Psychogeography News - September 2021

 

Hello All. I hope you had a good summer. Here’s September’s contribution to psychogeography related news. I apologies for it being a bit thin on the ground this month (for want of a better psychogeography pun). Thanks, Tina

Psychogeography and Walking

The RIBA Journal recently had an article about psychogeography feature in it: ‘Psychogeography allows us to explore the sensory city’ by Tszwai So. If you haven’t come across it before, the Walk Listen Create website advertises lots of events around the world. Also, see Andy Howlett's Paradise Lost event on 26th September: cinema screening and Q&A.

Cartography

There’s a lovely map from Stockport’s Gigantic Leap Frog Art Trail - available here - which took place in July. The International Conference of Cartography and Map Design is taking place on September 27 and 28 in Turkey: you can find out all about it here.

Architecture

This article in The Guardian looks at, would you believe, mafia architecture (who knew that was a thing). And, finally, this interesting and lengthy Archinect article (including some good images form the book), looks at Reyner Banham’s book Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies.

Discovering Lockdown Modernism in the North

Leeds Merrion Centre Mural by Eric Taylor

Guest post by Lisa Brown

Here Lisa talks about her interest in modernist art and architecture and the discoveries her and a friend made during the last year. You can get a copy of Lisa's book here: Post War Public Art.

I have always loved to take photographs and it’s something that I would normally do when travelling so I had grand plans of the things I might see on the trip to Japan that I had arranged for April 2020. So when lockdown began and the world shrunk, I started exploring my local area on foot as I found it was the only time I had the opportunity for any real peace and to escape household jobs that were otherwise difficult to ignore.

A friend in Manchester suggested we started photographing the empty streets of our respective localities and sharing them on Instagram. But after this mini project came to an end, I found that I missed the distraction that it had provided so I continued my local explorations, and being interested in mid-century architecture I began to walk further in order to seek it out.

Over time I realised I had built up quite a collection of photographs, not just of the buildings themselves but of the public art that often accompanies architecture from this period.

I like how accessible public art is and its egalitarian properties. Art works in a gallery are by their nature, even in normal times, restricted. The viewer has to make a conscious effort to see the art. And even the most dedicated art lover has been denied access to galleries for much of the last 18 months.

The post war period witnessed an abundance of public art; perhaps it was the influence of the Festival of Britain or just a more general appetite from the architectural community for the commissioning of public works to compliment the built environment.

Rombold the Giant, Keighley by John Bridgeman

Probably my first encounter with a piece of public art was the sculpture of Rombold the Giant in Keighley. He has stood proud in the town centre since 1968 and I have fond memories of him from shopping with my mum as a small child; always fascinated by the story of the giant and his boulder tossing antics.

The easing of lockdown meant I was able to travel further afield and add extra pieces to my impromptu collection. So, the Apollo Pavilion in Peterlee and The Three Tuns mural from Coventry joined pieces from Yorkshire.

Apollo Pavillion at Peterlee by Victor Pasmore

Three Tuns Mural, Coventry by William Mitchell

After many months of pottering and helping put together a photographic collection with Bill Ayres and Simon James Hadfield, I had the idea of collating my images in a similar way.

So, thanks to The Modernist Society, Rombold is accompanied on a perambulation by 18 other works; ordered from nearest to farthest from my home in North Leeds, in a little photo-book.

How to (de)Construct a Place Setting in Three Easy Steps

1 - Define a place setting.

What is a ‘place setting’: the setting of a place, to set a place? The opposite of ‘to set’: un-set…unsettle. A place for whom/what? A set placing. A place for a subject. A setting of a scene. To set the scene for the subject of the place.

1 place /plays/ n 1a physical environment; a space 1b physical surroundings; atmosphere 2a an indefinite region or expanse; an area…4 a particular part of a surface or body; a spot…5b an important or valued position…7a a proper or designated niche…8a an available seat…8c PLACE SETTING

2 place vt 1 to distribute in an orderly manner; arrange 2a to put in, direct to, or assign to a particular place…2c to put in a particular state 3 to appoint to a position…5a to assign to a position in a series or category; rank 7 to put, lay…

3 setting /’seting/ n 1 the manner, position, or direction in which something (e.g. a dial) is set 3a the background, surroundings…5 PLACE SETTING

2 - Ascertain the limits of the place setting.

“How is it possible to determine, in such a situation, what truly belongs to the inside and what does not?" (Derrida 1987: 138).
The place setting exists as a singularity in space and time: on the spatial plane it exists on a surface without clearly delineated edges, and temporally it is unclear at which point the place setting becomes itself, or when it is no longer that of which it is known in regards to assembly/disassembly.

