Instagram: Flowing with Flanuers

 

Image 1: The Price of Anonymity (Ebangelista, 2016)

When you gaze through Instagram you frequently come across many different types of people from all over the world to people you may know in real life.  The way we portray ourselves in everyday life is often carried over into our social media posts, where we often share who we are as a person. We engage and join in with conversations, and comment or like photos that are relevant to us. However, our personality can be shaped differently through the use of cyberspace if we choose to adapt the behaviour of the online flanuer and learn to “enjoy becoming part of the space and inhabit these spaces whilst lurking and observing rather than engaging” (Kuttainen, 2016)

Unlike everyday people, the flanuer chooses to inhabit new spaces such as communities on Instagram by drawing attention to themselves every now and then but do it in such a way that they still maintain their anonymity. The flanuer seems to be able to take networks such as Instagram and make themselves part of the spectacle by following their own “…spatial and temporal boundaries through a cognitive mapping of points of orientation…” (Barnes, 1997, p.1) If the flanuer chooses to follow his own boundaries, he is able to move through this space and the communities of Instagram freely as well as being able to “disappear in the spaces of the city” (Barnes, 1997, p.1)  By doing this, he is able to become an ‘image of movement through the social space of modernity’ (Barnes, 1997, p.1)

Conor McGarrigle’s 2013 paper Forgetting the Flanuer embraces this concept by supporting the theory that the flanuer’s objective is becoming involved in the creation of new internet spaces and the communities which this creation fosters.  In ones perspective, it seems that Instagram is becoming home to many flanuer’s who use the site to make themselves part of the ongoing urbanism being embraced and introduced through the site via the Instagram communities.

References

Barnes, G. (1997). Passage of the Flaneur. Otago University, New Zealand

Kuttainen, V. (2016). BA1002: Our space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, lecture 4: Maps and Networks [Powerpoint slides]. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au

McGarrigle, C. (2013). Forgetting the Flaneur. 19^th International Symposium of Electronic Art. Retrieved from https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/2123/9647/1/forgetflaneur.pdf

The Price of Anonymity. Photo taken by Antonio Ebangelista. Retrieved August 17, 2016 from https://plus.google.com/108809478498159880623/posts/GEMW5SDEUWN