Deviant Properties
Jordan A. Sand · 2013
Chapter 4 centers on the activities of the Street Observation Studies Society, a group of artists, historians, and others who won a broad following with their documentation of overlooked and seemingly inexplicable details of the Tokyo streetscape. Street Observation was just part of a larger trend of urban exploration that became popular during the bubble years of the 1980s. It represented a challenge to state and capitalist urban visions. At the same time, it articulated a desire to appropriate the remaining fragments of the city that had not already been repackaged by capital.