Derive in Chichester

"And then i said", another conversation whizzing past me blurring out of sight before it had even begun. I am static in a constant momentum, from left to right people dodge and duck, swirling and twirling, rushing without a purpose. Lost souls in their manufactured utopia they float. The constant movement of feet create a rhythm, a pace, a beat... Heart beat of the city. People are the blood of the city, keep going, keep moving, never stopping in order to keep the city from falling and crumbling into it's Roman walls. They are the fabric of this city but yet they walk and rush, no where near noticing how the city depends upon them, without them it is lost. Music intrudes my ears distracting from my train of thought, I join the wondering crowed. Clumping together to view the spectacle of musicians it changes the place, people have stopped, they are no longer ignorant of each others existence, things somehow feel connected even though the crowed still feel slightly disjointed by the bodies slipping through to try and maintain there ignorance, in their own bubble of nothingness. The music has stopped the crowed has gone, the connection is lost and we fall back into the low hum of chatter, of footsteps, of bags, of bikes, of anything other than each other.

"in a derive, one or more person, durng a certain period, drop thier usualmotives for movement and actio, their relation, their work and lesiure activite, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there" (Debord, quoted in Andreotti and Costa, 1996, p.22)This task was one of the first stages towards my final piece, I decided to do this task in order to gain a perspective of a busy afternoon within Chichester. So I therefore went into the center of town and did some free writing whilst I took myself on a Derive. From this passage that I wrote there are a few things which help toward my final piece the sense of community or lack of community within the last line which is important to me as my aim for the final pieces of site specific work is to bring the community of Chichester together to create not only my final piece but a piece of live art for the community by the community as well as my helping hand.