Drifting

Several months ago I wrote briefly about Guy Debord, psychogeography and the Situationist International group, and how they viewed the city. Debord was obsessed with the power of images, and a man who had been behind the most well-known slogans written across Paris in the 1968 uprisings. It seemed somehow entirely appropriate therefore to see his image stencilled onto a wall beneath the colourful drips and swirls of tags and graffiti.

Somewhere in the East of Paris an artist has created a stencil of the radical thinker Guy Debord and is now decorating walls and doors with his image. This figure is sometimes accompanied by a message, “Deux bords pour un dérive” (two sides for a drift), a rather non-sensical play on words on Debord’s name and theories. Debord both criticised and used text and images to inspire change, but what would he have thought about seeing his image become spectacle?

Debord’s most well-known work, “Society of the Spectacle” was published in 1967, and has been credited by many as a major inspiration behind the 1968 Paris uprising. In very broad terms, this book deals with post-war modernism, and how images in the media create a spectacle that produces alienation and division in society. Debord not only criticised though, but also proposed ways to break down or away from this society, with the most well-known strategy being the ‘dérive’ or drift.

Images though are not simply physical representations, but can also be generated by words. Debord quotes the sociologist Chombart de Lauwe who noted that “an urban neighborhood is determined not only by geographical and economic factors, but also by the image that its inhabitants and those of other neighborhoods have of it”. Studies had shown that individuals in cities often become trapped in banal triangles of work/home/leisure, and rarely deviate from these points. The solution to break out of this trap, and by extension to change people’s perception of their living environment would be to embark on a drift.

In practical terms, the drift would be a way to escape from the physical limits of the city. Built-up environments are necessarilly restrictive for Situationists, being designed to direct and control inhabitants. As Debord wrote, “In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there”. If everybody drifted on a regular basis, psychogeographical barriers would be broken down and the city would change. As the famous 1968 phrase summarised, ‘Sous les pavés la plage’ (Beneath the pavements, the beach).

Today’s stencil artist clearly feels that this is an image that can still inspire today, but does it still have relevance? Debord once wrote that “all that was once directly lived has become mere representation”, and it is ironic that this should apply to the man himself today. Debord’s drifts took in many bars and too much alcohol, a factor that is said to have contributed to his suicide in 1994, and the images of uprising and the slogans used in 1968 have since become something akin to capitalist commodities.

Simply choosing Debord’s profile seems to me to be approaching idolatry, rather like wearing a t-shirt with the face of Che Guevara on it. The message is an empty one, particularly for this face which is little known. However, this is an image that may provoke thought and reflection, and a single thought still has the capacity to grow into something more powerful. At the very least, it may encourage people to investigate a very original and fascinating personality.

Note: If you are interested in learning more about Debord, psychogeography and the Situationists, Ken Knabb's Bureau of Public Secrets website contains translations and discussions of all major texts: http://www.bopsecrets.org

Leaving a Trace

On the dusty whitewashed walls of a passageway into the Villa Marces, I see something that at first seems to be rather gruesome. On closer inspection, I see that the trail left by the hand is in black paint and not something more sanguine. Who executed this interesting piece of primitive street art? My hand dwarfs this shape on the wall, suggesting that it was the spontaneous gesture of a child who just wanted to leave a mark on the face of the city.

Why do we have such an urge to splash traces of our identities throughout our surroundings? City walls have long been more than just about keeping warmth in and danger out, but even before they existed and we sheltered in caves, we still found the need to decorate our immediate environment. Today though, the subject of wall decorations and just who has the right to make them has become an even more contentious issue.

Basic forms of graffiti were used as far back as early Greek and Roman times, notably in the use of the ichthys figure, otherwise known as the Jesus Fish. Here already, it was used a way to show membership of a group or to express opinion or belief. At some point though, these wall scratchings began to also be used for advertising purposes. Indeed, it is said that the earliest surviving example of 'modern' graffiti, in Turkey, is an advertisement for prostitution.

Over time, these basic forms of expression began to disappear in favour of more detailed and extravagant fresques and murals and the only people who continued to scratch messages on walls were soldiers and prisoners. Once again though, it was the need to sell and to advertise that bought messages back onto the walls of cities. Throughout the 19th century the cityscape was changed radically by the arrival of large, painted displays of produce and services, some of which are of course still visible today.

The city residents now found themselves surrounded by text and slogans. Whether it influenced them or not is an age-old debate, but it could not have left them unaffected. Indeed, when graffiti began to reappear in the city, notably in Paris, it was directly influenced by advertising. Guy Debord and the situationists hoped to provoke thought through the use of witty, pithy phrases that were almost a direct imitation of the kinds of slogans that people in the city had long learned to live with. Whilst these messages only exist in photos and books today (Sous la pavée la plage...), they continue to be influential amongst today's street artists, as can be seen in this example found in the Rue Chaptal.

