What is Rhythmanalysis? Dr Dawn Lyon, University of Kent - kent.ac.uk/sspssr/staff/lyon.htmkent.ac.uk/sspssr/staff/lyon.htm & nowaytomakealiving.netnowaytomakealiving.net ESRC Methods Festival 2014 Muybridge, The Horse in Motion

Introduction: What is rhythmanalyis?  Concept introduced by Henri Lefebvre ( ) in short book of same name originally published in 1992 as Éléments de rythmanalyse: introduction à la connaissance des rythmes  Translated into English in 2004 as Rhythmanalysis: space, time and everyday life  Opening line: ‘This little book does not conceal its ambition. It proposes nothing less than to found a new science, a new field of knowledge: the analysis of rhythms.’ (Lefebvre 2004: 3)

What is rhythm?  ‘Everybody thinks they know what this word means. In fact, everybody senses it in a manner that falls a long way short of knowledge: rhythm enters into the lived; though that does not mean it enters into the known.’ (Lefebvre, 2004: 77)  Rhythm requires more than repetition  There must be marked temporal elements, e.g. strong and weak, and an overall movement  ‘… the rhythmanalyst concerns himself [in original] with temporalities and their relations within wholes.’ (Lefebvre, 2004: 24)

Tuning into rhythm  The rhythmanalyst ‘will be attentive, but not only to the words or pieces of information, the confessions of confidences of a partner or a client. He will listen to the world, and above all to what are disdainfully called noises, which are said without meaning, and to murmurs [rumeurs], full of meaning – and finally he will listen to silences.’ (Lefebvre 2004: 19)  ‘The rhythmanalyst calls on all his senses. […] He thinks with his body, not in the abstract, but in lived temporality. […] He must simultaneously catch a rhythm and perceive it within the whole’ (Lefebvre 2004: 21)  ‘… to grasp a rhythm it is necessary to have been grasped by it; one must let oneself go, give oneself over, abandon oneself to its duration.’ (Lefebvre 2004: 27)

Doing rhythmanalysis  Lefebvre’s work on rhythm has been influential in geography in particular since publication of the book in English 10 years ago  Discussed (amongst others) by Mike Crang, Tim Edensor, Owain Jones, and Paul Simpson  Stimulated new attention to processes, patterns and interactions in natural and social worlds – see for documented examples of everyday life  Some critique that Lefebvre did not instruct readers how to do rhythmanalysis  Practical elaborations include mobile methods, notably walking, and time-lapse photography

Example: The everyday rhythms of Billingsgate fish market  How to document rhythm in a market space?  Time-lapse photography (speeded up) allows us to perceive interconnected activities and temporalities in the cycle of the market through the night  Loss of some detail leads to greater clarity in patterns  The use of sound connects the viewer to the felt-experiential aspects of moving through space-time, to hear the space in the sound  Time-lapse photography is both a medium of ethnographic inquiry and makes it possible to create a representation of the rhythms of market life

Conclusions  Rhythmanalysis is more than an orientation to research; it offers a way of thinking and doing research that makes us aware of time and space in new ways  It is in this book that Lefebvre demonstrates how space and time need to be brought and thought together to better understand everyday life  This involves the recognition of time-space as produced in practice