e-flux: Sherif El-Azma

http://e-flux.com/journal/view/90

Sherif El-Azma
The Psychogeography of Loose Associations

I look down. I feel awkward, although I act otherwise.

I hear him speak. He is talking to me.

“We have a new type of ruling,” he says. “A rule of small groups elevated to positions of absolute power by random pressures, and subject to political and economic factors that leave little room for decisions. They are representatives of abstract forces and have assumed power through a surrendering of the self. They are rulers by accident — inept, frightened pilots at the controls of a vast machine they cannot understand, so they bring in experts to tell them which buttons to press.”

I think of who “they” might be. Perhaps “they” are a non-governmental institute that deals with architecture, art development, or geography.

The stalker is a guide, and the job of the guide is to summarize information that might exist in a certain space and time. Guides also centralize and filter history, not only in an attempt to make the traveler a continuation of it, but to comfort the traveler in some way by making him feel that the center of this megacity is actually a village.