We have to rebuild a world from the rustles of paper. Or we could put on our shoes and go out the door.“
1 – Theory und practice of female* flanery

A contemporary trend of walking cities has been emergent during the last years – more and more done by people other than the cis-male person, by women. In this paper I would like to examine the female flaneuse both in theory and practice. The assumption I am making here is that the double male gaze has an impact on all layers of historic and contemporary flanery -concept, literature and physical practice. Yet female* flaneuses are, and have been, walking the cities and making appearances in literature. I will lay the focus on how the female flaneuse – now and in future – has to be understood as fundamentally transgressive – not only in delimitation of the male flaneur. As claiming space and the freedom to one’s own pace is aemancipatory and feminist act. In a third step, looking at my own practice as a performative researcher and artist working in the field of strolling I will look at how flanery can re-imagine and re-shape cities both in our minds and through our bodies.

Keywords: flaneur / flaneuse; feminism; performative research

1 Elkin, Lauren: Flaneuse. Woemn Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London, epub 2016, S. 201

Full text: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16m0i2vdTU_IMADaZb0sIHS0aPb57am7q/view?usp=sharing