Psychogeography
[1][2][3] In 1955, Guy Debord defined psychogeography as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.
[4] The first published discussion of psychogeography was in the Lettrist journal Potlatch (1954), which included a 'Psychogeographical Game of the Week':Depending on what you are after, choose an area, a more or less populous city, a more or less lively street.
[5][8][9] Ivan Chtcheglov, in his highly influential[citation needed] 1953 essay "Formulaire pour un urbanisme nouveau" ("Formulary for a New Urbanism"), established many of the concepts that would inform the development of psychogeography.
[10] Forwarding a theory of unitary urbanism, Chtcheglov wrote "Architecture is the simplest means of articulating time and space, of modulating reality, of engendering dreams".
[10] Similarly, the Situationists found contemporary architecture both physically and ideologically restrictive, combining with outside cultural influence, effectively creating an undertow, and forcing oneself into a certain system of interaction with their environment: "[C]ities have a psychogeographical relief, with constant currents, fixed points and vortexes which strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones".
[11] Following Chtcheglov's exclusion from the Lettrists in 1954,[citation needed] Guy Debord and others worked to clarify the concept of unitary urbanism, in a bid to demand a revolutionary approach to architecture.
Debord readily admits in his 1961 film A Critique of Separation, "The sectors of a city…are decipherable, but the personal meaning they have for us is incommunicable, as is the secrecy of private life in general, regarding which we possess nothing but pitiful documents".
The film's narrated content concerns itself with the evolution of a generally passive group of unnamed people into a fully aware, anarchistic assemblage, and might be perceived as a biography of the situationists themselves.
Among the rants which construct the film (regarding art, ignorance, consumerism, militarism) is a desperate call for psychogeographic action: When freedom is practised in a closed circle, it fades into a dream, becomes a mere image of itself.
[15] Moments later, Debord elaborates on the important goals of unitary urbanism in contemporary society: The atmosphere of a few places gave us a few intimations of the future powers of an architecture that it would be necessary to create in order to provide the setting for less mediocre games.
[15] While a reading of the texts included in the journal Internationale Situationniste may lead to an understanding of psychogeography as dictated by Guy Debord, a more comprehensive elucidation of the term would come from research into those who have put its techniques into a more developed practise.
While Debord's influence in bringing Chtchglov's text to an international audience is undoubted, his skill with the 'praxis' of unitary urbanism has been placed into question by almost all the subsequent protagonists of the Formulary's directives.
Debord was indeed a notorious drunk (see his Panegyrique, Gallimard 1995) and this altered state of consciousness must be considered along with assertions he made regarding his attempts at psychogeographical activities such as dérive and constructed situation.
Guy Debord defined the dérive as "a mode of experimental behavior linked to the conditions of urban society: a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances.
[17] In 1987 the psychoanthropologist Howard F. Stein of the University of Oklahoma published Developmental Time, Cultural Space: Studies in Psychogeography, introducing a new way of looking at how human beings deal with geographical entities, and how the latter resonate in their unconscious mind with personal ones.
This was followed in 1989 by a book titled Maps from the Mind: Readings in Psychogeography, edited by Howard Stein and by William Niederland, an eminent psychoanalyst, which incorporated fifteen chapters on various psychogeographical subjects by interdisciplinary scholars.
An article on the second annual Psy-Geo-conflux described psychogeography as "a slightly stuffy term that's been applied to a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities.
[5]:9 Though Sinclair makes infrequent use of the jargon associated with the Situationists, he has certainly popularized the term by producing a large body of work based on pedestrian exploration of the urban and suburban landscape.
[citation needed] Scholar Duncan Hay asserts that Sinclair's work does not represent the utopian and revolutionary foundations of Situationist practice, and instead 'finds its expression as a literary mode, a position that would have appeared paradoxical to its original practitioners'.
[citation needed] Sinclair and similar thinkers draw on a longstanding British literary tradition of the exploration of urban landscapes, predating the Situationists, found in the work of writers William Blake, Arthur Machen, and Thomas de Quincey.
Sinclair drew on this tradition combined with his own explorations as a way of criticising modern developments of urban space in the key text Lights Out for the Territory.
Part of this development saw increasing use of ideas and terminology by some psychogeographers from Fortean and occult areas including earth mysteries, ley lines and chaos magic, a course pioneered by Sinclair.
