Walking Through Time: Flânerie and Modernity in Latvian Interwar Culture (2023–2025)

Project No: lzp-2022/1-0505

Implementation period: 2023-2025

Project funding: EUR 300 000

Head of the project: Kārlis Vērdiņš, PhD

Project team: Eva Eglāja-Kristsone, Artis Ostups, Aija Brasliņa, Sanita Duka

The project focuses on the figures of the flaneur and the flaneuse – the solitary observers of urban life – as symbolic representations of modernity and its effects on literature and culture. An important figure in the context of industrialization and urbanization, the flaneur, first as a male character, burst onto the scene of European cities during the 19th century and was later explored by many 20th-century writers and artists. The observant walker, both as a male and a female figure, is inextricably connected to the modern city, which is constantly changing and deeply impacting the way modern subjects experience space and time. The project takes up the figure of the modern walker, which has enjoyed increasing attention from critics during the last decades. It puts it in specific historical and cultural circumstances, namely, those of interwar Latvia (1919–1939), showcasing multiple valuable cases for rethinking flanerie as a historical fact, discursive phenomenon, and conceptual tool. More specifically, the project employs the flaneur and the flaneuse to understand how Latvians adopted the rapid pace of modern life and how this experiential transformation impacted the way human sensibility is expressed within literature, visual art, and life writing.

Last time modified: 28.02.2023 11:06:22