🗺️Psychogeography and Art Unit 4 – Psychogeography: Artistic Approaches

What's Psychogeography?

• Interdisciplinary field combining geography, psychology, and art to study the influence of the geographical environment on human emotions and behavior
• Explores how urban spaces shape our experiences, perceptions, and sense of place through subjective and creative methods
• Emphasizes the role of the individual in interpreting and navigating the city, challenging conventional ways of understanding and representing urban environments
• Involves techniques such as dérive (drifting), détournement (subversion of existing elements), and psychogeographical mapping to uncover hidden meanings and narratives within the cityscape
• Aims to critique the homogenization and commodification of urban spaces, advocating for a more playful, spontaneous, and imaginative engagement with the built environment
• Draws inspiration from various artistic and intellectual movements, including Situationism, Surrealism, and Fluxus, which sought to blur the boundaries between art and everyday life
• Encourages a critical and subversive approach to urban planning and design, highlighting the potential for individuals to actively shape and transform their surroundings

Key Figures and Movements

• Guy Debord, French theorist and founding member of the Situationist International, coined the term "psychogeography" in 1955 and developed key concepts such as the dérive and the spectacle
  • Debord's book "The Society of the Spectacle" (1967) critiqued the alienating effects of consumer capitalism and the mass media on everyday life
• The Situationist International (1957-1972), an avant-garde group of artists and intellectuals, sought to revolutionize everyday life through the creation of "situations" and the practice of psychogeography
  • Situationists rejected the separation between art and politics, advocating for a radical transformation of society through the construction of new, liberating environments
• The Lettrist International (1952-1957), a precursor to the Situationists, experimented with urban exploration and subversive practices such as graffiti and détournement
• The Surrealist movement, particularly the work of André Breton and Louis Aragon, explored the unconscious and irrational aspects of the city through techniques such as automatic writing and chance encounters
• Contemporary artists and collectives, such as Stalker (Italy), Wrights & Sites (UK), and Constant (Netherlands), have expanded the scope of psychogeography to include participatory, site-specific, and multimedia approaches

Artistic Techniques in Psychogeography

• Dérive (drifting): A spontaneous and unplanned journey through the city, guided by the emotional and psychological effects of the environment, aimed at breaking habitual patterns of movement and perception
• Détournement (subversion): The appropriation and recombination of existing cultural elements (images, texts, objects) to create new meanings and critique dominant ideologies
• Cut-up technique: The random rearrangement of text or images to generate unexpected associations and reveal hidden connections between seemingly disparate elements
• Collage and montage: The juxtaposition of diverse materials and sources to create a fragmented and layered representation of the urban experience
• Psychogeographical mapping: The creation of subjective and imaginative maps that represent the affective and sensory dimensions of the city, often using unconventional symbols, colors, and annotations
• Performance and intervention: Site-specific actions and gestures that disrupt the normal functioning of urban spaces and invite public participation and reflection
• Documentation and archiving: The use of photography, video, sound recording, and written accounts to capture and preserve the ephemeral and fleeting aspects of psychogeographical practice

Walking as Art: Dérives and Drifts

• The dérive, a central practice in psychogeography, involves an unplanned and intuitive exploration of the city, allowing oneself to be drawn by the attractions and atmospheres of the urban environment
• Dérives challenge the functional and utilitarian logic of the city, encouraging a more playful and open-ended engagement with space and time
• The Situationists developed a set of guidelines for the dérive, such as the use of constraints (time limits, specific areas) and the incorporation of chance elements (dice, maps) to disrupt habitual patterns of movement
• The concept of the drift has been adopted and reinterpreted by various artists and writers, such as the Fluxus group's "Free Flux-Tours" and the "algorithmic psychogeography" of the Glitch Psychogeography project
• Walking as an artistic practice has a long history, from the Romantic tradition of the solitary wanderer to the Dadaist and Surrealist excursions of the early 20th century
  • Examples include Henry David Thoreau's "Walking" (1862), Robert Walser's "The Walk" (1917), and the "deambulations" of the Surrealist group in Paris
• Contemporary artists have expanded the scope of the dérive to include group walks, guided tours, and participatory events that explore the social and political dimensions of urban space
  • Examples include Janet Cardiff's audio walks, Francis Alÿs's "paseos" (walks) in Mexico City, and the "Stalker" collective's explorations of Rome's peripheral areas

Mapping Emotions and Experiences

• Psychogeographical mapping involves the creation of subjective and imaginative maps that represent the affective and sensory dimensions of the urban experience
• These maps challenge the objectivity and neutrality of conventional cartography, highlighting the role of individual perception and interpretation in shaping our understanding of space
• Techniques for psychogeographical mapping include the use of unconventional symbols, colors, and annotations to represent emotions, memories, and associations attached to specific places
• The Situationists developed the concept of the "naked city," a fragmented and recombined map of Paris that emphasized the psychological and atmospheric qualities of different neighborhoods
• Contemporary artists have expanded the range of media and techniques used in psychogeographical mapping, incorporating digital technologies, interactive platforms, and crowdsourced data
  • Examples include Christian Nold's "Emotion Maps," which use biometric data to visualize the emotional responses of participants to different urban environments, and the "Sensory Maps" project by Kate McLean, which represents the olfactory landscape of cities through smell walks and participatory mapping
• Psychogeographical mapping has also been used as a tool for urban activism and community engagement, allowing marginalized groups to represent their experiences and claim their right to the city
  • Examples include the "Counter-Cartographies Collective" project, which works with local communities to create alternative maps of gentrification and displacement, and the "Anti-Eviction Mapping Project," which documents the impact of the housing crisis in San Francisco

