"A flâneur is anyone who wanders, and watches, the city. The 19th-century French poet Charles Baudelaire called the flâneur a “perfect idler” and a “passionate observer.” Baudelaire was a flâneur himself and, when he wasn’t writing poems and spending his trust fund on dandy outfits and opium, he drifted through the streets of Paris.
Obviously, Trespassing depicts the filmmaker walks various cities in the world and encourages audiences to link the video with the practice of female flânerie, a term from the French masculine word flâneur. Baudelaire’s flâneur depicts a man who walks the city to experience, observe, understand, and portray city life through both of his participation and detached observation.
I often describe cities as being like a gigantic maze. However, unlike when I’m in a maze, I love being ‘lost’ in a city, wander about and notice. Albeit, I am not a proper flaneur; I want to do more than just look and wander, I want to create!
It has been a wonderful Sunday, profitably spent achieving nothing in particular. I set off across the river with the vague image of lunch somewhere in the Marais...
