An Exeter Mis-Guide

8/14/2019 An Exeter Mis-Guide

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An Exeter Mis-Guide

The Mis-Guide is published. Simon Hall, who has been

reconstructing our bathroom says hes reading the Mis-Guide. He isnt sure if hed do any of the actual

suggestions, but it has transformed his way of seeing the

city.

At the launch I think I finally explained the red and white

stick to myself a dtourned ranging rod not straight, but

knobbly, wobbly, lavic a quantum stick to shake atsmooth space and conjure up the bouncing ghosts, the viral

memes, bubbling up out of the museums of breeze, out of

the old farmworkers throat, out from the Wu-Tang

phantoms in the underpass.

The Mis-Guide resists the structure of

accommodation/incorporation in so-called consultation,

in which the site is decided prior to the process. If the Mis-Guide were practised it would define the sites of change,

not the profits from them.

I hadnt fully realised how much the Mis-Guide resists

uniformity, just how mythogeographical it is in its

hybridity, in its spacing of itself, until I read a manuscript

that Cathy was sharing before submitting for publication:


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though it is not theatre, it is conceived as thestimulus for a series ofactions, or performances,

to be created and carriedout by readers, whobecome walkers in thecitys spaces.

In a deliberate reversal(though not a rejection) ofarchaeology, readers are

invited to Look for ruinson which the future canbe built [] Make yourown statue, make yourown thing Two walkssuggest that the walkerturns urban planner.

Another suggests that the walker maps their ownbody onto the city. Another suggests that the walkercreate a memory map, then walking it in reality,examine the ways in which the two measure up:What have you included? What have you left out?As for Winnicotts child, every object is a foundobject. The whole city becomes a field oftransitional objects, part created, part discovered.

On the one hand, the walkers identity is mergedwith the city, projected through the sameimaginative play which allows the city to beintrojected in turn. On the other, the walkeremerges


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from the city, by discovering the boundariesbetween real and imagined, familiar and unfamiliarspaces. At the same time, new spaces and spatial

relationships are produced by the new andunexpected spatial practices that are provoked.

other walks involve exploring or playing alongboundaries: the river, the edges of habitation, thedivide between city and country, the railway, thehome, the parish. Others, again, invite anexploration of the city through an emphasis on a

particular sense touch, smell, sound like a childdiscovering it for the first time. Still othersforeground relationships between people, whetherfellow walkers, or the unseen person who has built ashelter beside the canal. All these walks suggest are-discovery or re-definition of where we are inrelation to the city and its other inhabitants

Any emphasis on personal involvement could seemin danger of ignoring objective analysis, but the Mis-Guide does not dismiss the importance of historicalawareness or political critique (indeed, a localhistorian was included in our steering group).However, it places its emphasis on the changes thatmight be brought about through the creation of newspaces, both imagined and practiced. In this, someof the walks approach activism explicitly, such asin Peace Walk, or implicitly, as in Exeter A-Zwhere the participant is encouraged to insert their


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own messages into the advertising on the busesLED displays.

Cathy Turner, p.12 13, The ciphered river of thestreets: finding a vocabulary for site-specific

performance, manuscript, 2003.

Phil Smith

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An Exeter Mis-Guide