Urban Exploration and Intervention

• Urban exploration, or "urbex," involves the unauthorized exploration of abandoned, derelict, or off-limits spaces in the city, such as industrial ruins, underground tunnels, and construction sites
• Urban exploration challenges the boundaries between public and private space, revealing the hidden and forgotten layers of the urban environment and the stories and memories embedded within them
• The practice of urban exploration has been adopted by various artists and photographers as a means of documenting and preserving the ephemeral and marginal aspects of the city
  • Examples include the work of the French photographer Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, who have documented the decline of Detroit's industrial architecture, and the "Abandoned" series by the Belgian photographer Henk Van Rensbergen
• Urban intervention involves the temporary or permanent modification of urban spaces through artistic actions, installations, and performances that disrupt the normal functioning of the city and invite public participation and reflection
• Examples of urban intervention include the "Park(ing) Day" project, which transforms parking spaces into temporary parks and gardens, and the "Guerrilla Gardening" movement, which reclaims neglected urban spaces through unauthorized planting and cultivation
• Urban intervention has also been used as a form of political protest and social critique, highlighting issues such as gentrification, surveillance, and the privatization of public space
  • Examples include the "Reclaim the Streets" movement, which staged unauthorized street parties and occupations in the 1990s, and the "Occupy Wall Street" protests, which used public space as a site of resistance and alternative community-building

Digital Psychogeography

• Digital psychogeography explores the impact of digital technologies and networks on our experience and understanding of urban space, as well as the potential for using these technologies to create new forms of psychogeographical practice
• The increasing ubiquity of mobile devices, location-based services, and social media platforms has transformed the way we navigate and interact with the city, creating new layers of digital information and social connection that overlap with the physical environment
• Artists and researchers have used digital technologies to create new forms of psychogeographical mapping and exploration, such as GPS-based walks, augmented reality applications, and online platforms for collaborative mapping and storytelling
  • Examples include the "Serendipitor" app by Mark Shepard, which generates random walking routes based on user preferences and real-time data, and the "Invisible Cities" project by Christian Marc Schmidt, which uses social media data to create interactive visualizations of the emotional geography of cities
• Digital psychogeography also raises questions about the impact of surveillance, data mining, and algorithmic decision-making on our experience of urban space and the potential for these technologies to reinforce existing power structures and inequalities
  • Examples include the "Surveillance Camera Players" project by Bill Brown, which staged performances in front of CCTV cameras to highlight the pervasiveness of surveillance in public space, and the "Algorithmic Psychogeography" project by the Glitch Psychogeography collective, which explores the biases and limitations of digital mapping platforms and location-based services
• The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift towards digital forms of urban experience and interaction, such as remote work, online shopping, and virtual events, creating new challenges and opportunities for psychogeographical practice in the post-pandemic city

Ethical Considerations and Critiques

• Psychogeography raises ethical questions about the potential for artistic practices to reproduce or reinforce existing power structures and inequalities, particularly in relation to issues of race, class, gender, and ability
• The practice of urban exploration has been criticized for its privileged and individualistic nature, as well as its potential to romanticize poverty and decay without addressing the underlying social and economic conditions that produce these spaces
• The use of digital technologies in psychogeographical practice raises concerns about privacy, surveillance, and the commodification of personal data, as well as the potential for these technologies to create new forms of exclusion and discrimination
• The concept of the dérive has been critiqued for its male-centered and Eurocentric assumptions, as well as its potential to fetishize the figure of the flâneur as a detached and privileged observer of urban life
  • Feminist and postcolonial critiques have sought to expand the scope of psychogeography to include the experiences and perspectives of marginalized groups, as well as to challenge the binary opposition between the public and private spheres
• The Situationist concept of the "spectacle" has been criticized for its totalizing and pessimistic view of consumer culture, as well as its failure to account for the agency and resistance of individuals and communities in the face of capitalist domination
• The practice of psychogeography has been accused of aestheticizing and depoliticizing urban space, reducing the complexity of the city to a series of playful and poetic gestures without engaging with the material and structural conditions that shape urban life
  • Critics have called for a more politically engaged and socially conscious form of psychogeography that addresses issues of housing, gentrification, environmental justice, and the right to the city
• The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the uneven distribution of access to public space and the disproportionate impact of the crisis on marginalized communities, raising questions about the role of psychogeography in addressing these inequalities and imagining more just and equitable forms of urban life in the post-pandemic city