A NEW YEAR'S DAY DRIFT

After a prolonged absence, I encourage myself to engage in some urban walking, with some automated assistance.

DRIFT- available from I-Store now!

Prior to the chiming of the bells, the banging of gongs and the curious absence of a fireworks display (the government of HCMC are apparently using the money saved to assist flood victims), I had already resolved to engage more vigorously in psychogeographical practice in 2017, and to grant some additional motivation, I thought I would download some psychogeographic apps. Sadly, I have had no joy with one of those (Derive- though I can get it to play some colliery brass band music), but DRIFT (already mentioned in my post concerning Minh Khai) was a little more successful.

The premise is simple: to encourage urban wandering by providing the user with a sequence of ten commands, each involving wandering in a particular direction for a specified number of blocks, or until some other criterion is  met, culminating with the user recording an image using the camera app on the phone. The images are then uploaded to the app's site (though I have so far been unable to locate this site), as well as being stored on the user's phone. The ten steps are saved as an individual "Drift", and the user is able to then initiate another drift, containing a completely new set of commands.

For the first time in many years I was joined on my drift by a companion, who for the reasons which may or may not be connected to some shocking revelations concerning Ho Chi Minh has opted to remain anonymous.

The app is available for I-OS and Android, and you can find out a little more about the ethos behind the product at the site of Broken City Labs.

STEP I:

Walk north for a block and try to find something out of the ordinary given the economic spatial cues of the area and document it.

From our starting point, it was impossible to travel north, and by meeting this stumbling block we encountered one of the glaring issues with the app. By relying on the cardinal points to navigate, the app restricts the available options. A relative system might have a greater flexibility, and hence variation.

Instead, we negotiated our way around until were able to follow a Phạm Ngọc Thạch northwards. This is Saigon's most architecturally refined district, and thus the giant plastic flowers struck us as somewhat out of the ordianry, althought they were decorations in preparation for the upcoming Lunar New Year.

STEP II:

Walk east until you find a trace of history and take a picture of it.



Our earliest opportunity to travel east presented itself at Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, and the story of what we found there is recounted at this post.

STEP III:

Walk north and look for a faucet or tap on the exterior of a building and take a close-up picture of it.





STEP IV:

Find the nearest reflection to you and take a picture of it.

STEP V:

Walk north until you see an unmarked path and take a picture of wherever it leads.



STEP VI:

Walk north until you find something wonderful and take a picture of it.



Perhaps this does not strike you as particularly wonderful, but this was a beautiful street.

STEP VII:

Walk south for a couple of blocks and empty your pockets on the nearest surface and take a picture of everything spread out on that surface.


                      

This step puzzled me at first, but I quite liked it for two reasons. Firstly, it encourages examination of the immediate surface. Secondly, it turns the walker into a performer. The action is not rational and, sonsequently, draws attention from other street users. It's a nice moment of inversion, with the observer (briefly) becoming the observed.

Note: due some uncharacteristically windy conditions I was reluctant to spread the content of my pockets all over the pavement... and yes, that is a cotton bud.

STEP X:

Walk south for one block, look for an example of an appeal and take a picture of it.

Yes, we did skip a step- or re-arrange the sequence of steps. You may have noted that heading northward would have meant tediously re-tracing our steps, and would not really be in the spirit of gettting lost, which is at the heart of "DRIFT".

Instead, we decided to jump to step ten and trace the remaining steps in reverse order. After walking south for one block, this sign was the closest thing we could find to an appeal. It is a recruitment notice for security staff.

STEP IX:

Walk in the same direction of the shadows you can see for two blocks and then take a picture of the nearest outdoor light source.

STEP VIII:

Walk north until you can find an example of a game and take a picture of it.

