Lauren Elkin

The New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice The flâneur is the quintessentially masculine figure of privilege and leisure who strides the capitals of the world with abandon. But it is the flâneuse who captures the imagination of the cultural critic Lauren Elkin. In her wonderfully gender-bending new book, the flâneuse is a “determined, resourceful individual keenly attuned to the creative potential of the city and the liberating possibilities of a good walk.” Virginia Woolf called it “street haunting”; Holly Golightly epitomized it in Breakfast at Tiffany’s; and Patti Smith did it in her own inimitable style in 1970s New York. Part cultural meander, part memoir, Flâneuse takes us on a distinctly cosmopolitan jaunt that begins in New York, where Elkin grew up, and transports us to Paris via Venice, Tokyo, and London, all cities in which she’s lived. We are shown the paths beaten by such flâneuses as the cross-dressing nineteenth-century novelist George Sand, the Parisian artist Sophie Calle, the wartime correspondent Martha Gellhorn, and the writer Jean Rhys. With tenacity and insight, Elkin creates a mosaic of what urban settings have meant to women, charting through literature, art, history, and film the sometimes exhilarating, sometimes fraught relationship that women have with the metropolis. Called “deliciously spiky and seditious” by The Guardian, Flâneuse will inspire you to light out for the great cities yourself.

Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London

Flâneuse

Scaffolding

A love letter to Paris and a meditation on how it has changed in two decades, evolving from the twentieth century into the twenty-first, from analog to digital. Your telephone is precious. It may be envied. We recommend vigilance when using it in public. --Paris bus public notice In fall 2014 Lauren Elkin began keeping a diary of her bus commutes in the Notes app on her iPhone 5c, writing down the interesting things and people she saw in a Perecquian homage to Bus Lines 91 and 92, which she took from her apartment in the 5th Arrondissement to her teaching job in the 7th. Reading the notice, she decided to be vigilant when using her phone: she would carry out a public transport vigil, using it to take in the world around her and notice all the things she would miss if she continued using it the way she had been, the way everyone does--to surf the web, check social media, maintain her daily sense of self through digital interaction. Her goal became to observe the world through the screen of her phone, rather than using her phone to distract from the world. During the course of that academic year, the Charlie Hebdo attacks occurred and Elkin had an ectopic pregnancy, requiring emergency surgery. At that point, her diary of dailiness became a study of the counterpoint between the everyday and the Event, mediated through early twenty-first century technology, and observed from the height of a bus seat. No. 91/92 is a love letter to Paris, and a meditation on how it has changed in the two decades the author has lived there, evolving from the twentieth century into the twenty-first, from analog to digital.

A Diary of a Year on the Bus

No. 91/92

On Beauty and Excess

Art Monsters

Flanöz

Simone de Beauvoir

Deborah Levy

Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir

The Newly Discovered Novel from Simone de Beauvoir

Inseparables

Selected as a Book of the Year 2016 by the Financial Times, Guardian, New Statesman, Observer, The Millions and Emerald Street 'FlOneuse (flanne-euhze), noun, from the French. Feminine form of flOneur (flanne-euhr), an idler, a dawdling observer, usually found in cities. That is an imaginary definition.' If the word flOneur conjures up visions of Baudelaire, boulevards and bohemia - then what exactly is a flOneuse? In this gloriously provocative and celebratory book, Lauren Elkin defines her as 'a determined resourceful woman keenly attuned to the creative potential of the city, and the liberating possibilities of a good walk'. Part cultural meander, part memoir, FlOneuse traces the relationship between the city and creativity through a journey that begins in New York and moves us to Paris, via Venice, Tokyo and London, exploring along the way the paths taken by the flOneuses who have lived and walked in those cities. From nineteenth-century novelist George Sand to artist Sophie Calle, from war correspondent Martha Gellhorn to film-maker Agnes Varda, FlOneuse considers what is at stake when a certain kind of light-footed woman encounters the city and changes her life, one step at a time.

Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London

Flaneuse

'Destined to become a new classic' Chris Kraus A dazzlingly original reassessment of women's stories, bodies and art - and how we think about them. For decades, feminist artists have confronted the problem of how to tell the truth about their experiences as bodies. Queer bodies, sick bodies, racialised bodies, female bodies, what is their language, what are the materials we need to transcribe it? Exploring the ways in which feminist artists have taken up this challenge, Art Monsters is a landmark intervention in how we think about art and the body. Weaving daring links between disparate artists and writers – from Julia Margaret Cameron’s photography to Kara Walker’s silhouettes, Vanessa Bell’s portraits to Eva Hesse’s rope sculptures – Lauren Elkin shows that their work offers a potent celebration of beauty and excess, sentiment and touch, the personal and the political. ‘The Susan Sontag of her generation’ Deborah Levy

Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art

Your telephone is precious. It may be envied. We recommend vigilance when using it in public. -- Paris bus public notice In Autumn 2014 Lauren Elkin began keeping a diary of her bus commutes in the Notes app on her iPhone 5c. Reading the notice, she decided to carry out a public transport vigil, using her phone to take in the world around her in homage to the famous Oulipian Georges Perec. Writing down all the interesting things and people she saw on bus lines 91 and 92, which she took from her apartment in the 5th Arrondissement to her teaching job in the 7th, Lauren's goal was to observe the world through the screen of her phone, rather than using her phone to distract her. During that year, the Charlie Hebdo attacks occurred and Lauren had an ectopic pregnancy, requiring emergency surgery. At that point, her diary of dailiness became a study of the everyday and the Event, mediated through early twenty-first century technology, and observed from the height of a bus seat. No. 91/92 is a love letter to Paris and a meditation on how it has changed in the two decades the author has lived there. It's a celebration of community and a time when we could all observe each other in our fleshy up-closeness.

No. 91/92: a Parisian Bus Diary

"This collection first published with the title 'Early Levy' by Penguin Books 2014"--Title page verso.

Two Early Novels

Beautiful Mutants and Swallowing Geography

Si le mot "flâneur" évoque immédiatement Baudelaire, les Grands Boulevards et la vie de bohème, qu'en est-il de la flâneuse ? Dans ce livre jubilatoire, ode piquante à la déambulation au féminin, Lauren Elkin la présente comme une femme "déterminée et pleine de ressources, profondément en phase avec le potentiel créatif de la ville et le pouvoir émancipateur d'une bonne balade". Mais elle nous montre aussi que revendiquer d'occuper ainsi l'espace urbain reste pour les femmes un acte subversif. De New York à Paris, de Tokyo à Londres et Venise, Lauren Elkin croise en chemin les flâneuses qui y vécurent - de la réalisatrice Agnès Varda à la correspondante de guerre Martha Gellhorn, en passant par les romancières George Sand et Virginia Woolf. L'auteure s'attache à mettre au jour ce qui se joue chaque fois qu'une femme au pied léger sort à la rencontre de la ville, comment chacun de ses pas contribuera à transformer son existence.

Reconquérir la ville pas à pas

Un ensayo reivindicativo sobre la experiencia singular de pasear siendo mujer. El flâneur nació en el París del siglo XIX. Su hábitat natural eran los bulevares y las galerías de la ciudad. "La multitud es su dominio, como el aire es el del pájaro, como el agua el del pez", escribió Charles Baudelaire. El flâneur es un hombre ocioso que pasea y observa a la vez, pero desde la distancia: no se involucra. Sin embargo, para Baudelaire la flâneuse no existe. Las mujeres no tenían la libertad de los hombres para acceder a las calles de la ciudad porque se veían reducidas a ser objeto de la mirada de los paseantes. ¿Qué es entonces una flâneuse? Una mujer que no solo contempla, sino que también participa. Su presencia en un espacio que tradicionalmente no le pertenece supone un desafío. Donde el flâneur mira, la flâneuse perturba y subvierte. Elkin hace un recorrido literal y metafórico por las ciudades en las que ha vivido; a través de sus paseos nos descubre una nueva mirada y reivindica el derecho de las mujeres a pasear. La flâneuse se detiene en los detalles y amplía la mirada, toma notas de su propia experiencia y las entrelaza con las de otras artistas, escritoras, cineastas y periodistas (George Sand, Sophie Calle, Martha Gellhorn o Agnès Varda) a las que admira y cuyas visiones han formado y transformado la de la propia autora. De Nueva York a Londres, de París a Venecia pasando por Tokio, cada ciudad encierra el juego, la fascinación, el peligro y la familiaridad que sirven a la autora para reclamar el derecho de las mujeres a pasear por la ciudad, a ocupar el espacio público y a alejarse de lo que se supone que deben ser para cambiar sus vidas por completo: "Dejadme pasear. Dejad que vaya a mi ritmo. Dejad que sienta cómo se mueve la vida a través y alrededor de mí. Dadme emoción. Dadme esquinas curvas inesperadas. Dadme iglesias inquietantes, bonitos escaparates y parques en los que pueda tumbarme".

