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Digital draw attempt #3

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Digital draw attempt #2

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De-mythologising cyberpunk.

I love internet commentators who wish for a cyberpunk age to descend upon them. How ironic when one only needs to travel a handful of kilometres beyond the comfort of the urban core circlejerk towards the periphery to actually face the sort of full-frontal disparity, inequality and racism that we wish upon ourselves through futuristic dystopian imaginings. 

The point of the cyberpunk movement, narrative and aesthetic in the style of 2020 and Shadowrun (but also abundantly present in Dredd, Blade Runner, GitS, Deus Ex, and more recently Va11 HallA) is to demonstrate that despite the proliferation of technology, the systems and structures generating inequality are only heightened and exasperated by the increased pace of capital accumulation it facilitates. There is no space for the valorisation of the role of technology in society through a cyberpunk lens. 

Basically, in the reading of cyberpunk for which I advocate, technology and its proliferation is no magic bullet solution to the “urban condition”. Technology is an enabler or mediator of access to data, for certain, but with the caveat of means to access that data increasingly obfuscated and inaccessible through costly proprietary software, ever increasing hardware requirements, etc. Access is thus still gated behind privilege-born and power-seized opportunity, with inequality subsequently recast and (re)symbolised the perpetual hustle for table scraps of such digital technologies and the mobility it may offer. 

The overwhelming urbanite majority, in turn, resort to utilising make+shift responses to meet their daily necessities. In this sense, technological mediated mundanity in a cyberpunk world can certainly serve to generate agentive capacities. However, that agentive development operates laterally in society with severely limited upward, structural mobility to match. Thus, for the urbanite majority in the cyberpunk world, it’s about getting-by: just making enough to scrape by at the end of the day, and accessing new networks offering possible new side hustles to incrementally plan further ahead.

This isn’t the future, it’s the now. A reading of any sort of academic account from AbdouMaliq Simone, Achille Mbembe, Sarah Nuttall or Edgar Pieterse on the nature of the African city paints this above picture, but rendered as the daily experience of an urbanite majority at this current moment in time. These are accounts of the urban everyday around us that speak of the same tensions contained within cyberpunk worlds, of the same make+shift responses driven forward by mundane ingenuity and knowledge. This strategizing occurs with or without certain forms of technology, although the presence of widely-proliferated technology like mobile phones helps to define and understand particular moments of these make+shift responses in context in time and space.

For me, that’s the power of a cyberpunk narrative – it is neither techno-utopian nor technophobic but rather an itchy reminder of the nature of structural violence as it stands right now, particularly the manner in which it is relayed through urban materiality. What this sci-fi narrative portrays then is an omnipresent urban reality that cuts across the fabric of time, from past to present to future. A reality bound with structural division that, even now in the present, we all too easily cast to the back of our minds and choose to continuously perpetuate as a driver of our daily routines of privilege. 

The utilisation of technology in cyberpunk serves to exaggerate the extent to which neoliberal urban society teeters on the precipice of total collapse. Technology such as digital currencies, holographic sign boards, biomodification, artificial intelligence, guidance systems, etc. are not the focus, but merely a backdrop to heighten and exaggerate the same societal tensions that surround us now.

When all of this is read through Latour and an actor network optic, cyberpunk is less about the "fact" of the future, but rather a concern directed more towards it’s invisible constituent forces; the societal, economic and political relations embedded in everyday existence that, when put into motion, hold the concept of the future together in every strand of interaction between actors. 

Thus the appeal of cyberpunk should lie in the underlying, unspoken motif that there is no monomyth of a hero’s cycle, of victories awaiting to be unlocked by a protagonist wielding the right sort of technomanagerial MacGuffin. 

Cyberpunk’s quintessence is, instead, locked in the daily grind of getting by, and the frightening prospect of being drawn towards relinquishing oneself to the chaos embedded within the shambling mass of flesh, concrete steel and circuitry of the city.

A cyberpunk future should not be welcomed. It should be uncomfortably acknowledged as our present. 

