Urban walks: from walk to (inter)text

The article is devoted to analysis of the role of the phenomenon of modern culture, urban walk, in the formation of urban text and urban identity. Important features of modern culture are at the same time existential hunger, narcissism, the predominance of the visual over the textual, a deep gap between "look" (perceive) and "see" (understand). The object of study is a special format urban walk -literary walk ("Walks across Tomsk with the writer"). Urban walk is considered in terms its role in the formation of intertext: existential, structural-functional, semiotic, historical-anthropological. The analysis of "urban walks" as regular urban practice is based on the material of the project "Walks across Tomsk with the writers", which was manifested in Tomsk in 2015. The study applied the semiotic principles of R. Barthes, Ch. Peirce, U. Eco. This allowed us to identify such specific features of urban walk as: oversaturation of verbal and non-verbal, conventional and, in particular, non-conventional signs; presence and complex interaction of icon, index and character signs; the complex nature of the relationship between predominantly unwritten, unstable urban walks texts and stable urban texts. The complex, branched dialogic structure of urban walks includes: the individual "Ego" of the traveler and the many-faced "Other" - physis, architecture and urban environment, the biographical and lyrical "Ego" of the author and the "Ego" of his characters, the "Ego" of other participants of urban walk, as well as texts and stories on the topic of communication. We found in the chronotope urban walk interact all the main modalities of space and time - real, perceptual, conceptual. The minimal semiotic and existentially significant structural unit of urban walk is the "gesture-nomination". Gesture-nomination leads from recognition of the Other's being to "swinging", "unwinding" thought in extended speech acts. There are similarities between the "baby Dasein" and the "nomadic (Abrahamic) Dasein" of the Old Testament patriarchs on the one hand, and on the other hand, significant differences between them and the Dasein of postmodern nomadology. When comparing these historical and cultural contexts, were revealed significant ideological features of urban walks: high intensity of emotional and intellectual response to the "influx of reality", setting on awareness of perception and saturation of sensations, weakening of control over the environment, freedom and openness to the flow of being, multiple Others, etc. The sight / look of the walking human is existentially open, at the same time it confronts both the view formed by post-modern nomadology and the deterministic view (e.g. "professional view", gender / archetypically conditioned view). Historical, cultural and socio-cultural analysis of urban walks (on the example of "Walks across Tomsk with the writer") revealed important aspects of their formation and functioning - the interaction of ascending civil and descending power initiatives, the presence of specific infrastructure (including the epiphenomenon of "literary Tomsk"), the importance of interrelated processes of "domestication of geniuses" and "broadcasting of names", the interaction of personal and collective myths. As a socio-cultural practice, urban walks confronts the total prevalence of "the Visual" in contemporary culture and, perhaps acting in the fashion trend for literary selfies, argues a model of the new text-centricity.

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