EINSTELLUNGSRAUM e.V. Sylvia Schultes Morphologische Fragmente I

1849 Edgar Allen Poe described the people who pushed past a window of a coffee house in London¹. He did not forget to mention that his first-person narrator just recovered from an illness and with that Poe hinted that after a longer phase of isolation his protagonist reacted oversensitively to outside stimulation. The thus sharpened perception lead to his narrator classifying the objects of his observance - the pedestrians - in a sociological census.

He differentiated two "classes": 1. the compossed and 2. the unresting. Among those he defined by means of their clothing nobel people and people with certain professions, amongst those merchants, barristers, grocers and stock jobbers. The attention he denied these "Eupatridae" (conservative great land owners; note by J.L.Sch) and average people of society he gave to the '"tribe of clercs". With those he found the good manners of the nobel world with a delay of 12-18 months, that is why he saw them 'wearing' those like second hand clothing. Amongst the "division of upper clercs" he identified the offspring from 'good homes'. At twilight he noticed the appearance of the 'race of swell pick-pockets' which had their tryst even before the gamblers and venturers.

Women, junk dealers, innkeepers, drinkers, the poor, the sick and the handicapped and all the others that did not appear downtown Poe's protagonist gets to meet only when he was close on a pedestrian's heels whose face stuck out of the crowd and attracted him so much that on the spur of the moment he decided to follow him. Disquietingly he encompasses in this way also remote streets that lead him to outskirts and slum quarters marked by

Objects in the 4th dimension Johannes L.Schroeder about the exhibition Morphologic Fragments I, Swarm Intelligence For Beginners by Sylvia Schultes I. To probe urban masses of people 1849 Edgar Allen Poe described the people who pushed past a window of a coffee house in London¹. He did not forget to mention that his first-person narrator just recovered from an illness and with that Poe hinted that after a longer phase of isolation his protagonist reacted oversensitively to outside stimulation. The thus sharpened perception lead to his narrator classifying the objects of his observance - the pedestrians - in a sociological census. He differentiated two "classes": 1. the compossed and 2. the unresting. Among those he defined by means of their clothing nobel people and people with certain professions, amongst those merchants, barristers, grocers and stock jobbers. The attention he denied these "Eupatridae" (conservative great land owners; note by J.L.Sch) and average people of society he gave to the '"tribe of clercs". With those he found the good manners of the nobel world with a delay of 12-18 months, that is why he saw them 'wearing' those like second hand clothing. Amongst the "division of upper clercs" he identified the offspring from 'good homes'. At twilight he noticed the appearance of the 'race of swell pick-pockets' which had their tryst even before the gamblers and venturers. Women, junk dealers, innkeepers, drinkers, the poor, the sick and the handicapped and all the others that did not appear downtown Poe's protagonist gets to meet only when he was close on a pedestrian's heels whose face stuck out of the crowd and attracted him so much that on the spur of the moment he decided to follow him. Disquietingly he encompasses in this way also remote streets that lead him to outskirts and slum quarters marked by	illness, stink and alcoholism. The second part of the story - the night half - is dedicated to those inhabitants of the exterior of the city. On few pages Poe developed a snap-shot of the city which have for one half been gathered by views from a coffee house table. On few pages Poe developed a snap-shot of the city that in the first half of the story which has been gathered by views from a coffee house table. In the other half he sets his watching narrator motion. He leaves his constant spot to follow a straying stranger through the city who does not find calm anywhere. His facial expression relax only then a little when he can engross in a lively mass but linger does not occur anywhere. Poe called the stranger a man of the crowd, but this has nothing in common with the term of man of the masses that is circulating nowadays, who is perceived as an unconspicuous ready-made issue of a normal person. Poe's man of the crowd is almost the contrary, he is a loner and outsider who lets himself flow in the obviously chaotic structure of an acutely flowing urban mass of people. With that he is at the same time a fugitive and seeker of the crowds. Surrounded by people he finds momentary relief which could be called an acknowledgement of his self but he is driven further right away by a hidden energy. The stranger behaves like a sensor circulating in the crowds of people in a metropolis whilst the protagonist that follows him acts as the program that registers movement and evaluates it partially. From the roaming of the enuia sociologic point of view arises here almost incidentally. It takes the narrator in the proximity of the otherwise covertly living city residents who represent the dark counter image of the in the city roaming person. Only the little noticed and because of this seemingly non- structured areas of the city that the outsider explores reveal the wholeness of the urban population and the facets of their movements. In the poetical and scientific recording of these lay the roots of a tradition to which we in EINSTELLUNGSRAUM appoint ourselves when we query art for its part for the awareness of phenomenons in urban traffic. Walter Benjamin² already indicated that Charles Baudelaire - who writes like Poe - was well adviced to engage in an alliance with science to suggest such a pact generally to men of letters.
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1 Edgar Allan Poe: The Man of the Crowd, in: The Complete Tales of Mystery and Imagination etc., London 1981, p. 164-169, 165.	2 W. Benjamin: Charles Baudelaire. Ein Lyriker im Zeitalter des Hochkapitalismus (a poet in the age of high capitalism), in: Ges.Werke (collected works), vol I, 2, pages 509-690, here page 545.
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