Virtually Tramping Through Post-Normal Times

Abstract

Suddenly our project is pitched into a new place by the advent of COVID-19 in early 2020. Everyone is thrown, including us, by the sudden deconstitution of everything, including neoliberal urbanism. After a short pause, the tramps realise this is just a new (if now deathly) field of the industrial capitalist order we had set out to examine. With this insight, we resume our tramping under the particularly strong conditions of the lockdown in the State of Victoria, exemplified by our first, overly cautious AC saunter through the pixelated woods of Walden: the Game, where the only risk of virus is from some dodgy malware. We soon realise, however, that we have no business being in the woods while our thoughts are in the city.