ABSTRACT
As de Certeau notes in the epigraph to this chapter, buses and trains can be excellent methods for making meaning out of the repetitions of our daily lives, for every Monday to Friday, in good or bad weather, the urban commuter takes city transit to work or to school. There are few other places in the city, where, if we must commute, we are forced into such close proximity to strangers for extended periods of time, where we are captive audience to advertising and to city streets going by outside the bus windows. We are subject to the smell of bodies, food, the mustiness of wet clothes on rainy days; we are forced to endure the rudeness of other people’s cell-phone conversations or too-loud music emanating through headphones. We can create our own bubbles to isolate the self from contact, through mobile media such as cell phones, MP3 players, and other handheld devices (Bissell 2009; Adey 2010; Bull 2000), or through print media such as the daily commuter papers (Straw 2007). Or, we can see the bus as a temporary zone of theater, where a community comes together for the length of time that one travels (Schechner 2003; Jensen 2010). The commute can be seen as simply transportation, a necessary dead time where nothing happens, or it can be a hectic rush to be endured and avoided if possible. It can also be “gift time” (Jain and Lyons 2008), a space for contemplation or enjoyment. It is the idea of “gift time” that I am interested in particularly, for as Ole B. Jensen (2009: 154) points out, pleasure is a less discussed element of mobility, but one that can provide a more meaningful approach to commuting as a life practice. In suggesting a move from “urban transport to urban travel,” he asks, “can infrastructures be understood and comprehended within the realm of aesthetic pleasure?” The question of aesthetic pleasure within urban travel forms the basis of this essay. It revolves around the experience of commuting as “gift time” and also
“equipped time” (Jain and Lyons 2008), referring to the growing presence of mobile technologies that allow a commuter to control how time is spent while in transit. As cell phones, tablets, and other electronic devices become ubiquitous, they offer a great potential to bring out the pleasures of commuting, for they are uniquely able to interface with the city that then becomes a “hybrid space” (Gordon and de Souza e Silva 2011). This chapter looks specifically at the inbetween spaces of city transit as a liminal space of everyday ritual, a performance site of urban contact, and a hybrid mobile space through the use of locative media, in order to suggest some possibilities toward an aesthetics of mobility. I begin with a brief methodologies section that situates my approach and frames my case study of city transit in Montréal. The following three sections look at how the spaces of the in-between are constructed, first as a liminal performative space where one transitions between personal and public roles, second as a space of performance and a site of possible engagement with fellow commuters, and, finally, as a hybrid space that can accumulate meaning toward a deeper sense of community and connection. In each section, I establish different elements of the commuting experience, before exploring how works of art and music interact with this experience. I focus specifically on the different kinds of artworks that have taken place within the Montréal transit network, with special attention to locative and mobile media art. In the concluding section, I sum up and discuss the impact of these site-specific urban transit projects, and argue that works of locative art are uniquely able to engage the commuter in a hybrid landscape in order to connect with, rather than disconnect from, the surrounding environment. I argue that mobile locative media art can be a major instigator of a move toward pleasure in urban travel.
