Pleasures of distraction Jørgen Ole Bærenholdt and Connie Svabo Space, Place, Mobility and Urban Studies (MOSPUS) Research Unit & Centre for Experience Research (COF) Department of Environmental, Social and Spatial Change (ENSPAC) Roskilde University (RUC) Draft paper for 4 th Nordic Geographers Meeting, Roskilde University, ANT and tourism practices track

Experiences of pleasure Mediation Multiplicity Distraction Focus on the geographying agency of materialities, most notably how the mobile phone camera mediates a city, but also makes the point that a materiality does not geography in any singular way; it works in multiplicities; it crafts multiple realities. And in the intersections between them, distraction is found.

Mediation To associate; to communicate between two parties Inspired by Serres and Latour: simultaneous establishing of a connection and the distortion which takes place in the connection Materials, technologies, objects mediate tourist experiences

Multiplicity The state of being multiplex or manifold Inspired by Serres, Latour, Mol & Law: there is not one singular order, but multiple emergent orders. (It is a goal for research to account for the multiplicity of the world) Tourists engage with sites in multiple ways Materials, technologies, objects mediate places in multiple ways

Distraction Distraction as the intersection between multiple spaces and times Emerges from the tensions between multiple orders of reality (absent – present) Inspired by Hetherington (Capitalisms Eye), Benjamin (Passagen-Werk) Modernist form of experience – Erlebnis – the pleasure of glancing at the world in distraction; acting through intersections of distance and proximity

Conclusion Inspired from the combination of ANT and Walter Benjamin to explore the flickering geographies/worlds of experience (Erlebnis); the pleasure of letting things happen mediation – multiplicity – distraction argument Based in the strong narrative from ethnographical (also auto/semibiographical) and material/technological/virtual insight Applicable to other examples; your own experiences ???