MA Week 43 - Psychogeography Readings (2)

Psychogeography readings (2)

Tina Richardson’s chapter A Wander through the scene of British Urban Walking in the book she edited, Walking Inside Out : Contemporary British Psychogeography (2015) gives a good overview of the current stated of psychogeography. I’ve summarised below a few key points.

Richardson quotes Situationist International member Abdelhafid Khatib’s definition of the dérive: “At the same time as being a form of action, it is a means of knowledge”. She further clarifies that the dérive cannot be just a stroll and that the wanderer must be conscious of the environment. Psychogeography concerns itself with crossing boundaries, whether logical or physical (p2). This is certainly something I’ve experienced in my own wanderings.

 

Richardson is very inclusive in her discussion of the urban walk, and certainly does not equate it only to the SI dérive. She considers that numerous factors are at play; the walker, the place, the method. Neither is she precious about the style of the outcomes, citing zines, blogs and academic papers as equally valid outputs. The walk necessarily causes a subjective and individual response. She encourages readers to define their own form of psychogeography if they wish or need to do so. (p3-5), urging the reader to name their own approach and formulate it into a more clearly defined methodology (p18). She suggests (p13) that “artists (both performance and visual), while not always describing themselves as psychogeographers, might call themselves ‘walking artists’.” Possibly the idea of walking as a way of challenging the traditional boundaries of art? It has certainly felt that I have pushed my practice forward through urban wandering.

Interesting is her mention of Iain Sinclair, a contemporary British psychogeographer who often takes a nostalgic view, and whose influence has led to British psychogeography taking a nostalgic bent. The nostalgia has a danger of leading to a type of repurposing the past, of revealing or perhaps inventing forgotten characters, a rose-tinted longing for a time that never really existed in the way that it’s presented. This I interpret as a veiled criticism of viewing history “at a distance”. (p10).However, the nostalgia connection is interesting as it also occurs in Harrison’s discussion of heritage (see this Week 16 blogpost). Richardson here comments on a connection that I’d already made by my own wanderings, namely that of  heritage and psychogeography.

She demands (p18) “if a psychogeographer is not revealing the hidden topographical layers of social history or questioning the physical manifestation of some capitalist edifice or other, is psychogeography actually taking place?” - good question. My wanderings revealed some layers of social history to me, at least, and in turn I tried to depict these visually for other people to view and critique. I suppose there was also some anger at the capitalist destruction of industry too.  So I must be doing psychogeography….?