A note: play equipment, amusement park rides, jigsaw puzzles, any distraction at all are all described as "games" in the Vietnamese language. To my companion, this piece of playground equipment in the grounds of an exclusive primary school exemplified the concept of "game" absolutely. I was at first disinclined to agree: whilst it was easy to imagine the games that could be played upon it, it was bereft of human children making full use of the facility. In that state it was no more a "game" than any other piece of obscure sculpture or street furniture.

I thought about the distinction for a moment, of how in most cultures it is not acceptable for children to climb over public artwork (unless, of course, that was the artists' inital intent). Probably more to do with litigation than propriety, I would imagine. Unlike a public sculpture, this bit of play equipment was designed exclusively for children to clamber over, investigate and explore. It was therefore  a game wating to be played.

Having completed ten steps, no prize was awarded, though my companion compared the Drift to a game, albeit one with an invisible reward system. Homo ludens adrift in Saigon, investigating and exploring, and occasionally clambering over obstacles.

Drift  was a good way back into praxis, and an interesting introduction to psychogeography for my companion. Indeed, the simple format (and arbitrary instruction) makes it quite suitable for use in pairs or groups, as an introdution to the derive. It is a pity, however, that there is no online collection of the drifts of others, or at least not one that I have been able to locate. I have emailed the game's developer(s), and will post their response as soon as it is received.

In the meantime, if you wish to download the app it is available on  iOS only. If you have used this software previously, it would be wonderful if you could provide a link to a description of your own experiences in the comments section, because that's what we're supposed to do nowadays.

You can also find slightly different edits of the images at  this instagram hashtag (#driftPCHCMC1)

NGUYEN THI MINH KHAI

Vietnamese Revolutionary and prominent member of the Indochinese Communist Party.

Whilst engaged in a automatically generated DRIFT in HCMC's district one, my companion and I found ourselves searching for a piece of history. Walking is not a popular Vietnamese activity, and my companion was eager to complete the task as soon as possible, suggesting that we merely record the name of the street, seeing as that corresponded to thee name of a historical figure.

Suddenly the memory of last year's street name project came flooding back, closely followed by a wave of guilt- guilt at having fallen so far behind with the project I had actually moved 1000 km south of the city of its origin. That is a substantial dérive.

After a brief moment of reverie and self-admonition, I was brought back to the matter at hand, which was to engage in an automatically generated drift through HCMC. The dérive was generated by an app called DRIFT, and is subject to a parallel blog post. Essentially, the app provides a series of simple instrcutios which encourage users to explore their city, with each instruction generally concluding with the recording of a piece of photographic evidence. In our case, the instruction to "walk east until you find a trace of history" had been going on for much longer than might ordinarily be expected in a city as rich in heritage as Saigon, leading to my companion's suggestion of a cop-out.

I asked what was historically significant about Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai. My companion's memory was sketchy, but was sure that she had been involved in revolutionary activities in the last century, rather than a more ancient figure. My co-drifter's town of origin is Huế, and related that Huế also has a Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai street, intersected by Lê Hồng Phong Street. Hồng Phong had been her husband, and my companion recollected that they had both been executed by either "the French or Americans".

With each street in Saigon (and nearly every street in Vietnam) bearing the name of a Vietnamese historical figure, we instead continued to walk, until we came across a colonial rooftop rupturing the polyvinyl shell in which that trace of history had been hidden, and that was documented in Minh Khai's stead.

Later, we checked the English language entry for Minh Khai on wikipedia (from whence was procured the image above), and discovered that she had in fact been executed by the French in 1941, two years after her husband. The couple had travelled to Moscow in 1934 as the ICP's delegates to the 7th Comintern. What was most intriguing, however, was the article's claim that she had been a lover of (or perhaps even married to) Uncle Ho. As the article notes, and as my companion reminded me, the official party line in vietnam is that Uncle Ho had no romantic attachments throughout his entire life. It should be noted that the only reference to this fact is contained in William J Duiker's biography of Ho Chi Minh (Ho Chi Minh- A Life), and the Vietnamese people I have discussed this with so far have been incredulous about this particular story.

