Cultural Cartography

Men and their women/ Women and their men

I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this thought, but it really struck me recently when a gay colleague showed me photos of his current squeeze. I realised that my other male colleagues had never shown me pictures of their female partners and I started wondering why. I realised as well that I had probably never shown my male colleagues who are straight pictures of my other half. Why not...?

I first started thinking about why we shows photos at all. And it's all about pride. I'm convinced that my guy is gorgeous, very sexy and very masculine. And I want other people to appreciate that and give me recognition for that. And only the right kind of people can do that. Who are those people?

It's people who can can translate what they are seeing into the right kind of response and a response that not only is right, but also fulfills the purpose of why I'm showing the photos. It has to be the right recipient of the message or to talk in marketing speak, the right target group.   As a woman if I was shown photos of a woman,  I would not comment in the same way a heterosexual man would but more importantly I wouldn't be the right target group because historically I'm not on the same playing field.

It's all quite primeval and maybe I'm not saying it quite right,  but it's about whether the person you are showing the photos too could have been competing for the person you got.  And so are their comments valid because they know what they are talking about. 

Keyboqrd Nqvigqtion

A=Q M=; W=Z and some others

I qn in the lounge qt Chqrles De Gqulle qirport qnd hqving extre;e difficulties using this keyboqrd: this hqs nothing to do zith the s,qll zhiskey I drqnk lqst night to cql, ,yself dozn qfter groups: Insteqd it is thqt it is not q QUERTY keyboqrd qs I knoz the,: there qre certqin si,ilqrities but so,e 9qnd qs you cqn see the ,ost i,portqnt letters qre not zhere they "should" be: I donù^t knoz if this is nor,ql but it is very disturbing:

It shozs ,e hoz typing qnd the auip,ent for typing hqve beco,e qn essentiql in our dqily lives: Q ger,qn keyboqrd is qlso different: So zhen zill ze hqve q keyboqrd thqt recognises zhqt you zqnt to zrite qnd just gets on qnd does it:

Clever work

Travelling through Victoria one evening last week at rush hour, I saw this:

It's a real person, relaxing under a sun shade wearing holiday clothes. And the message was "BA's sale is now on." It's not very clever thinking, quite simple in fact: Remind people of what going on holiday is about. But it was highly effective because it really made you stop and think: Mmm yeah, I might check out their sales and see what they have.

Shop windows

I seem to remember that Marx’s theory on capitalism talked about shop windows and how that when the goods were placed in shop windows and displayed as objects independently of their use, they became fetishes for people to possess. I don’t think he thought this was a good thing. However some recent shop windows I saw not only seem to be doing an excellent job of this, but in fact they have perfected the art of fetishsising the shop window itself.

This is of course all the more true around Christmas where people including myself will go and look at the window displays and enjoy them as that and not as an attempt to show you goods that you might want to buy. It's also interesting when you consider Benjamin's perspective on the metropolis as represented by Paris: that as well as being the seat of commercialism, it is also the most immediate expression of the modern experience.

The Nation has an interesting take on Benjamin's most interesting and problematic work from a while ago: Benjamin and the City of Light. I still think Benjamin is underated as a visionary and overrated as theoretician but that's another long debate.

PS. If you look closely in the photo with the tiger, you can see a ghostly image of me enjoying the most immediate expression of the modern experience. I'm the one with the hat

The anarchy of fireworks

Happy New Year everyone. I'm gearing  myself up for a couple of big posts, some of which I've been thinking about for quite a long while. I feel if I write that here, I'll have to put them up, as otherwise I'll be a blog tease - if there is such a thing.

But first things first: Fireworks. I was in Berlin for New Year (called Silvester as it is the name day of a pope from the fourth century AD). It's a great city and has lots of anarchic tendencies, which I really appreciate. This really came to the fore at midnight on Jan 31st, where all over Germany everyone goes out on the streets and lets off fireworks. They don't go to organised events where you are all safely held behind barriers (like the Brits on Nov 5th), no, they turn up with huge sports bags filled with the scariest looking rockets and boxes with names like Teufelbox "devil's box" and just set up at the corner of the road and proceed to let them all off, one by one. As it is dark and cold, most people are quite well wrapped up. As it is New Year's Eve, most people are somewhat inebriated. And so the whole thing has a very anarchic feel to it: You'll see what I mean hopefully when you see the pictures.

And then there's the fireworks. Semiotically they clearly symbolise the fight against the darkness of winter and the need for humanity to hold back the dark and bleak feelings of the season. They are signs of man's attempt to demonstrate his control over the sky at night. They explode in a variety of colours and are uncontrollable in the way they light up the sky and which way they fly. And they are to me, undescribably beautiful, precisely because of the anarchic sparkling shapes they write across the sky.