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Gushing fanboy letter sent early January

Evolve has left such an indelible mark on my life in recent months (and the past week especially), I thought it would be worth dropping a message to say thanks for everything your music has given me.

https://youtu.be/TY7e4IZY-Tc

I’m an urban researcher from South Africa. Aside from being a wage slave to make ends meet while in SA, my real passion that has kept me going is using avant-garde artsy methodologies and approaches to explore how we produce a sense of place and emotional connection to our cityscapes.

I subscribe to a particular approach called psychogeography where engaging in regular dérives, or drifting, is a vital way of unpacking how we navigate the urban landscape beyond just physical traversal. A really important aspect of my own personal practice is the use of music to help stimulate this process. Typically, I have plenty of vaporwave, futurefunk, chillwave and downtempo on rotation to help induce a certain state-of-mind to get emotionally and psychologically lost in cities; to just relinquish any predefined idea or notion of a place and to just give in to the want to meander. 

But to get to the point of the mail; 

after a random chance application, I recently got accepted to do work on a PhD in a small but beautiful city in Switzerland; a once in a lifetime opportunity to research and write about the exact sort of stuff described above. 

In the process of moving I had to sell and let go of the majority of my material belongings save for a bag of clothes, my laptop and an iPod. I have never left South Africa or gone overseas before, so there was tons of anxiety and stress about going somewhere completely alien. For the past couple of months I have been on edge about the stress of making this work, if I can find a sense of place and the inspiration I need to do this sort of passion-driven work, but on an ever bigger scale. The fear has been crippling; I need to feel to do my work well, but can I produce those feels when I’m not even certain if I can find an attachment to a place?

I arrived in Neuchâtel, Switzerland last week. Before work kicked off at my new university, I had a few days to explore the city and surrounding region. I packed a backpack and spent half a week doing what I know best - jamming in some earbuds, losing myself to music, and just purposelessly walking. 

Your jams, but Evolve more specifically, became the center piece of my soundtrack as I began to locate comfort and solace in an unfamiliar land. Listening to True while climbing up verdant hills with mist rolling down into the terraced residential districts below. Forever providing the backdrop to streetcars pulling themselves through a rain soaked dusky thoroughfare. Regret becoming the soundtrack to an exploration of abandoned industrial buildings, climbing their walls as a river cuts into solid granite channels below. Lean On and Can’t Get Enough defining long sunset walks back along the pebble-strewn, crystal clear shores of the lake back to my apartment after a weekend of getting lost yet becoming found.  

I now have this album that is fundamentally associated with the emotional connection of starting to find a sense of place and purpose - of building the memories that constitute “home”. 

As my life and work progresses across the next three years, varied pieces of music will fall in and out of rotation as I further explore and write about South African and now European cities. However, Evolve will always remain as the standout album that offered a canvas upon which to write myself and lay down those initial roots - each song becoming a map to navigate both the physical and emotional nooks and crannies of a new home. 

In that sense, Evolve is more than just another album on my cityscape playlist - it’s become a fundamental part of my identity in Switzerland. It gave me the confidence to make this work and to find a place here.

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This video documentary project right here, massive source of inspiration for unravelling the everyday processes that inspire creatives and artists in Japan. Artistery is based within the mundane, not the exceptional. 

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Skating reflections - Cape Town, 2016

Switzerland, 2018

While back to doing what I do best (terrorising the neighbourhood dogs with the rittle-rattle of polyurethane on cobbled roads), the vibrations under my feet induced the feels to remember why getting back on a board is imbued with such emotion.

Then I remembered I wrote this two years ago when I decided to make a conscious endeavour to incorporate skating into my psychogeographic practice. This was spurred on by a feeling of connection with my dad that being on a board offered; an affinity I never had the opportunity to experience while he was around.

I guess Snakes are home on a board, on land or sea <3

Cape Town, 2016

For most of my life, I never understood my dad’s fascination with the sea and surfing. It was a relationship I ultimately envied, always selfishly wondering why my dad would spend time obsessing over something that just didn’t click with me. It became a “something” I couldn’t share with him as his son, while countless youngsters on the beach could; kids who admired him for this unfathomable relationship he had with the sea.

