one's life in a box as well as popular attitudes about the need for enclosure
I wouldn't usually think of emptiness as a key feature of an urban environment, so it's interesting to read about how groups and individuals make unused, abandoned spaces meaningful by reclaiming them.
there can be no situationist painting or music, but only a situationist use of those means
Interesting to think about how a situationist use of art is not considered to be art itself. What makes the détournement a milieu rather than art?
Only a mass awakening will pose the question of a conscious construction of the urban environment.
How can such a mass awakening be attained?
It would be better to detourn it as a whole, without necessarily even altering the montage
Could this sort of détournement be extended to a détournement of urbanism? Can something with undesirable qualities be detourned and made better just by negating the bad aspects, without actually cutting them out?
A flashmob in a public space can be understood as a liv-ing memorial,
Interesting to consider the differences between a living memorial and a traditional memorial, especially in the context of the fate of the memorial; the temporal nature of performance art, for example, means that it can't be "accepted, neglected or mistreated by the public" in the same way as a traditional memorial.
a statue re-mains a piece of art until it is embedded into the social practices of society
Reminds me of what Michael Asher did with the George Washington statue, but in reverse
it has no need and no desire to join with any other self-contained and self-sufficient enti- ties in resistance
While the electronic age may make us self-sufficient, so too does it connect us and enable us to join together in resistance.
the laboratory invention of the perfect environment, which can't be spoiled by further time
Both the "historical place" and the "virtual place" are defined by their relationship to time--why is the suspension of time so important to Acconci's conception of place?
Public art has to squeeze in and fit under and fall over what already exists in the city
Can public spaces act as public art?
To become a political arena, the piazza- the model of an open public space-gives up any claims of being a democratic space: it resigns itself and becomes an authoritarian space.
Is a politically active space necessarily opposed to a democratic space? Acconci seems to claim that the catalyst for political activity in a public space, be it an idea or a person, transforms the public space into an authoritarian one. Is the coalescence of individuals really a resignation of democratic space?