So now the pictures. I hope you'll agree with me that this feels quite scary when you see it as an image.

 

Everyone needs an Arthur

I went to Russell's coffee morning this morning. It's the first time I've been, up till now I've just been lurking on the outskirts or lurching with jet lag when I could have gone. So it was great to go today and enjoy such a festive occasion.

When I was talking to Richard, he asked me if I had an "Arthur", who for those of you who don't know is Russell's great little boy. I had to answer "no", at which point he said "Everyone should have an Arthur". Bt the way I think Richard's Arthur is called Thomas. I understand what Richard meant, but then I started thinking about it a bit more. And I think he's right in a much deeper way. It's not just about the joys of being a parent, it's about what being with a child does to the way you think. This isn't the most original theory but it just struck me again today.

I'll give you an example. Russell had kindly bought some crackers which we all pulled (I didn't get anything apart from a very lame joke) and Athur got one of those puzzles made up lots of different coloured triangles, which you are supposed to fit together to make a square. Arthur didn't do that, he decided to make a man using the different coloured triangles.

So he took something and looked at it and then tried to make something new out of the same starting bits that anyone else had. And came out somewhere completely different - it was a brilliant man by the way. I think that's what children do best, apart from being very cute of course. They aren't circumscribed by the rules of society and convention so they just do things differently. And in a way that's what we should be doing as planners as well. Making men out of coloured triangles, instead of squares.

PS. I also talked to Helen as well who was great and confirmed my theory about qual researchers and planning, it's all the same thing really.

PPS. I would have liked to put a picture of the real Arthur up here, but I'm not sure whether that would be appropriate. But the real Arthur is great.

PPS. I was very disturbed to see the new Star Wars figures. They are so much more cartoon like and completely unfanciable in the case of Han Solo.

The writer

A new piece of work has appeared outside my block of flats. I have no idea who it is by or why it is there. I only know that I would like to buy it but have no doubt that I couldn't afford it. Why do I like it so much? Well, I've christened it "The Writer". Look at the pictures first and then I'll explain why that talking about this piece fits with the aim of this blog.

The writer sits on their own but is embedded in their environment. They are isolated but in touch. They concentrate, looking outward and inward at the same time, just like the look on this statue's face. And things grow out of them, maybe out of their mind but maybe out of their body. And they and the words they use are made up of all the words and writings written before. They cannot separate themselves from the past and their environment.

Culture is made up in the same way. We are all individuals but we cannot separate ourselves from our environment. A cultural object grows out of these individuals. And yet it is made up of all the signs that existed before and the meaning which they construct.   

Translators

I was at our company Xmas party last night which was surprisingly good. At one point I found myself talking to a younger colleague about a bit of a professional dilemma he was in. He is wanting to move into planning and yet has found himself working as an account person. I gave him the benefit of my small amount of wisdom as to what I thought he should do. I realise now that what I was actually doing was translating the experience that I have had in my career into useful nuggets for him. ie. always sell the benefit, make it easy for your boss, decide what kind of person you want to be and be it. etc. I also realised that I was translating and interpreting situations and comments in his life for him. ie. if your boss says to you "Maybe you should think about that some more," that can mean you haven't thought enough or you should think some more because it might be worthwhile.

An ex colleague of mine was very good at this. She was able to extract herself from the detail and talk about the meta level. She could therefore explain how someone was positioning themselves in a meeting and why.

I also thought that anyone who is interested in training and mentoring might find "translation" a useful metaphor. You take something you know and translate it into someone's elses language or frame of reference.

Don't know whether my comments helped my colleague though. I was slightly inebriated and very convinced I was being brilliant.

Hanging on the telephone

Is it just me or is there still a more intimate feel to a call conducted on a landline. I know that when I'm travelling I never feel quite like I'm really connecting to my loved ones, because not only am I miles away and often in another timezone, but because there is no physical connection to them.

All the traditional words we use around telephony are to do with tangible connections: the line, connection, to get through to some one etc. And the iconography is even more powerful: you can't strangle someone with the reception from a mobile phone. The tense moment in whodunnits and thrillers where someone has to wait for a call next to the phone because the cord is not only the connection but also the limiting factor; it stops you taking the phone away with you.

I know that the mobile phone has given us lots of other things. But that sense of intimacy and immediacy and sometimes threat which comes from being physically connected by the phone cord is being lost.

 

Urban graffiti

What does it say that the thing you want to paint over is telling you not to paint over it? And that the authors and their band (!!) also reference the meta linguistic nature of the graffiti