I have spent most of my adolescent and young adult life regretting that I just couldn’t share that fascination with him. Unlike my older brother and father, the beach and the sea just isn’t something that resonates with me; it isn’t part of my emotional or mental make-up. This has really stuck with me; becoming a regret I’ve agonised over and struggled to come to terms with, while searching for a part of my father within my self.

The past couple of months I’ve been messing around with a cheapie but decent skateboard I picked up. Something just struck a chord in me, like, it’s time to finally learn to skate properly. I’ve spent most nights pulling that board apart, learning how each component works by itself and in relation to other parts of the setup, tinkering and tightening, falling and getting up until I found a setup, style and rhythm that works for me.

Just simply cruising and bombing through the back roads of Rondebosch once dusk has set in has been my meditation. Everything clicks as I lose myself through the quickly darkening streets.

The feel of the trucks adjusting beneath my feet as I gently sway my knees and hips back and forth, the varied staccato and vibrato of the whirling of the wheels as they transition over different suburban surfaces. The vacuum of the evening silence, gently pierced by polyurethane on gravel.

I am by no means a good skater, I’m probably terrible in the eyes of any half decent amateur. But I am not skating and cruising to impress like a younger, more self-conscious me may have once done; I’m doing it for myself. Being on a board in the silence of my own mind is about coming to terms with my own shadows; in this is a sense of contemplative comfort and relief that I have never quite experienced through a sport or hobby. It is the meditation and solace I have long sought, allowing me in an instance of an emotion to work through the chaos that typically addles my mind.

In essence, my board is a reflexive mirror; a developing limb helping my body to reach out, grab and parse the conscious and unconscious moments and affect that pass by.

Aimlessly wandering, turning and getting lost down random cul-de-sacs and streets, places only really known to their wealthy inhabitants, safely tucked away behind their high walled estate and unaware of the nightscape surrounding and unfolding around them. Following a loose trail of dim Phosphorus orange glow back to the hostel at the school. It all just makes sense. It is sense in its senselessness.

The moment I somehow meander my way back home, I am compelled to repeatedly head out again and re-experience all of this; following a different trajectory through the streets of the suburbs that may offer me new insights and experiences. A hunger to carry on until my legs pain and my eyes strain, and physical fatigue sets in. A physical fatigue that does a disservice to the insatiable appetite of my mind and soul to see, feel and hear more of the gravel crunching beneath my new and increasingly familiar extension of my being: my deck.

So Michael, ultimately I could never replicate the exact situation and context that drove your life and passion. I wasn’t meant for the sea. I was however meant for the urban and the streets, and in finding a way to become one with this landscape — to map out its contours and it’s geography through my body — I feel like I have come a little closer to finding a parallel to your own experience.

It is a parallel that hopefully allows me to continue feeling your presence; to feel you alongside me as I carve streets and blaze my own unique trail with my own life experiences. I’ll ceaselessly search for that presence; that “something” that compels me to strive to empathise and understand a man I didn’t have the chance to (or make the opportunity to) wholly acknowledge as a part of me while alive.

Nearly five years on, I hope I’ve grown into a son you would have been proud of.

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Skating reflections - Neuchatel, 2018

A month since arriving in Neuchâtel; what emotion to cruise stretches, those that not so long ago felt insurmountably long to a lost mind, but now traversed in a matter of minutes. Each kilometre a new experience, ready to be relearned and navigated at new speeds and intensities.

The thumming of asphalt grading changing textures beneath soft polyurethane. The bend of a knee and the sway of a hip to gently carve into a meandering walkway, weaving in and out between evening joggers. An icy wind catching through the rips in my jeans, their material worn in and mapped by knocks and scrapes from adventures in boarded-mobility since passed. The knowing nod of a passing skater, a mutual acknowledgement of our simultaneous lost-in-the-moment-ness.

All those moments, creating a rooted familiarity in a foreign land. NOW I can feel at home - a wanderer of the cityscape with his tools in tow.

