Page - 181 - in >mcs_lab> - Mobile Culture Studies, Volume 2/2020

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 6 2o20 (Travel) Tanja Kapp | Journeying the Page 181 discourage entry into or exit from cer- tain zones’ (Debord 2006b: 62). By positioning the parts of London he walks through on his cover as distinct entities, he acknowledges how these spatial entities remain to some extend disconnected from one another. Nev- ertheless, by drawing lines that connect them, Molesworth traces the forces of attraction and aversion sensed during his derive along the train tracks. He thus highlights how psychogeography creates an attention to and rebellion against the hegemonic spatial rules that govern urban life and structure. In A Long Walk, various visual and verbal media come together to form Molesworth’s travel narrative. Examining the medial properties of the zine, it is evident that a large part of the narrative is comprised of images, both in the form of drawings and of photographs. However, information is also encoded in textual form, with a majority of words being typewrit- ten and some handwritten edits made within or on the margins of the paragraphs. As the zine allows for any kind of semiotic rep- resentation to be implemented into its cut-and-paste structure, such as with quotes and images being re-assembled in bricolage and entirely new contexts being invented, it enables play with pre-established notions associated with works of art or ways of medial representation. The page breakdown of A Long Walk visualized in Fig. 5 shows the usage of word and image in the zine, explicating specifically which techniques of both sign systems were used over the course of the narrative arc, and when they overlapped. During the following analysis, the page breakdown will shed light on the overall intermedial composition of the narrative, with several close read- ings further illustrating specific narrative tactics. The juxtaposition of drawings and photography amplifies how the use of abstracted signs pulls the subjective imagination of both reader and artist into their imaginative construction of mediated travel. In his work, Molesworth cautiously juxtaposes both pictorial techniques of representation: as can be seen via the page breakdown [see Fig. 5], photographs are interspersed to a small degree, and only emerge after the first third of the narrative has established the mood of the work. From a reader’s perspective, the travelogue is thus far characterized by an abstract drawing style, with clear lines and occasional geometric forms forming silhouettes, textures, contrasts and skylines. These overarching impressions are contextualized by written accounts Fig. 4: Cover of A Long Walk (Molesworth 2016)