A collection of writings about place space writing and art …
Placid small thought no 2
The passage of time (my History) leaves behind a residue that accumulates: photographs, drawings, the corpses of long since dried up felt pens, shirts, non-returnable glasses and returnable glasses, cigar wrappers, tins, erasers, postcards, books, dust and knickknacks: this is what I call my fortune.
–Georges Perec, Species of Spaces and Other Pieces
Describe your street. Describe another street. Compare.
– Georges Perec ‘Approaches to What?’ in Species of Space and Other Pieces
What can we know of the world? What quantity of space can our eyes hope to take in between our birth and our death? How many square centimeters of planet earth will the soles of our shoes have touched?
– George Perec in Species of Spaces and Other Pieces
Make an effort to exhaust the subject, even if that seems grotesque, or pointless, or stupid. You still haven’t looked at anything, you’ve merely picked out what you’ve long ago picked out. Force yourself to see more flatly.
– George Perec in Species of Spaces and Other Pieces
To write: to try to meticulously to retain something, to cause something to survive; to wrest a few precise scraps from the void as it goes, to leave somewhere a furrow, a trace, a mark or a few signs.
– George Perec in Species of Spaces and Other Pieces
“My intention… was to describe… that which is not taken note of, that which has no importance: what happens when nothing happens other than the weather, people, cars, and clouds.”
– Georges Perec in An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris
“ In 1969, I chose, in Paris, twelve places (streets, squares, circuses, an arcade), where I had lived or else was attached by particular memories.
I have undertaken to write a description of two of these places each month. One of these descriptions is written on the spot and is meant to be as neutral as possible. Sitting in a café or walking in the street, notebook in hand, I do my best to describe…”
– Georges Perec in Species of Space and Other Pieces
“ The people in the streets: where are they coming from? Where are they going to? Who are they?”
– Georges Perec in Species of Space and Other Pieces
This intriguing visual exploration of Perec’s Species of Space that I most fortuitously came across on YouTube was made by the Nomads.usp Center for Interactive Living Studies, Research Group of the Institute of Architecture and Urbanism, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, http://www.nomads.usp.br –
Space.
The concept of space is an enigma [to me a least].
Yet Perec and Bachelard are two of the greatest exponents in attempting to document the concept of space in its illusive and ethereal qualities.
We live in spaces.
We inhabit spaces.
We are in space.
Space is all around us, and yet nowhere.
My writing desk is one of my most important spaces.
Writing is a private activity, yet it can take place in either a private or public space.
Sometimes mundane spaces are my best source of inspiration and pleasure in terms of triggering my urge to write.
Georges Perec was a master at documenting the mundane places and spaces of our ordinary lives, as well as the objects that dwell in them: the objects on a writing desk; the bedroom; the apartment…
Writing is an inhabitation according to Perec: A writer inhabits the page and his or her world as well as inhabiting space.
Let us together explore the minutiae of spaces all around us in all their detail and infinite glory…
[MN] 14 May 2017 – 7 March 2019
Naked Cities Journal 