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Love for the pastel-hued scapes of Fez

Fez was one of those fleeting, ephermeral experiences that continues to occupy a little corner of your mind. Spending days becoming lost in it’s world when it released for Vita, I fell in love not necessarily with the game as a ludo-experience itself, but rather the end delivered through a gameplay medium: the pictueresque worlds and accompanying soundtrack on offer. 

Fez presents worlds that are devoid of life, but never feel sterile or barren. Without much dialgoue to convey exposition, the game relies upon atmosphere to create a bread crumb trail of insights through which the player creates their own narrative of the situations in which they find themselves placed.

With the release of Fez on iOS, I have found myself dabbling in these worlds once again; less concerned with trying to reach an end goal rather finding bliss in becoming lost in the bliss of the beauty of pastel-hued trixelated landscapes and Disasterpeace’s haunting 8bit ambience.

On returning to take up the mantle of Gomez, I found solace in realising how unwittlingly embedded his adventure had become in shaping my popular imagining and sense of colour relation. Fez offered an aesthethic style and language that just tickled my fancy in all the right ways. These are influences that are prevalent even in unconscious spaces such as my dreams. 

Personal standouts from the soundtrack:

https://youtu.be/rHW2mtuc6pc

https://youtu.be/Pl-fz_cRL6M

https://youtu.be/MdY-iueFsoo

https://youtu.be/6lWqchH05HA

https://youtu.be/KeWFzsqLsH0

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Metatextual analysis as a media product in of itself: Second Quest

“It’s not so much a question of whether a princess—or anyone—needs to be saved/protected,” Thompson said. “It’s that no one ever asks the princess what she wants to begin with. It’s really a question of agency and subjectivity. Who gets to act? Whose subjectivity matters?

There’s a missing woman at the heart of the Zelda series. And not just captured, imprisoned, needing to be saved, but fundamentally absent.... The legend of the title is quite right. That’s all Zelda is - a legend.”

https://www.themarysue.com/second-quest-review/

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Pavement Specials TV

Excerpts from a proposal given to a former employer for an action-research oriented documentary. It was pooh-poohed, so dumping here for future use/inspiration, because fuck the haters. 

Pavement Specials TV 

A short-form documentary series, focusing on creative individuals that bridge the spatial divide between the central city and south east city regions through the nature of their day-to- day work.  

Overview 

A short-form online documentary series focusing on the relationship and connection held by Cape Tonian creatives between senses of places and belonging, and their resultant creative inspiration. In form, each episode focuses on a local creative individual or collective as they self-narrate the viewer through their day-to- day process, and the places across the city they feel regularly drawn to for inspiration.

The series is interested in how creative inspiration plays out across both perceived and actual spatial divides that define our city, and the manner in which this shapes a unique sense of identity for Cape Town creatives working in neighbourhoods beyond the central city. The series aims to spatially contextualise the soul and sense of place that inspires the creative process of our most underrated and infrequently celebrated local talent, specifically those who work beyond the limelight of traditional mainstream and commercial creative industries. 

The inspiration and proof of concept 

Toco Toco TV is a successful Japanese online documentary effort aiming to capture the more day-to- day nuances of how creative people work.Much of their output on YouTube consists of ten-minute long interviews with a focus on a more diverse and unexpected range of creatives who are primarily based in and draw inspiration from Japan’s city centres. These short interviews play out as a seamless monologue from the creative as a single-camera video shoot trails a few hours spent of their day. 

These aren’t necessarily the top designers or the hot flavour of the month creative, but rather the quirky types who have been embedded in local scenes and have often struggled away in their niche in a dedicated manner for years. These are the individuals often working in more in-between and unexpected spaces of the creative industry, not for glory and income but for the expressive vision they believe in. One of the central thrusts of the series (especially videos with creatives based in Tokyo) is for creatives to open up about the places they feel a connection with; a place that offers an anchoring or a sense of significance in a day-to- day manner. 

