Route

I had a meeting on Friday past that finalized The List. In order to defend before the end of April, it seems that I must complete all of the items on The List by the end of March. March... ironic that that would be my militant month of working. 

Most importantly though, I figured out how I am going to do my Chapter 3. I ad tried a few things but nothing stuck. The question was - how do I show the ways in which the permanent Extraordinary City expresses itself? How does the spatial form of the city inform Carnival? And inversely, how does Carnival inform city space? The way I've decided to tackle this analysis is to consider the parade route step by step. The way I figure, when you walk through the city (or dance through it), your experience is unavoidably framed by the places you move through. So I am going to use the path on one band I followed in Carnival 2009, from its camp, to each judging point. I will look at the spatial qualities of each neighborhood the route passes through and consider the relationships between each judging point and their immediate environment and the historical events which have shaped those spaces into the urban artifacts they are today. 

The point of all this is simple. The Carnival route evolved from the interconnection of different competitions. In a sense the route itself is a true hybrid between the French tradition of pageantry and the African street masquerades. The route does both and leaves room for both. A simple organisational tool. I think I see some Architecture in this after all...