This is part of an ongoing series of articles concerned with the origins of Vietnamese street names, and the myths and legends attached to them. You can find the story of how this project came to pass at Huế Street Names.

Alternatively, you can look up all articles labelled street names

A New Day

There's something special about waking up ahead of one's alarm, fully refreshed and eager to face a new day. It's like gaining time: whether it's one minute or one hour, somehow it feels like a victory. 

So it was a triumphant psychocartographer that awoke this morning, more than an hour before the dreaded alarm bells were due to ring. Outside, in the quiet side street to which I've recently moved, birds were singing gaily, and a soft yellow light was creeping out from behind the buildings opposite. Extra buoyancy was granted by the knowledge that a deadline was rapidly approaching. Regular readers (and again I ask if such a thing as a "regular reader" exists) will recall that I recently began an internship with Global Site Plans: my first draft post had been completed but lacked images, so I had to race over Thủ Thiêm to get some pictures.

Problematically, my SD card was completely on the blink and needed replacing, necessitating a stop at District One. It was the first time in my five months in in HCMC that I'd braved the morning rush hour. Not for the first time I was grateful that I'd invested in a slightly-less-than-cool automatic underbone moped rather than a manual motorcycle: the traffic was so stop-start my leg may well have fallen off. Fortunately the worst of the traffic had abated by the time I arrived at the the tunnel beneath the River Sài Gòn, and I was able to observe the vast expanse of District 2. It's virgin territory, earmarked for development on a scale that dwarfs London's Olympic Park. 

The forthcoming post, which I shall link here as soon as it is online, is really a short overview of HCMC's current pattern of development. The proposed scheme at Thủ Thiêm is of particular interest to me as it a) involves reclaiming a huge natural wetland and b) is huge in scale. The master plan is to build an entire central business district from scratch, including an international airport and port facilities. Whilst it's easy to be sceptical of the efficacy of top-down planning of this magnitude, it's also easy to get caught up in the pervasive narrative of a dynamic Vietnam racing to catch up with its wealthier neighbours in South East Asia.

It's also of some concern that such a huge ecological asset is going to be compromised. The area is a vast wetland with a rich abundance of flora and fauna, but from a purely anthrocentric point of view it undoubtedly fulfils a valuable role in water management. Situated right in the centre of HCMC's municipality (though outside the traditional city limits), at a bend in the river Sài Gòn, the site is overspill for the limited drainage network of HCMC proper. HCMC's outlying wetlands have been drained and built upon; the traditional city's canal network was also greatly reduced during the inter-colonial (pre-unification era), making the city ever more vulnerable to flooding during he wet season. It's hard to see how the removal of 8,000 hectares of marsh will do anything to mitigate that vulnerability. 

Asian urban development projects have a respectable record when it comes to wetland management, particularly in China. The master plan for Thủ Thiêm makes provision for the preservation of existing wetlands and includes some artificial wetlands too. It is difficult to ascertain the efficacy of these provisions without a level of expertise that eludes me, however, and such design decisions can be aesthetic rather than functional. 

For the time being, however, judgement shall be reserved. It is, after all, a new day, and I'm feeling uncharacteristically optimistic.

REFUSING TO GET LOST AND THUS LOSING MY WAY

Shortly before arriving in Saigon I came across  Tina Richardson's fantastic blog, particulations. This was back in November, and as regular readers (if there are any of you out there)  will recall, I was beginning an exploration of the former Vietnamese capital, Huế (you can read all about it here). Richardson had recently delivered a lecture at the University of Huddersfield about her own research, preparation for which led her to ponder "what a new psychogeography might look like". Following a discussion with Phil Smith and Alex Bridger she came up with the slide below. A slideshow of the lecture is available at  www.academia.edu (Tina Richardson recommends downloading the slideshow and viewing through powerpoint so that you get the full benefit of the animation).

