Psychogeography
Published by smfoto on Monday 26 February 2007 at 06:28Psychogeography is integral to Canaan Lane, particularly along the route of the Great North Road and the divisions between the Old and New Towns of Edinburgh. Psychogeography can be a tricky beast to pin-down, but in essence it is the study of character of place. It is a pseudo-science of the urban occult, lost or rediscovered spatial symbols, and the configuration of culture, particularly in cities. A concatenation of place and subject, diagnosing and treating a locality as a psychological entity. A few choice quotes 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. Today, the expression is possibly most readily associated with Iain Sinclair's synoptic A psycho-geography, then, derives from the subsequent ‘mapping’ of an unrouted route which, like primitive cartography, reveals not so much randomness and chance as spatial intentionality. It uncovers compulsive currents within the city along with unprescribed boundaries of exclusion and unconstructed gateways of opportunity. The city begins, without fantasy or exaggeration, to take on the characteristics of a map of the mind. (Chris Jenks)The situationists' desire to become psychogeographers, with an understanding of the 'precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals', was intended to cultivate an awareness of the ways in which everyday life is presently conditioned and controlled, the ways in which this manipulation can be exposed and subverted, and the possibilities for chosen forms of constructed situations in the post-spectacular world. Only an awareness of the influences of the existing environment can encourage the critique of the present conditions of daily life, and yet it is precisely this concern with the environment which we live which is ignored (Guy Debord's Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography.)
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. (Providence Initiative of Psychogeographic Studies)
Labels: Psychogeography