This could take the form of that one spot they consistently walk past, drop by or spend a couple of minutes relaxing at. It could be a coffee shop, a gritty side street bar, corner shop café, a park, an open space, or a street or building that strikes a chord with them.After having the creative spend a couple of minutes explaining their practice and craft, much of the video begins to unfold how these everyday moments of attachment to place actually inspire and inform the maker process and the products created. The documentary series is adept at going beyond just describing the maker process, rather offering more time to meander and surface the sense of community or a sense of isolation created through being at a certain space. Even nostalgic moments and seemingly unrelated stories from the past that emerge from visiting a space are given the limelight, as the series understands that these mundane moments are fundamental to a creative’s process. 

When taken as a whole, the Toco Toco TV series begins to weave a rich tapestry of interwoven narratives on creativity between very different individuals with diverse inspirations, needs and forms of practice. However, it demonstrates that across these differences, creativity and a sense of place are part of the same process.The unspoken central thrust of the documentary series that I pull inspiration from is thus: How does place and place making inspire and drive the everyday creative process of those embedded in the city? 

Pavement Specials TV 

A frequently released, online, short-form documentary series of vignettes that champions the everyday experiences of local Cape Town creatives. Each episode is dedicated to a local creative, offering a space to self-narrate their own insights around their craft and visually demonstrate their sense of place in the city and the industry. 

The core tenants 

The well-established and more mainstream commercial-orientated creatives in Cape Town’s central city already have several platforms open and available to them. This documentary may include voices and representation from some of those creatives, but it is not driven by or for them in its purpose.Rather, a Pavement Specials series would place the focus on those Cape Town creatives working in a manner different to that seen in the mainstream and traditional commercial spheres (even including those who perhaps do not even identify as creative because of the lack of relatability they find in the central city’s elitist design and creative space). 

The focus would be placed squarely on individuals and collectives based in the South East suburbs of the Cape Town metropolitan area (areas like Athlone Nyanga, Gugulethu, and Khayelitsha) who have created creative responses and have established or in the process of establishing productive and positive livelihoods for themselves and others in their neighbourhoods. The series would also aim to document creatives who are not just bound to their home neighbourhood, but also make attempts to work between spaces (specifically between their neighbourhoods and the central city) and explore the manner in which this spatial relationship shapes their understanding of their craft. 

This spatial relationship need not necessarily be portrayed in a politically-heavy manner, but rather in a way that is honest and offers some insight into how the environment the creative finds themselves in shapes what they in turn put out in the world.Key to this aspect of the series would be to offer artists the space to surface how perceived and how actual is the spatial divide in their own lives. Articulating for themselves how they negotiate it, how this inspires their own work and what places they claim as their own across and between the geographies of Cape Town. 

Where is the gap? 

Investigating these questions is typically the domain of academic researchers and activists. Such groups have already written and conducted investigations around this spatial relationship, but not in a way that is grounded and takes on a form that is popular and easily digestible by a broad audience.Academic styled research work also fails to contextualises the experience of Cape town through following the day-to- day, almost auto-ethnographic and self-reflective experience of a creative.A Pavement Specials TV series on Cape Town would therefore be decidedly more humble and honest in its form, following the simple format of Toco Toco TV in offering creatives a platform to express themselves in their own voice and on their terms, in their own spaces, while busy in their own routine. 

The clincher 

In essence, this Pavement Specials series would offer unique insight not yet seen in Cape Town’s mainstream online media space: an approachable form of media that provides creatives with a space to honestly self-reflect on their spatial relationship with the city in their own voice, and the manner in which this relationship inspires and informs their own work.Rather than pontificating and preaching around spatial inequality, this series makes these very real issues far more relatable to a general audience by visually representing key issues at the level of the everyday. With a visual and narrative focus that privileges the patterns, places and people that creatives engage with every day, each episode can tell a fundamental, empathetic human story that cuts across demographic differences.

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Mastery through the mundane

Reflecting back on watching Jiro Dreams of Sushi years ago, and rewatching aspects of it late last night, something resonated with recent thoughts concerning mundanity.

For Jiro, a Michelin Star sushi chef, his perspectives on the relationship between life and a career emerge through a lens of decades dedicated to the Mastery of his craft.

