flanerie

By then, flanerie had given way to goose steps.

LINKS - Internet surfing is apparently not considered proper flanerie.

"Graphic Flanerie."

"In a way, it has even surpassed Paris and London as the pinnacle of flanerie, simply because of the variety of street life in each neighborhood."

For it was here, in the early decades of the century, that flanerie - the practice of strolling leisurely around a big city just to take in the sights - came into its own as a modern art form.

This was the hub of Weimar flanerie: site of Europe's first electric traffic sign (1924), installed to orchestrate the movement of cars, buses, trams and crowds of people on their way to work.

"Flanerie," the third portion of the biennale, will show the work of artists who will be invited to Berlin to collect their impressions of the city and translate them into mostly photographic and multimedia work.

Walter Benjamin's "One-Way Street," Siegfried Kracauer's "Streets in Berlin" and Franz Hessel's "Sightseeing Trip" celebrate flanerie as an essential education in modern sensibility.