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itself, was far removed from the hitherto more
negative representations of Liverpool as a post-
industrial city dogged by unemployment, eco-
nomic decline and social and racial tension.
However, despite, or perhaps because of its rich
semiotic plenitude, the fi lm's densely packed
urban melange maps a curiously absent or dislo-
cated sense of place. What is particularly striking
is the extent to which the unique landmarks and
architectural iconography that had formerly
dominated Liverpool's representational spaces
have in large part been supplanted by a super-
abundance of signs: street signs, shop signs,
famous music venues and global brand logos,
foregrounding the act of consumption as the pre-
eminent marker of the city's urban renaissance.
As a consequence, the symbolic (and actual)
navigation of these spaces prompts a heightened
sense of urban disorientation: the city disappear-
ing underfoot as the semiotic fabric of the urban
imaginary spirals further down the wormholes of
the global symbolic economy.
Against this corporate vision of a post-in-
dustrial city caught in the 'irradiating gaze'
(Augé, 1996, p. 179) of global capital, swept up
by what Jonathan Meades refers to as the
'brandwagon' of the 'regeneration industry',
3
we can perhaps envisage another city, one that
lurks somewhere beneath the shiny veneer and
neo-liberal facades of 'culture-capital', a city
whose landscapes are dwarfed by the corporate
edifi ces epitomized by the Liverpool One devel-
opment: Grosvenor's eponymous 'Paradise
Project'
4
(after Paradise Street in the City Centre
South where it is located), at the time of writing
the largest retail development in Europe. Within
these alternative spaces of the city, a qualitatively
different set of urban mobilities becomes evident.
Excavating and indeed embracing the spaces of
disorientation that defi ne the de-localized geog-
raphies of consumption and globalization, art-
ists and fi lm-makers seek new pathways through
these landscapes, psychogeographic and surreal
journeys, which, in their wake, expose the inert
and socially neutered qualities of the urban fab-
ric that defi ne large areas of cities such as Liver-
pool today. It is these alternative spatial practices
that are explored in the second part of this article.
Against the contextual backdrop of Liverpool as
'world in one city', I set out to navigate the sur-
real urban geographies mapped in British direc-
tor Alex Cox's 1998 'Liverpool fi lm'
Three
Businessmen
. The fi lm, or more precisely the cin-
ematic geographies it maps (in which travellers
around Liverpool pass through locations in Rot-
terdam, Hong Kong and Tokyo) serve to initiate
a wider discussion on the heterotopic nature of
the city as a global space of deterritorialization,
consumption and 'time-space compression'
(Harvey, 1990). Taking the form of a Buñuelian
travelogue or odyssey, the fi lm narrates an
uncertain space of urban
fl âneurie
marked by
disorientation, ellipses and thwarted desires of
consumption. In this regard the fi lm may be read
as a psychogeographic counterpoint to the deliri-
ously consumerist vision of Liverpool promoted
in
Liverpool: World in One City
.
Liverpool
®
: Culture-Capital
If Liverpool is the 'Pool of Life',
5
its culture
ripples throughout the world: an outward
expression of vitality, talent, innovation,
3
'Jonathan Meades Abroad Again: On the Brandwagon', BBC2, 16 May 2007.
5
A gift to the city by the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung, the phrase 'Liverpool the Pool of Life', while a
boon to city marketeers, has wider resonance amongst local community groups and artists that is suggestive
of a broader set of meanings and associations than those appropriated by the regeneration industry in Liver-
pool. In his 1961 book
Memories, Dreams, Refl ections
, Jung famously recounted a dream in which he found
himself wandering amongst the 'dirty, sooty' landscapes of a nocturnal city, in the centre of which was a
'broad square dimly lit . . . into which many streets converged. In the centre was a round pool, and in the
middle of it a small island' (quoted in Jones and Wilks-Heeg, 2007, p. 209). As Jones and Wilks-Heeg have
shown, the idea of a 'pool of life' into which 'many streets converged' played an infl uential role in the establish-
ment of Peter O'Halligan's 'Liverpool School of Language, Music, Dream and Pun', an infl uential alternative arts
and cultural venue. Inspired by his own dream of a spring bubbling out of a manhole cover on Mathew Street,
O'Halligan identifi ed a point where, at the point of converge of several streets (East Mathew Street, West Mathew
Street, Button Street, Rainford Square and Temple Street), there was indeed a manhole cover. Convinced this
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