"You must immerse yourself in your work. You have to fall in love with your work. Never complain about your job. You must dedicate your life to mastering your skill. That's the secret of success and is the key to being regarded honorably."   

Find solace in work that you find yourself in; for intense passion towards a “dream job” and resentment towards one you merely stick to for money are extreme sides of the same spectrum.

Satisfaction and solace in a career, and by extension the life with which it is complicit, comes from the development of depth in simple routine and process. The autonomous, meditative-like state of repetition of a task is where true mastery lies.

This Mastery is not given or conjured up through thought and conjecture; it is a production formed through skill, which, in turn, manifests through this dedication to the routine.

This advocacy of Mastery may not be universal in its application, for it is certainly informed by a very particular cultural perspective. However, as I become increasingly congnisant and familiar with the relationship between myself and the productive process through which I aspire to define myself, I become increasingly drawn to such narratives.

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An advocacy for the mundane in our personal psychologies. Not because it provides bombastic, riveting adventure but because it is necessary. “The thing about repairing, maintaining and cleaning is: it’s not an adventure. There’s no way to do it so wrong you might die. It’s just work. And the bottom line is: some people are OK going to work and some people, well some people would rather die. Each of us gets to choose."

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"What exactly is doing nothing?"

"Going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering”

Life philosophy right here. 

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Rakugo reflections on South African performative oral history.

Reflecting back on spoken word poets at a Reclaim the City Tafelberg event has spurred on thinking about spoken word performances in other nations and cultures.

In Japan there's a revered form of single person spoken-word performance called Rakugo. The practice of Rakugo is so entwined across the varied regional and cultural topography of the nation, that the art form has entered the popular imagining as a living historic practice across all ages, dialects and social groups: Rakugo is understood as foundational in the imagining of language, comedy and expression for the nation as a whole. This is especially true since the performance of the Rakugo itself (across all levels of performance, from the street-side theater through to thousand-strong audiences) is still anchored in recalling historical, cultural practices that evoke a popular imagining of what defines Japan. A selection of routines that differ from region to region and between dialects allow a rakugoka to recall well-established and varied oral histories that resonate with the audience, while putting their own spin, twists and creative use of limited everyday items as props to expand on the mythos of the expected Rakugo performance and keep the audience enthralled. 

Remembering back to the manner in which the spoken poet performed at the Seapoint promenade, reciting and calling aspects of his rooted history into his self-expression, still produces tingles running down my spine. Despite the difference between the performer and myself, I was able to acknowledge and connect at some fundamental, basic level. That acknowledgement has been carried through in the front of my memory to present, a full year later. That basic connection, generated through a shared and common national identity is perhaps at the basis of a performance of Rakugo. How lovely would it be for a country like ours with such varied linguistic variations and differences, to support, elevate and universally revere forms of spoken word that sustain, enrich and carry forth our oral histories. I may be completely ignorant, but I know nothing of any South African local, established forms of spoken work performance that recall popular, historical stories. I have no doubt they exist and that they are plentiful. And the point is that I should - that should be in our immediate conscious as a nation, regardless of race or linguistic group if we are to take ourselves seriously as a "nation" with some semblance of a shared cultural identity. I may not necessarily want to know every story, or even particularly want to frequent such performances, but at the very least I should know that they exist and acknowledge them. The fact that I know more about Rakugo off the top of my head than any local form of historically-rooted performance forms in the same vein is something I'm particularly ashamed of.

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The real af flipside of Japanese culture

To counter my mild obsession with “kawaii” Japan, I have an equal interest in the sense of rootedness(less) and senses of place and belonging that form the identity of the hikikomori and Internet Cafe Refugess; two groups among many who live on the fringe of society...

Hikikomori: Those who find escapism in their resignation from the weight of social escapism, becoming reclusive introverts.

>https://qz.com/924866/a-new-newspaper-in-japan-aims-to-help-the-countrys-population-of-social-recluses/ >https://www.nippon.com/en/currents/d00332/

Internet Cafe Refugees: The many who find themselves in between the gaps of society; unsupported by the same society that is all to willing to exploit their economic or gendered vulnerability. 

