Anshul Dérive One
February 19, 2018, by
The idea of drifting suggested by Guy Debord in his “Theory of the Dérive” is an art that modern society seems to have forgotten about, or at least wilfully ignores. The hustle and bustle that characterizes people’s lives, especially in a city as metropolitan as NYC, is considered a natural phenomenon. However, this bull-headed rushing through life causes interesting and meaningful aspects of the city to blend into the background level of noise that is the soundtrack to most people’s lives. However, this is not to say that the various psychogeographical currents present in the city have no impact on the individual’s behaviour. Instead, a person’s living experience is diminished because of this lack of awareness. Engaging in this dérive afforded me some insight into what Debord describes as “the groping search for a new way of life” (Debord “Introduction”). My meandering through the streets of Downtown, simply taking in the sights and sounds without worrying about my work, my friends, or any of the countless things that could have guided my actions, opened an interesting perspective on the city’s movements and transitions. The path taken for my dérive may have seemed random but the deeper understanding of psychogeographic influences within a location gained from the works of Kittler, Williams, and Mattern show that there were underlying reasons behind these decisions. For this report, I will attempt to highlight these various influences and the impacts that these ultimately had on my itinerary.
The very first thing that I did for the dérive once I reached my starting point on the intersection of Broadway and Fulton was to search for construction. The entire street was covered with various examples of this, both for renovation projects and the setting up of scaffolding for new building projects. Buildings, especially those that are built in mega-cities like NYC, are extreme feats of human effort. However, the length of time that is involved in the construction process, as well as the ubiquity of these structures throughout the city often makes it easy to ignore the amount of construction taking place. This blending in of what is technically new construction is reminiscent of the interplay between dominant, residual, and emergent cultures that Williams touches on in Marxism and Literature. The constant establishment and development of new construction in the city also brings about constantly developing and growing “meanings and values, new practices, new relationships and kinds of relationships” (Williams, 123). Interestingly, the discussion about the truly emergent nature of these developments, instead of simply being novel, was also an interesting discussion that factored into my musings. Urban expansion has become an extremely common aspect of the way that NYC develops and grows, making it possible that construction is not much more than a phase of the current dominant city culture. However, contemplating this issue later on brought back the assertion that Mattern makes about the reality of urban development and technological progress. Specifically, “urban environments everywhere are characterized by a lot of messy materiality, ‘residual’ media, and different notions of ambient intelligence, sometimes even reflecting competing epistemologies and clashing politics” (Mattern, 156). The process is far from simple, much like the confusing sprawl of construction present throughout the whole street. I continued my walk by following a green car that took me towards Freedom Tower, passing the intersection between Fulton and Church. I found myself feeling somewhat nostalgic at the sight because the last time I remember visiting this area was in my freshman year. The dérive treated me to an interesting experience when it suggested I keep my eyes trained on my feet for 15 steps, right as I pass Vesey and head towards Barclays. During this time, I see vents leading down to the subway and feel the heat streaming out of them. There is an entire network that exists for the trains below the streets that we can see. This is just as much a part of the city, acting like skeletal infrastructure reminiscent of Kittler’s comparisons whilst discussing the networks that exist within a city (Kittler, 718). This little glimpse made me think about all of the people throughout the various levels of the city and the many interactions that characterize each of their experiences. In line with this line of thinking, I decided to turn back towards Broadway when prompted to go Northeast. The area only reaffirmed Kittler’s discussions about the city and the way it has “heightened the tempo of human intercourse and translated its products into forms that could be stored and reproduced” (Kittler, 721). There are countless people out walking on the street, so much so that I needed to step out of the rush to write down my thoughts. This draws me towards Steve Flander Square to take a stop at the bench. There are several other individuals that have been drawn towards it just like I have, using the insulating bubble represented by the park and its benches to speak over the phone or simply take a break. The experience that the park represents is evidence of a specific microclimate of sorts that offers a distinctly different experience from the extremely crowded streets surrounding it. Debord describes the way that certain areas of a city impose a psychogeographical influence on the people living within it, and I feel that the decision to take a breather in the park reflected a personal desire to take some time away from the dominating action of Broadway. The last leg of the derive went by a little quicker following the short break that I took on the park. Returning to Broadway on the Northeast corner of the park, I chose to turn right onto Chambers. The instructions suggested I find a coffee shop to visit, but I do not drink coffee and instead chose to press on with the next task after turning onto Elk Street, a tidy and uncharacteristically cosy street. At this point, I was tasked with finding silence, which is never an easy task in NYC. A parking lot was my best bet for this task, simply because you would be hard-pressed to find true silent in the hustle and bustle that defines the city. The remaining tasks that I would have for the dérive were all in the same vein, such as looking for something out of the ordinary and searching for a cat. The NYC kindergarten school placed in such close proximity to the business and commercial district represented by Broadway was a juxtaposition that I felt fulfilled the former task. The search for a cat would prove to be the last one, simply because my efforts were not rewarded with success despite travelling up and down Leonard and Franklin. Interestingly, as punctuation to the unique and varied nature of this experience, my efforts at searching were rewarded with not a cat like originally tasked, but instead several mice hiding in different areas around the street and sidewalk. An interesting observation that I had about my decisions to complete the final task was the need to fixate around Broadway. This behaviour was visible throughout the whole trip, as I would constantly return to this centre of attraction and industry whenever given the chance. The natural current of the city and its movements meant that there was a part of me that believed I would have the best chance of fulfilling any tasks in that area. Additionally, the subconscious decision to stick to that area was supported by the easy access to less hectic zones like the park, the kindergarten, and the parking lot whenever I required it.
Works Cited Debord, Guy. “Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography”. Les Lèvres Nues, 6, 1955. Retrieved from http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/presitu/geography.html. —. “Theory of the Dérive”. Les Lèvres Nues, 9, 1956. Retrieved from http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/theory.html. Kittler, Friedrich A. and Matthew Griffin. “The City is a Medium”. New Literary History, 27(4), 1996. 717-729. Mattern, Shannon. “Coding Urban Pasts and Futures”. Code + Clay … Data + Dirt. University of Minnesota Press, 2017. 147-215. Williams, Raymond. “Dominant, Residual, and Emergent”. Marxism and Literature. Oxford University Press, 1977. 121-127.