Living in the image-world of today is accompanied with the demand for the instant gratification and the increasing need for always-connected state of being. According to Manuel Castells, it brings the notion of shrinkage in spatial distances; he writes about “spaces of flow”, addressing to the furious flow of information between the interconnected nodes within the network. It produces the hybrid forms of correspondence, so the artists have a chance to form the new type of collective – the one that equally relies on mediated and non-mediated communication.
In such circumstances, we may negotiate the importance of the whole complex set of experiences gained by the temporary change of habitat, especially today when online and offline collectives are intertwined.
So, what kind of perceptual shift emerges, when the artist changes his habitat for a limited amount of time? Or perhaps s/he remains being a flâneur in the interconnected world? The enriched communicative channels certainly do affect the artist’s practice: the „touristic gaze“ is one of the approaches widely used by the artists in order to show or deconstruct the world unseen (not yet seen). The touristic gaze may deal with the set of images from the physically distant areas, locally recognised as „exotic“.
The tension between the local and the Other has always been present in the art practice (just take Romanticism for example) – but today, in our Google-Earth-ed world, the discovery of such hidden places becomes a real quest. It isn’t the unseen territory we are looking for – it is the discovery of micro-narratives articulated through the filter of artist’s personal focus, tested by the different audiences. The audience, of course, is not only constituted of the art lovers, but also of the labourers in the art industry. So the new flâneur explores the different contexts in the process of creation of an artwork, through the translation of various paradigms following the axes: familiar/distant, local/Other. S/he does a peculiar remix of different narratives, constructing a Gestell from what is given, or exposed – be it a highly populated urban surrounding, a glimpse to someone’s living space, various situations s/he had the approach to.
Therefore, the connection between the artistic practice and the habitat where it takes place plays an important role within a labour of the new flâneur.
Residency Unlimited comes as a service and a platform that encourage these perceptual shifts: not only as a support for the new flâneur and the diverse artistic practice that may flourish in such circumstances; it is the re-discovery of the space/place/network that is at stake. Within the multitude of visual information, the flâneuris the one who does the pick.