Another one of the situationist's stock slogans was Ne travaillez jamais (Never work). It's unlikely that this message would be understood by the Russian immigrants in Paris who have taped and stuck a patchwork of work requests on a wall outside the Saint Alexandre Nevsky Cathedral. The wall here provides those who struggle to find the right words with a voice, and again shows how writing on a wall can help an individual in a city of 2 million people simply to exist.

Today, the worlds of advertising and graffiti seem to be far apart and few people see how closely liked they really are. In France, advertising boards and posters are regularly attacked by taggers who then leave tagged publicity messages themselves back to their websites. The irony of their gesture seems to be completely lost on them. Their motivation, a reduction in the number of 'aggressive' commercial messages in city centres, is perhaps worthy, but their inspiration comes clearly from the world of tagging. And is tagging not a step away from acceptable street-art towards self-promoting vandalism?

If many would argue that the distinction between graffiti as an artform and as an act of vandalism is in the choice of targeted support, few would argue that a suitable support would be the façade of a school for infants (the Ecole Maternelle Beslay).

The rather poor design of the establishment which did little more than give the taggers a mounted platform and a wall support should not be used as an excuse. We all struggle to be heard in the cacophony of the city, and such tagging can be seen as a cry from an invisible individual. The popular saying has it that walls have ears, but some walls should be entitled to silence.

A Question of Perspective

Walking around Paris, it is easy to consider yourself as a kind of time-traveller. If you use your imagination just a little and block out the most ostentatious elements of the 20th and 21st centuries, you can almost believe that you are experiencing exactly the same city as inhabitants from hundreds of years ago. But how do we know exactly how our ancestors saw and experienced the city? Standing on the Parvis of Notre Dame today, we may have the impression that we are stepping in the footprints of visitors from centuries ago, seeing the same things that they observed, but here we would be very much mistaken.

In 1865, the Baron Haussmann completely recreated the parvis and other areas surrounding Notre Dame, tearing down all the medieval buildings that blocked a broad perspective of the Cathedral. The radical changes imposed by Haussmann have always proved controversial, perhaps nowhere more so than here. As the situationist Guy Debord wrote, “..from any standpoint other than that of facilitating police control, Haussmann’s Paris is a city built by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. Interestingly for the situationists, Haussmann also built a new police headquarters and law courts on the Ile de la Cité, making it in many ways represent the controversial trinity of the law, the state and religion.

It is the parvis though which has altered our perception of this historic monument. Called a “lake of asphalt” by the French historian Jacques Hillairet, he also notes that the current day parvis is six times bigger today than it was in the middle ages. Hillairet continues, exclaiming that Notre Dame “was originally constructed in order to be seen from the foot of its towers and not from the end of the present empty space. This view minimizes it”. If we look at Google maps, and compare Notre Dame with two other famous cathedrals in France, we see just how radical Haussmann’s renovations were.

In the first picture, we see that the parvis at Notre Dame is at least as long as the church itself. At Reims in the second picture, the parvis is an insignificant oblong form. Finally, at Strasbourg, the imposing gothic cathedral has almost no parvis at all, instead being tightly surrounded on three sides by other buildings.

Was the intention of Haussmann purely one of perspective? In fact, the previous perspective of the cathedral had long since stopped impressing the Parisians. The church had fallen out of popularity at the end of the middle-ages, and was already in a state of severe disrepair when the French Revolution occurred. With the old order temporarily defeated, Notre Dame narrowly avoided being demolished altogether when it was sold off, until further political revolutions finally stopped this from happening. The new revolutionary order did though pull down all the statues carved into the outside of the church and sell off many of its treasures.

Finally, it was Victor Hugo who did much to bring the edifice back into the hearts of the public following the publication of his famous story, Notre Dame de Paris. Haussmann then delivered perhaps what the public of the day wanted, and probably what many tourists today appreciate. When these tourists line up at the end of the Parvis, or the Pont St Michel to take photos though perhaps they are not aware that they are actually photographing history from a very modern perspective.

Further Information:
Following Alain's very interesting comment, I looked again on Google and found the markings he refers to. On this picture below, you can see a narrow road leading up to the church, and just how close to the church the original buildings were. The map beneath dating from the beginning of the 17th Century indicates that the street was called aptly enough, Rue Notre Dame. The map also seems to suggest that the original Hotel Dieu (hospital) was situated on the other side of the parvis, alongside the river.