>http://disposableworkers.com/?page_id=37

What draws me into these experiences is not the misery or the direness of the situation, but the glimmers of hope and capacity for agency still present for the individuals behind the group label.

I feel particularly drawn to the hikikomori for this reason. I have been considering the potential of indivudals experiencing the pressures of social expectation to in turn use the labelled identity placed upon them as a means to come to terms with and understand their situation. What is the structural pressures exerted upon them, and coming to grips with their capacity for agency in spite of these structural impositions. 

As seen quite frequently in grassroots struggles in South Africa with regards to imposed artifically constructed identities such as being “poor”, these often racist, colonial-imbued identities actually enable people on their recieving end to form collectives under that label to find empowerment, and in turn, to demonstrate why such structurally imposed identities fail to capture the nuance of individual struggles. 

I feel a similar academic lens placed upon the hikikomori could provide interesting insights into expectation and pressure; particularly from how such pressures emerging from a very particular Japanese societal context manifests as identity subject positions that outright defy the expected social convention. This manifested subjectivity is not defiance in a manner that is an active confrontation (as is the case in the South African example), but as defiance through withdraw.

That comparitive element, in of itself, is an interesting hook. 

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20 years on — considering social inclusivity and superordinate goals for children through Pokémon

I felt a pang of nostalgia watching the recently released Japanese advert for this year’s release of Pokémon. I haven’t thought of the venerable gaming series at all lately, but twenty years later and watching the short, tear-jerker promotion brought forth many childhood memories long buried by everyday pressures of adulthood. Memories not of the games themselves, but of the memories surrounding the game: shared experiences with friends. 

Beyond the nostalgia, watching the ad made me consider how digital technologies like Pokémon can become central and relevant to forming senses of place and belonging in children. I’ve been tinkering around for the past year or so with ideas on how diverse, shared and yet also contested senses of citizenship, community, place and belonging can be better understood in motion at the most foundational levels — childhood and adolescence.

This thinking has been spurred on through working and engaging with the social-cultural geographies of the classroom. My more recent line of thinking has been—in these ever unfolding and ever changing micro-place geographies, how can digital technologies and digital classroom interventions begin to form a comfortable space for self-expressed place and citizenship that, first; helps students locate and internal sense of place and belonging, a sense of purpose and place in a world that they have an active, contributing role in, and, second; offers them the self-confidence to reiterate and relate those senses of identity and societal roles to play in a collective (confidently established in a comfortable, personalised digital space) back into their everyday “real-world” social relations and space.

In essence: How does potential for social connectedness across differences— to deepen senses of place and belonging in relation to others — begin to be surfaced through the digital, and then actualised into practiced and “real”, empathy-driven social connections? Is there any well-established best-practice or piece of design that demonstrates the possibility to actually actualise social change in such a hybridised manner? Or is this thinking around “digital citizenship” and digital platforms that mediate senses of place and belonging ultimately all just a flash in the pan, self-justifying and lofty rhetoric without any sort of real grounding?

Serendipitous then for Pokémon to have just celebrated its anniversary and for me to be reminded of a piece of game design that has consistently held this very ethos in its design for the past two decades. This dimension of social connectedness was the intended design foundation for the original Gameboy release of Pokémon from the outset. The lead designer of GameFreak, Satoshi Tajiri, has explicitly stated that the basis for the idea of “trading” pieces of virtual data — the titular ‘mons — was to create a gaming experience that offered an intermediary platform between children and their everyday relationships with one another. An ice-breaker for situations where children would otherwise struggle or feel awkward in new, unfamiliar or difficult social settings.

Through using a “social pretext” (something that strikes a common chord in all children regardless of their differences like language, nationality, religion, gender, and race) kids would be provided with something to naturally connect with each other and share mutual experiences as they pursue the ultimate goal of the game. The pursuit of this ultimate goal to catch all the ‘mons and becoming a great player— performed through trading and battling in game — can only be realised through meeting face-to-face, working collaboratively in person and learning to communicate with others in the “real” world. Ultimately, despite their perceived social differences (nationality, language, race, gender, etc.), by the end of their playtime kids would have mutually worked towards a commonly realised superordinate goal that could unite them.

