Corpore praesenti. Walking in urbanscape with Siegfried Kracauer and Georges Perec

Walkscaping is a complex, tiresome, probably infinite activity but also necessary. This activity can use or produce very different descriptive practices, which are embodied respectively by the German sociologist and philosopher Siegfried Kracauer and by the the French writer Georges Perec. These two authors, so different from each other in terms of biography, geography, cultural background and forma mentis, still present some features in common. Both are deeply in love with the urban space, and so dedicate themselves elegantly to the art of flânerie, walkscaping as a philosophy and a writing practice; both use the eye as an instrument of investigation into reality; both are interested in what usually passes by unnoticed, the obvious, the secondary, the daily (both have polemical instances against sociology, which captures only the most extravagant and exceptional aspects of life). Borrowing an expression from Stefano Boeri, both Perec and Kracauer can be defined as ‘detectives of space’. Their apprehension (as much as their hopes) denote an unmistakable urban matrix that makes their work actually unintelligible if it’s deprived of its reference to the urbanscape (whose chasms they explore restlessly, walking on its streets). The city is an integral part of their personality, it’s their chez soi. But, leaving these affinities aside, there are also differences between the two in the way that they look at the urbanscape. In the chapter I will try to point out their visions of walkscape, focusing and discussing them.