What is Psychogeography?
Psychogeography was founded in the 1950’s; it is about the way in which people view their city. How they can walk around and not notice anything like architecture within their environment. Psychogeography is about taking people out of their usual surroundings, letting them walk different routes to what they would usually walk, making them look differently at the urban environment and letting them see it in a new and interesting way.
“The act of walking through a well-known city instead of taking a taxi, seeing the same buildings, streets and inhabitants from a more personal angle, can make us see everything in a different light, and that is sort of what psychogeography is all about.”
“Psychogeography is the hidden landscape of atmospheres, histories, actions and characters which charge environments”.
“The term originally harks back to Thomas De Quincey's dreamy, druggy treks of the nineteenth century and Walter Benjamin's excursions around the Paris streets of the 1920s, fusing Jewish messianism, Kabbalism, Marxism and visionary Surrealism. But after Internationale Situationiste #1 1957, the term evolves again, indicating the study of the effects of geographical settings on mood and behaviour”. http://www.classiccafes.co.uk/Psy.html
“The study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals”
"The study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals." Another definition is "a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities...just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape."
Who and what are the Situationists International?
The Situationist International was a restricted group of international European revolutionaries, it was founded in 1957. It was a very influential group, they did not like how people we seen differently depending on the wealth they had. They wanted everybody to be like one, rather than to be looked upon differently depending on who you were, where you lived or the amount of money you had, they set out to brake down the division between people.
"People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have corpses in their mouths."
“They fought against the main obstacle on the fulfillment of such superior passionate living, identified by them in advanced capitalism. Their theoretical work peaked on the highly influential book The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord. Debord argued in 1967 that spectacular features like mass media and advertising have a central role in an advanced capitalist society, which is to show a fake reality in order to mask the real capitalist degradation of human life. To overthrow such a system, the Situationist International supported the May '68 revolts, and asked the workers to occupy the factories and to run them with direct democracy, through workers' councils composed by instantly revocable delegates”.
Who is Guy Debord and what role did he play in Psychogeography?
Guy Debord was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker, a member of the Letterist International, founder of the Letterist faction and also a founding member of the Situationists International. In the 1960 he led the Situationist International group, during this time; he influenced the Paris Uprising of 1968. Some people consider the book he wrote titles Society of the Spectacle influenced this.
“At first, the movement was mainly made up of artists, of whom Asger Jorn was the most prominent. From 1962, the Situationists increasingly applied their critique not only in culture but to all aspects of capitalist society. Guy Debord emerged as the most important figure: he had been involved in the Lettrist International, and had made several films, including _Hurlements en faveur de Sade_ (1952). Inspired by the libertarian journal _Socialisme on Barbarie_, the Situationists rediscovered the history of the anarchist movement, particularly during the period of the First International, and drew inspiration from Spain, Kronstadt, and the Makhnovists. They described the USSR as a capitalist bureaucracy, and advocated workers' councils. But they were not entirely anarchist in orientation and retained elements of Marxism, especially through Henri Lefebvre's critique of the alienation of everyday life. They believed that the revolutionary movement in advanced capitalist countries should be led by an "enlarged proletariat" which would include the majority of waged laborers. In addition, although they claimed to want neither disciples nor a leadership, they remained an elitist vanguard group who dealt with differences by expelling the dissenting minority. They looked to a world-wide proletarian revolution to bring about the maximum pleasure.”
With Debord being the main influence within the Situationists International, he wanted people to look freely upon their city, for them to experience it differently, taking in the things from their environment that they have not necessarily noticed before.
Who is will self and what contribution does he make to Psychogeography?
Will self is an English Novelist and short story writer, he writes for numerous newspapers including The Independent and The Guardian. Within his work he writes about psychogeography, due to him writing about Psychogeography within his articles, more people were introduced to it, he gave people a better understanding of what psychogeography is all about, this made people look a lot differently at their surroundings.
Who is Iain Sinclair and what makes him a Psychogeographer?
Iain Sinclair is a British writer, documenter, film maker and poet, based in London. Today psychogeography is mostly associated with him, due to his writing and the way he sees his city. His work is inspired by the walks that he takes around London; he notices the small things about the environment that not many people tend to notice.
“By the time I was using (the word), it was more like ‘psycho geographer’ more of a raging bull journey against the energies of the city of creating a walk that would allow you to enter into a fiction”.
“Today, the expression is possibly most readily associated with Iain Sinclair's synoptic urban drifts; the divining of the unconscious cultural contours of places: "By the time I was using [the word], it was more like 'psychotic geographer' more of a raging bull journey against the energies of the city of creating a walk that would allow you to enter into a fiction."Sinclair's work is a dense, fused poeticized prose often inspired by walks and free-associated treks around the underside of London, most especially the expansice wilds of the East End and its Essex deltas. Cafes often figure in his novels, and the Alpino in Islington's Chapel Market N1 has long been one of his stop-offs on regular walks up the Regent Canal.
What is a Flaneur?
Flaneur means stroller, lounger, loafer, it refers to they way in which somebody walks around their city, in order to experience the environments and to take in everything that they are seeing, enabling them to appreciate it more.
It also relates to a “complete philosophical way of living and thinking”.
“The term flâneur comes from the French masculine noun flâneur—which has the basic meanings of "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer", "loafer"—which itself comes from the French verb flâner, which means "to stroll". Charles Baudelaire developed a derived meaning of flâneur—that of "a person who walks the city in order to experience it". Because of the term's usage and theorization by Baudelaire and numerous thinkers in economic, cultural, literary and historical fields, the idea of the flâneur has accumulated significant meaning as a referent for understanding urban phenomena and modernity. In French Canada flâner is rarely used to describe strolling and often has a negative connotation as the term's most common usage refers to loitering.”
Who is J G Ballard and what role does he play in Psychogeography?
J G Ballard was an English writer, this was his connection to psychogeography, he wrote about it, in books and articles, he wrote about the way in which he saw places and what they meant to him. Giving people a better understanding of how you can see things differently if you pay a bit more attention to what it surrounding you.
“The literary distinctiveness of his work has given rise the adjective ‘Ballardian’ which is defined by the Collins English Dictionary as “resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in J. G. Ballard’s novels and stories, especially dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscape and the psychological effective of technological, social or environmental developments”.
Who is Richard Wentworth and what is his engagement with Psychogeography?
Richard Wentworth is a British sculptor and photographer; he documents everyday things around where he lives. His photographs are unusual due to the compositions within them, he wants to make the most of the environment that he lives in, therefore he photographs the unusual things that he can find within.
“Wentworth also uses photography as a means of documenting what might be called 'the sculpture of the everyday': a cigarette packet jammed under a wonky table leg; a makeshift construction to reserve parking space; a bucket jammed on to the side of a dented car so that the headlight can still operate. 'I live in a ready-made landscape', he remarked early in his career, 'and I want to put it to use'”.
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