Deviant Practices: Technological Re-codings of the City through Radical Play

• Main Author: Laura Bissell
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Open Library of Humanities 2013-01-01
• Series: Body, Space & Technology Journal
• Online Access: https://www.bstjournal.com/articles/55

By critically analysing recent explorations into walking the city as a creative and politicised practice, this paper illustrates how mobile devices can be used as tools for radical play and to encourage subversive use of public spaces. Building on Henri Lefebrve’s 'Writings on Cities' (1993) and 'The Urban Revolution', (2003) this paper will offer new types of technologised mapping as a politicised performative practice that enacts participants ‘right to the city’. Australian performance group pvi collective’s recent piece 'Deviator', (2012) sited in Glasgow and other international cities, demands a subversive re-coding of the city via a technological 'derive', live performance and play. By positioning audiences as interventionists on the streets and encouraging a deviation from the norm the social codes of the city are reimagined and participant-spectators encounter potentially transformative interactions with public spaces.