Space, chance, time: walking backwards through the hours on the left and right banks of Paris

In connection with cultural geography’s current interest in themes ofexploring and intervening in the city, this paper narrates an intervention in Parisauthored by Jean-Pierre Le Goff. Le Goff is renowned in France for his interventionsin both town and country that play with the dictates of chance. The walk takesparticipants to 12 locations on an imaginary geographical clock that Le Goff hasplotted on a map of Paris. Participants are invited to walk anticlockwise the hourson the clock and at the site of each hour to place as many cards as the hour, drawnat random from a deck of tarot. In the progress of the walk the participants findthemselves caught up in disclosing a cryptogram that links with individualmythologies while revealing a city within a city. The subterranean temporalities ofLe Goff’s intervention connect with ideas of play and re-enchanting thecity; they unearth incidences of objective chance and the uncanny as well as thecity’s hidden signs. They enable countercultural practices to evolve thatsuggest the lived moment is significant to thinking about alternative narratives instudies of urban geography