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184 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 6 2o20 (Travel)
Tanja Kapp | Journeying the Page
Pairing abstracted drawings with typewritten words, Molesworthâs narrative oscillates
between the specific and the universal in order to illustrate the tension in psychogeography
between the individual self with its specific experientiality and the seemingly objective outside
world. While his drawings do not pre-establish any temporally or geographically fixed locale,
inviting the reader to complete the visual narrative with knowledge of their own experiences,
the text situates the walk by naming its place, time, and aim, as well as personal reflections.
Even though Molesworth shares these specific details right at the start of his documented
journey, he gives his readers the opportunity to go through whole passages of drawings with-
out interruption [see Fig. 5]. Between paragraphs that specify his walk, he thus creates visual
sequences of immersion and âclosureâ. Consequently, the experience of reading the zine mirrors
that of psychogeography, as it depicts the subjective lens of the singular walkerâs psyche â with
their specific memories, traumas and identities, looking out onto a world that can speak for
itself, whose story waits to be listened to. Molesworth establishes in the beginning that âby
making this walk I hoped to learn something new of a place I had never been, rather than vis-
iting known a area [sic] and risk anticipating a pre-ordained set of ideas, and risk not capturing
anything at allâ (Molesworth 2016: 3). Psychogeography is a constant negotiation between two
simultaneous aims: On the one hand, it seeks to uncover unseen discourses and histories of a
place by reflecting them, and by letting the scenery affect oneself in its own right. On the other
hand, it provides the means to find oneâs own voice and presence in the process and serves as a
technique to come to terms with oneâs inner condition and place in the world. Independent of
any media-specific guidebook and untouched by editorial hands, the zine provides the space to
mediate psychogeography in that it not only retells one particular walk, but also to some degree
provides the infrastructure to read psychogeographically. For the armchair traveller, the zine
reproduces the conditions and difficulties faced by a psychogeographer, letting the reader dither
between the specific subject and the general feeling of place.
In addition, the eclectic pages of A Long Walk highlight how the environment is travelled
in situated ways, according to oneâs personal dĂ©rive of the eye. Fig. 6 illustrates how zines, unlike
most comics, do not direct the reader onto a particular path towards deciphering the content of
the page. Even though the medium borrows a multitude of representational forms, it does not
inherently predetermine specific ways of reading. While there is indeed a continuous narration
structured by the convention of chronological page-turning and the various chapters represent-
ing the neighbourhoods travelled by Molesworth, the zineâs smallest narrative instance, the page,
does not exhibit such a conventional sequence. Rather, linearity is at odds with the microcosm
of the page: The zine here illustrates how the travel experience of walking tours, while showing
a continuous pathway, is always already comprised of simultaneous impressions coming from
all angles of oneâs spatial existence. Both kinds of double pages shown in Fig. 6 foreground
this simultaneity, with the drawings even abandoning the structural outline of a conventional
comic-style grid in favour of an unstructured mosaic of panels. The deliberate ambiguity in
sequential order derives from the unorthodox positioning of the panels, but is further reinforced
by the fact that most images are transitioning from aspect-to-aspect.9 This means that, rather
9 It may be argued that some of them are non-sequiturs, âoffer[ing] no logical relationship between panels what-
soeverâ (McCloud 1993: 72) and thus also creating a sense of disorientation and an even greater vacuum for
imagination.
>mcs_lab>
Mobile Culture Studies, Band 2/2020
The Journal
- Titel
- >mcs_lab>
- Untertitel
- Mobile Culture Studies
- Band
- 2/2020
- Herausgeber
- Karl Franzens University Graz
- Ort
- Graz
- Datum
- 2020
- Sprache
- deutsch, englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY 4.0
- Abmessungen
- 21.0 x 29.7 cm
- Seiten
- 270
- Kategorien
- Zeitschriften Mobile Culture Studies The Journal