Russel Hlongwane: The Flaneur

INDLELA SEMINAR/WORKSHOP SERIES PRESENTS:

City Walk in downtown Durban by Russel Hlongwane

The city is laden with buildings, and buildings are laden with history. The flaneur is an aimless wanderer, in other words, an empty wanderer. It is through this ‘’emptiness” that new readings of cities emerge.

The Durban CBD has experienced radical changes in the past few years, it has transmutated in its own way despite planned methods of incremental city growth. This city has to accommodate esoteric forces, economical forces and carry memories. The one way to map memory is to study the exterior of buildings alongside the observed forms of (foot, vehicle and visual) traffic. There are also agents that refuse to change, they defiant agents make for interesting narrators of activity that happen around them. This city-walk, therefore, aims to explore the notion of walking as map-making.