Una paseante en París, Nueva York, Tokio, Venecia y Londres

Marco Livingstone

Caroline Walker

Rina Arya

Andrew Nairne

Celebrated for her beautiful, sometimes playful yet often challenging and complex paintings of contemporary women in diverse architectural settings, both interior and exterior, Caroline Walker''s practice explores the myriad social, cultural, economic, racial, and political factors that affect women''s lives today. From the luxurious hotels and private homes typical of Los Angeles and Palm Springs to the temporary social housing of female asylum seekers arriving in Europe from Africa and Asia, from the nail bars of London to the private pools and nighttime parties of the European elite, Walker deftly broaches both everyday and more provocative subjects ranging from the pay gap to migrant workforces, the beauty industry to domestic roles, gender stereotypes to ageism. By addressing such themes and through her painterly virtuosity, Walker is rapidly establishing herself as one of the leading British painters of her generation. The publication features both a significant newly commissioned essay and an in-depth interview with the artist by art historian Marco Livingstone - a leading authority on contemporary art with a particular interest in Pop Art and figurative painting. Together, these two texts offer a comprehensive overview of the subjects, themes and approaches, both conceptually and in terms of technique, that have come to define Walker''s oeuvre. Topics include historical inspiration and references ranging from nineteenth-century French painting to twentieth-century modernist architecture, Walker''s carefully choreographed staging of photoshoots with actors, models, and sitters in various locations around the world, and the role of photography, drawing, and studies in the development of her major works. Through an ongoing dialogue with the artist spanning several years, Livingstone has become a key interlocutor for Walker''s practice, offering readers an opportunity to really get behind the scenes and beneath the surface of her work. Another new text, by Andrew Nairne, director of Kettle''s Yard, University of Cambridge, specifically addresses the body of work ''Home'' that was commissioned and first presented at Kettle''s Yard in spring 2018. For this series, Walker worked with the charity Women for Refugee Women, exploring the lives of asylum-seeking women in temporary accommodation in London. Dr Rina Arya, a professor of visual culture at the University of Huddersfield, focusses in her text on Walker''s paintings of nail bars--commercial, private spaces in the public domain in which the encounter between worker and client can be both depersonalising and strangely intimate. Continuing the publication''s consideration of how Walker represents the complexities and realities of different women''s lives in urban and suburban contexts today, a short yet illuminating text by Paris-based scholar and writer Dr. Lauren Elkin, author of ''Flâneuse: Women Walk the City'' (Chatto & Windus, 2016), offers an introduction to Walker''s series of glimpsed scenes of women at work, whether in hair salons, restaurants or office buildings--the result of the artist''s own record of walking the city in London. ''Picture Window'' is the most substantial and comprehensive publication to date on the work of London-based Scottish artist Caroline Walker (b. 1982, Dunfermline). A graduate of the Glasgow School of Art and the Royal College of Art, London, her rise to the international stage since completing her studies in 2009 has involved solo exhibitions at Kettle''s Yard, Cambridge; GRIMM, Amsterdam and New York; Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles; ProjectB, Milan; and Space K, Gwacheon, among others. Developed and designed by GRIMM, Amsterdam and New York, which has co-published the monograph with Anomie Publishing, UK, ''Picture Window'' is beautifully illustrated by around 170 images including paintings, studies, drawings, and photographs, many of which are published here for the first time. The publication is being launched to coincide with a presentation of Walker''s works at Frieze London in autumn 2018.

Picture Window

Scott Esposito

The Oulipo celebrated its fiftieth birthday in 2010, and as it enters its sixth decade, its members, fans and critics are all wondering: where can it go from here? In two long essays Scott Esposito and Lauren Elkin consider Oulipo's strengths, weaknesses, and impact on today's experimental literature.

An attempt to exhaust a movement

The End of Oulipo?

Svenja Gräfen

Mirjam Aggeler

Leyla Bektaş

Anneke Lubkowitz

Bettina Wilpert

Nadire Y. Biskin

Sibylla Vričić Hausmann

Gerhild Steinbuch

Katharina Sucker

Leona Stahlmann

Anke Stelling

Andra Schwarz

Deniz Ohde

Karin Peschka

Cornelia Manikowsky

Svenja Reiner

Julia Lauter

Anna Hetzer

Dinçer Güçyeter

Halina M. Jordan

Simoné Goldschmidt-Lechner

Katia Sophia Ditzler

Judith Coffey

Sandra Burkhardt

Kamala Dubrovnik

Luna Ali

Flex|en, das, – kein Pl.: 1. trennschleifen 2. biegen 3. Sex haben 4. das Variieren der Geschwindigkeit beim Rap 5. die Muskeln anspannen 6. seine Muskeln zur Schau stellen 7. Flâneuserie In 30 verschiedenen Texten mit 30 verschiedenen Perspektiven auf Städte, alle geschrieben und erlebt von Frauen*, PoC oder queeren Menschen. Texte, die beweisen, dass das Flexen, die Flâneuserie endlich ernst genommen werden muss. Die Figuren in der Anthologie streifen durch Berlin, Paris, Jakarta, Istanbul und Mumbai. Sie erzählen uns u.a. davon, wie eine Frau mit Kinderwagen die Großstadt erlebt, eine Frau eine Großdemonstration in Dresden miterlebt, wie Flanieren in Indien schon Aktivismus bedeutet, wie sich die Geschichte in den Ort einschreibt und manchmal wird die Stadt sogar selbst zur Figur.

Flâneusen* schreiben Städte

FLEXEN

Lauren Elkin

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