For anyone with an interest in the analysing post-modern urban environments I'm sure the lecture would have been inspiring. The terminal slide is a neat summary of where psychogeography might be (or should be) heading, and so I have included it here. However, one item in the right-hand column gave me serious pause- and not, I hasten to add, because I felt it did not deserve inclusion in a list of reactionary approaches to psychogeography. Instead, I questioned the validity of my own pursuits: I was (and remain) a tourist, a stranger in a strange land.

The observant among you will have noticed that Richardson has stated that this list is not prescriptive. Nonetheless, I felt it necessary to re-evaluate my methodology as well as my motive. The city is text, and psychogeography is a deep reading: it demands familiarity. When I moved to Saigon I was reading a text in a foreign language, way above my reading level. Turning a corner did not lead me new and surprising discoveries about how the city fitted together: instead it led me into dark alleyways, labyrinths of narrow streets and a nagging fear that I was, in fact, truly lost.

This realisation did not curtail my sporadic urban hikes (though I have to say HCMC is one of the most pedestrian-hostile cities I have encountered, indicative of my limited experiences outside of Europe), it changed my approach to them, however. I have not, so far, felt compelled to keep any record of my forays, knowing that they will read like travel-writing (and most likely, bad travel writing). There is plenty of that in the world already, and I have no desire to that particular corpus.

The transformation from confident flaneur to ignorant tourist has been difficult. I feel vulnerable if I am alone at certain times. I have begun to consider straying from the main roads an act of reckless bravery. I do not walk alone at night, or rather, there is a very limited area of the city in which I feel I have the confidence to walk at night (though these areas are not necessarily the safest, they are the ones with which I am most familiar, and therefore feel the safest). Besides, I'm much more likely to travel by motorbike: a necessity given the sprawling nature of Saigon and the pedestrian-hostile nature of its structure. I am wary of producing my camera or sketchbook in public places- not, I hasten, for fear of being robbed, but more out of some sense of embarrassment: I was invading the public space of the local population and cataloguing their lives. 

Sometimes I only get as far as the roof of my hotel.

Unfortunately, whilst I accept that I am a tourist, work commitments mean I'm rarely given the opportunity to act like one. Furthermore, I'm just not very good doing it on my own. I've plenty of experience if travelling on my own, but of late it has become apparent that my experiences were shaped by the people I met along the way. Part of the fun of travelling by yourself is randomly colliding with strangers, strangers with whom goals are temporarily shared, and experiencing part of the journey together. The key word here is travel, the experience being characterised by regular movement, venturing from place to place, picking out the highlight and moving on. Though they might protest otherwise, travellers of all hues generally stick to the same trails, and this constant stream of movement along narrow channels ensures regular collisions. In contrast, I have been relatively static, wandering aimlessly around Thanh Binh district.

This has started to sound much more depressing than I originally intended. For those readers who have made it this far, I wish to reassure you that as bleak as this might sound, it is by know means the whole story. Indeed, the relative social isolation the engendered by my previously described dilemma has enabled me to concentrate on some really interesting, home-based projects (concerning which a post is imminent). I can also state that I'm really enjoying teaching, and am lucky enough to teach a fascinating group of students. But perhaps the most promising prospect at present is the invitation from Global Site Plans to join their blogger network, The Grid, and to act as their HCMC landscape architecture blogger.

This final point offers an exciting third way, a new north-east passage out of the mire in which I have ensnared myself. It takes a long time for the stranger-in-a-strange-land to become the man in the crowd, and perhaps the tourist is not the best archetype to assume in order to facilitate that transition. I will be actively seeking out stories concerning the urban landscape of this sprawling and dynamic city, utilising my insight into landscape architecture and the local knowledge of my Vietnamese friends. I will be producing two posts a month for the site, links to which will be provided here.

So: I apologise for this lengthy and unusually candid piece of writing, but hope that herein sufficient explanation for my equally lengthy absence has been provided. Be prepared for a rapid succession of posts over the next few weeks: I've been surprisingly busy during this period of apparent inactivity...