Comments on: Revisiting London’s walks

By: phil smith

phil smith — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 13:53:29 +0000

this is worth a look:

http://blog.platformlondon.org/2011/11/28/platform-promenade-guest-blog-by-participant-hester-berry/

By: phil smith

phil smith — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 14:25:27 +0000

the audience dynamic that Steve describes seems very important and I’m not sure I’ve picked up on that contrast before – there’s one other aspect I think we haven’t fully discussed and is directly relevant to the research here – the Platform walk was pretty focused in its thematic matter, while the Aldwych walk was very disparate – the Platform walk, while it gave us different invitations to experience the space tended to draw us back to the limited thematic – while the Aldwych walk was weak because it did not have some sort of spinal or matrix theme (like, say, the Devil’s Footprints does) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdEYlYJpkl0 – but it does have a crude mythogeography – a multiplicitous geography – which is the more likely to provoke a wish to defend, nurture, improve an environment?

By: Steve Bottoms

Steve Bottoms — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 11:26:23 +0000

Phil makes an interesting point here… Although, without wanting to reignite the debate again, I’d simply note that my own experience of the Platform walk was that there was *plenty* of space between the set-piece narration sections for us to process our responses. Indeed we walked quite considerable distances between some of the stopping points. So I wonder if there’s also something here about the dynamics of group involvement in walks like this. The network group knew each other fairly well by that stage, and for the most part seemed deeply involved in private conversations during the walking bits of the Platform walk – did that in itself limit the ‘space’ for personal reflection? Whereas I tended to hang back from the group a bit becuase I was taking pictures for documentation purposes (and because I’m a sad loner). Conversely, with your walk Phil, there was much more of a conscious engagement with the group AS a group (and even an announced introduction of an outsider into the group, plus group role-play etc), so that the communal dimension was all part of it and hanging back as a sad loner would have felt inappropriate anyway? We were invited to reflect as a group, whereas I think the Platform walk was perhaps addressed more to individual reflection, in the sense Ranciere discusses in ‘The Emancipated Spectator’ (and as in their audio walk, obviously). But anyway, I think we may never agree on this! Thanks, Helen, for posting these thoughtful reflections…

By: phil smith

phil smith — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 13:58:25 +0000

I’ve pondered the ongoing argument around these two walks and I think that one key aspect is information-transfer – the Platform walk followed a particular version of the standard guided tour’s prioritising of information transfer, but (like the standard tour) did not allow much space for the tour group to test this information against their feelings, act in the moment on it, subject the tour itself to the same test as it was being asked to subject the companies to…