Explorations in Flânerie

It was a chilly February morning at Allen's Landing Park on Buffalo Bayou when writer Chris Ayala pointed to a trash can.

Inspired by Robert Smithson's set of six photographs, entitled The Monuments of Passaic, Ayala offered this everyday, oft-overlooked object a waypoint for creative reflection on an urban adventure.

Ayala, who visited the Unviersity of Houston this spring as a Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts Visiting Artist led participants on a meandering walk accross the Buffalo Bayou and through downtown Houston in the tradition of the flâneur. Derived from the Old Norse verb flana, flâneur means "to wander with no purpose" and was popularized in 19th century France by writers who worked with the walk as a literary form, such as Pierre Larousse, Charles Baudelaire, Dodie Bellamy, Eileen Myles, Virginia Woolf, Janet Cardiff, Agnes Varda, and Ron Silliman.

Guided by Ayala, University of Houston faculty, staff, and students were joined by members of the public for an exploration in flânerie. Engaging with site-specific observations of both natural and urban landscapes accross the Buffalo Bayou, an intrepid group of promenaders set off to document place, explore space and share stories during an afternoon of creative movement.

The walk began at Allen's Landing, sometimes referred to as “Houston’s heart,” where August Chapman and John Kirby Allen first arrived in 1836 to begin building the city at the confluence of Buffalo and White Oak Bayous where Houston's first port once operated.

Strollers procceeded at their own pace through park paths and into downtown, arriving at another historic landmark, the Julia Ideson buidling. Part of the Central Library system, the Spanish-Renaissance style building opened in 1926 and was named after the system's first head librarian. After light refreshments and reflections, participants circled back around to Allen's Landing to conclude the afternoon.

 

Did you miss the walk? Not to worry! Chris Ayala has compiled a list of artists and authors who have helped shaped his understanding of walking and place. He shares them here as an introduction for you to develop your own philsophy of walking and embark on an exploration in flânerie.

• The Monuments of the Passaic, Robert Smithson
  Six photographs of unremarkable industrial landscapes in Passaic, New Jersey depict evidence of man-made history, yet the title of “monument” seems ironic. Ayala likes to find his own monuments in the mundane.

• Niceties, Elizabeth Mikesch
  A subversive text of lingual dissonance in which vocality precedes sense-making operations. Its phonics disrupt narrative through syntactical atonalities.

• The Moan Wilds, Caroline Rayner
  A book-length poem by Caroline Rayner featuring artwork by Emma Ensley.
  
• And Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight, Lynn Xu
  Ecstatic, melancholy, and defiant, the voices of this poem flicker between life and death, gorgeous and gruesome, visionary and intimate.