Phenomenologies of the Urban Night

Research 2020

Materials: Text and collage

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The Phenomenologies of the Urban night teases out the poetics of the night, and in so doing, understands the set of boundaries which reconfigure our spatial, social and atmospheric relations between ourselves, and between the self and the world. 

 

When looking at boundaries, other words come to mind. Thresholds, frontiers, barriers, borders, permeability, porosity, movement, transgression, walls. The nighttime enables experiences of transgression, it provides a perceptional ownership and access to space through facilitating feelings of agency and freedom. The night is a “bonus space” or “dead space” which, when occupied, results in a trespass, just as day is regulated by a specific set of productive codes. 

 

A peculiar set of conditions define the night, which exists in relation to its counterpart, day. First, the Darkness, or failings of light, then the Acts, or polarised ‘functionalities’ of society. What one might call the physical atmospheric and the socio-spatial. Both are intrinsically linked, and form the foundation of our human experience of the urban night. 

 

The night is defined, by dictionary.com as: “the period of darkness between sunset and sunrise.” 

 

The night is an ‘in between’ time. The spaces of the night, interstitial moments within hidden places with criminal faces, seeping from the cracks in our seamless systems of day. The time between the productive hours, the time between coherence and obscurity.

 

“Don’t worry, this is common procedure when flying in the hours of darkness”, a flight attendant once spoke through the loud speakers, as the plane cut shaking through turbulent airs. The night is uncertain and turbulent, but its effects are purportedly predictable, “common procedure”. Must we accept the uncertainty and turbulence of the night time without seeking to justify or understand the logic which prevails in such circumstances? In its most simple terms, the night is uncertain because of the darkness. Lack of light constitutes a difficulty in “seeing”. Since we live in a ocular-centric society sight equates to knowledge, and lack of sight equates to lack of knowledge, and thus uncertainty. In a space or time where one’s senses of sight are lessened, we feel not only insecure in our knowledge and ability to perceive danger, but we feel less accountable for our own actions through virtue of the fact that others may not perceive our strange or malignant acts so vividly. This effect of the night on people’s actions (which alcohol I dare say, exacerbates), leads to a somewhat turbulent situation.

 

Turbulence is a term which often finds itself holding negative connotations, but when paired with something awe-inspiring, it can find a new home with the Sublime. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, I shall here quote John Dennis, the English critic and dramatist who, when writing in the 18th Century, described the Sublime as “the horrors and harmony of experience, expressing a contrast of aesthetic qualities”, the "delight that is consistent with reason mingled with Horrours, and sometimes almost with despair”. It is revealing to explore how one aspect of experience can be consistent with reason, and another not. The night time is, I argue, misunderstood, and it is precisely an absence of “reason” which imbues within it such rich experiential and social qualities. 

 

There is a sharp contradiction of feelings experienced in the urban night. In fact it is precisely this intense contrast that lends the city its richness. The characteristics of the night have been defined in many ways: “excitement, expectation, apprehension, tension,” “potential,” a “calculating hedonism”. The night is something other, and in times and spaces of “otherness” of “difference and defiance,” we can say, do, act and be different, to how we are during the day. The night is, in a sense a “bounded space as a container of power.” 

 

“Don’t worry, this is common procedure when flying in the hours of darkness”, a flight attendant once spoke through the loud speakers, as the plane cut shaking through turbulent airs. The night is uncertain and turbulent, but its effects are purportedly predictable, “common procedure”. 

 

The night is uncertain because of the darkness. Since we live in a ocular-centric society  lack of sight equates to lack o f knowledge.In a space or time where one’s senses of sight are lessened, we feel not only insecure in our knowledge and ability to perceive danger, but we feel less accountable for our own actions.

 

Turbulence is a term which often finds itself holding negative connotations, but when paired with something awe-inspiring, it can find a new home with the Sublime. John Dennis described the Sublime as “the horrors and harmony of experience, expressing a contrast of aesthetic qualities”, the "delight that is consistent with reason mingled with Horrours, and sometimes almost with despair”. It is revealing to explore how one aspect of experience can be consistent with reason, and another not. 

 

The characteristics of the night have been defined in many ways: “excitement, expectation, apprehension, tension,” “potential,” a “calculating hedonism”. The night is something other, and in times and spaces of “otherness” of “difference and defiance,” we can say, do, act and be different, to how we are during the day. The night is, in a sense a “bounded space as a container of power.”