“Psychogeography directed us to obscure place, to elusive ambient effects and partial artistic and literary prescedents for the sublime. If we felt frustrated at the effort required to put them all together, we had missed the point. Psychogeography was a reverie, a state of mind… It represented a drfit from the ideal and the rational to the extraordinary and the revolutionary.” (Simon Stadler, The Situationist City, 1998)
Though the term “psychogeography” may be overused these days as a buzzword or catch-all term for a very diverse range of intellectual activity; though, it is typically traced back to social theorist and filmmaker Guy Debord and the Situationists of the late 1950s and 1960s. The original concept was the exploration of a built environment without preconceptions, to refuse to limit legitimate discussion to architectural styles or residential percentages, but to discuss the reality of actually inhabiting an (urban) environment. This exploration and study was expressed through psychogeographic maps such as The Naked City or Guide Psychogeographique de Paris, as well as texts and travelogues. Before the term was even coined, psychogeography can be traced even further back to Dadaist and Surrealist drug and alcohol induced wanderings throughout Paris, as well as 19th century concepts of the flâneur in both British and French literature.
Setting aside the historical precedent and Situationist conceptions, psychogeography consists of the following: a political dimension, a philosophy of opposition to the status quo, the notion of “walking”, the idea of an urban movement, and the psychological component of how human behavior is affected by environment. In general, it is seen as some psychological imprint overlaid on the physical landscape.
The primary method of psychogeography is the dérive, which from French translates to “drift”. In the inaugural issue of the Internationnale Situationniste, the dérive was “a mode of experimental behavior linked to the condition of urban society: a technique of transient passage through varied ambiances.” The dérive also has antecedents in Thomas DeQuincey’s opium influenced Saturday night wanderings, as well as Andre Breton’s Surrealist romantic journeys.
Nevertheless, Debord speaks of the dérive as an activity in which one: “Drop[s] their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain… From the dérive, points of view, cities have pyschogeographical relief, with constant currents, fixed points and vortexes which strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones.”” (Theory of the Dérive, Internationale Situationniste #2, 1958) Unlike the random wanderings taken by the Surrealists, there was nothing random about the dérive.
Accounts and analysis of dérives are recorded and expressed in variety of formats. These formats have included books, essays, poems, photo essays, films, and, of course, maps – though these maps may seem nonrepresentational or nonsensical in the traditional geographic sense. These “maps” have been used in political actions, drifts, & projections, distributed in flyers, journals, and magazines.
(Guy Debord & Asger Jorn, Guide Psychogeographique de Paris, 1958)
A wide range of “practitioners” for reference:
Peter Ackroyd /J.G. Ballard / Charles Baudelaire / William Blake / André Breton / Ivan Chtcheglov / Paul Conneally / Guy Debord / Michel de Certeau / Daniel Defoe / Stewart Home / Aleksandr Janicijevic /Asger Jorn / Iain Sinclair / Will Self
NOTE: Some of the above mentioned pre-date the term “psychogeography” but can be traced back from present day writers or related ideas from the Surrealists, Lettrists, the Romantic flâneur, and mid 19th century British literature.