The visual design language and the over-arching narrative themes of the series that drive these super-ordinate goals are also universal in their approach, helping to reinforce the deliberate social-interaction design intention. Monsters are deliberately designed to relate to common archetypal animals, creatures, mythologies and ideas shared by all cultures. Beyond the visual design though, progression in the game is driven by a story to pursue “greatness”, but a form of “greatness” that is realised in a personal way. The game allows players to make deliberate and recognisable progress at a pace that seems almost tailor-fitted to each and every individual person. Despite the overall story beats being the same for every player, the moment-to-moment narratives created along that story will be unique for each player and will differ every play through. 

This emergent gameplay narrative reiterates a shared common end goal, but with infinite persona stories to reach that point. Additionally, progress along the moment-to-moment narrative beats can only be achieved through making deliberate decisions and strategic planning; tough calls around battle team make-up that can only be made by the player with the knowledge of the context, aims and objectives they have established in their own adventure.

Despite this leaning towards a westernised, individualised notion of achievement and “greatness”, the game also naturally finds balance by providing the space for more eastern, communal-led notions of everyday, mundane greatness to emerge. The game is practically designed to generate break-time chatter between kids, spurring them on to share their own strategies, tips and rumours; communal advice to be respected, taken on, tinkered with, and applied to your very own adventure to help spur your story further along.

Across two decades, every iteration of the main game series still contains the same design philosophy that was established in the DNA of the original release in 1996. Not regarding game mechanics, the general design philosophy of the overall digital package is timeless. As such, it is immaterial if the series is no longer relevant to you; as a piece of social-orientated design, the series will live on beyond your present-day, adult opinions. The fact that I teach fourteen-year-old kids who have fond memories for the release of a Pokémon game that came out five years prior (at a time when they were only eight or nine years old)— and speaking around that nostalgia in a way that is reminiscent of my own nostalgia — demonstrates at its core how superbly designed and crafted as an interaction experience, and thus timeless and consistently relevant to younger generations, this venerable series shall remain.

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The selling out of the everyday urban soul

Reading The Con Magazine’s article on gentrification (http://www.theconmag.co.za/…/19/the-gentrification-equation/) was a super affirming experience. Gamieldien’s description of Salt River mirrors my own experience and insight over five years ago into the suburb and its relation to the broader gentrification discussion. 

However, another part of the article that particularly struck a chord was the description of the Bromwell Hotel. The article rightfully describes this wanky space as the confluence of artifice, lampshading the broader systems of inequality playing out in the area. However, it did not do justice in explaining why the Bromwell site is especially tragic given the context.

From my Masters fieldwork, it became clear from conversations with old locals long embedded in the Salt River/Woodstock milleau that The Bromwell served as one of the most significant cosmopolitan spaces in the Southern Suburbs. Much like the Junction, the Standard and the Locomotive, the hotel for nearly a century served as a key gathering point for navigational engineers, railway workers, bankers, skollies, factory workers, et al to gather and share a common space, the same food and drink during the height of apartheid and racisalised inequality.

Across race, class and gender differences, people found ways to be brought into frequent contact with one another within the hotel space despite harsh apartheid controls. This, in turn, generated a unique manifold cosmopolitan place identity in Salt River and Woodstock centred on these hotel establishments (note: I use the term cosmopolitan in the tradition of Lefebvre and Simmel, and not in the trite manner it gets thrown about in coffee-shop urbanisms).

The Bromwell was regarded by many as the crowning jewel of the city of Cape Town’s hotel establishments. It is with this context that the present state of the Bromwell is made that much more tragic, especially so for the older groups of diverse locals that I spent much of my Masters hanging and drinking with. 

The term “simulacra” or zombie urbanism does not even begin to describe the dislocated place-ness of the present-day Bromwell – removed of the context that shaped the soul of not only the building, but the community that surrounded it. It is profoundly more political than mere "development".

This is what we call progress.