Somebody puts together the place setting. It could be the diner, it could be the cook, it could be the silver service waitress/waiter . . . it could be you. A number of possible people construct it. The placemat, cutlery, glasses, plates are laid out by following certain cultural conventions. The dining paraphernalia is placed on a surface, a table. Some of the items may rest on the placemat, if there is one, and some will not, for instance the glasses do not, although they too can sometimes sit on their own object, a coaster.

Where is the edge of the place setting? If you were to draw around the limits of the place setting you would quite probably draw around almost every single separate item that makes it up.

The margins are unclear. It appears that the outside of the place setting is also contained within the inside of it, in the fluid space between the items. The outside pours into the inside. What belongs to the place setting and what does not? Does the tablecloth belong to the place setting: the tablecloth could be removed and the place setting could still be considered to exist. What of the table? What could be utilised in the place of a table that would still enable a place setting to be called such: a kitchen counter, a TV dinner tray, a wooden packing crate. How many individual items that make up the place setting need to be removed for it to not be a place setting? Everything but a knife and fork . . . maybe . . .

How significant is the setting of the place setting: could one assemble a place setting on the pavement of a busy street, or in an art gallery? The context of the place setting might mean that a diner could not be present at the scene of the place setting. If it were physically impossible (or dangerous) for a diner to be in attendance, is it still a place setting: could a place setting be set on an airport runway and it still considered to be a place setting. It would certainly be recognisable as one, but how much does the context effect the place setting, inasmuch as it is part of the dining event. On a spectrum of contexts it is difficult to ascertain an absolutely clear point at which a place setting would not be considered to be such.

The place setting, in terms of its existence, comes into and goes out of being surreptitiously. At some point in its manifestation it becomes what is recognised as a ‘place setting’, but its materialisation is gradual and rather furtive. It is carefully assembled piece by piece, comes to rest for a period of time, then is gradually dismantled by the diner and/or an-other: disarranging the original construction. If the place setting was only considered to be a place setting at its most complete (prior to the diner’s arrival, prior to their unpicking of it), its disassembly could be seen as a destructive act. The diner destroys the place setting, like one might destroy a work of art. This could be considered an act of violence.

Considering the place setting to be a ‘place setting’ only when it is whole and complete, allows for it to be described as such even in the absence of a diner. If the place setting is set, but the diner never arrives, the place setting is still a place setting, even if its origins are not so sure. However, at some point, the items making up the place setting will all be removed.

If the place setting is seen as something more nebulous, uncertain in terms of when it begins and ends in time, the diner’s re-arranging of the items that form it, and the removal of those items during the dining process, could also be included in what is recognised as the place setting. But, we still have the issue of a beginning and end, though. Does the place setting begin when the placemat is laid or, maybe, when the first piece of cutlery is set down. Does it end when the final item is removed?

The place setting is a fragile thing.


3 - Ensure the place setting is ready for the diner's arrival.

The place setting awaits a subject. The place setting is calling a subject. The diner is hailed by the place setting, “interpellated” in the Althusserian sense, whether the place setting has their name on it or not, as it might at a formal dinner when written on a card. The place setting has a subject in mind, whether it is a named subject or a generalised other. The type of dinner will dictate, to a large degree, certain characteristics in the diner: it may dictate their class, wealth or social status; their associations with other diners (relative, friend, business associate); their membership of a certain group. All these qualities define the event, the place setting, and the subject. Therefore the place setting holds certain notions about the subject before they arrive at the dining table.

At a formal dinner the place setting exists for the sole purpose of a subject to be sat at it, and for that subject to utilise it within a given framework. It is an object requiring a subject to fulfil its purpose. The place setting anticipates an always already subject. In this sense the subject comes before the place setting, they exist before the place is set, as a knowable, expected attendee of the dinner. But, does the subject exist as a diner before the place setting is set? If the place setting is a one-time-only event, it is possible the subject only exists as a diner at the point they sit down at the table. If this is the case, then the place setting comes before the dining subject.

It appears that the tendrils of the place setting spread temporally in both directions. It forms a nexus which connect a past and future subject in the singularity of an event. This event, operating around the hub of the place setting, is also contingent in the changing of the subject. The subject will have been altered by the event and will not be the same subject that sat at the place setting at the beginning of dinner. Conversations might have taken place, dialogue exchanged, the subject’s psyche could be transformed, however minutely.

The place setting, as an assembly, is also part of the greater assembly which is the dining event. This could be considered to be like the Deleuzo-Guattarian “assemblage” which comes together and then disassembles. If it were considered in these terms, we could not separate the subject from the event, the subject does not attend the event they are part of the event. The place setting and the diner would be intrinsically linked, because they make up the processual dining experience.

The place setting retains the history of the event. Before the final items are removed, what remains of the place setting contains a trace of the event that has just taken place. The place setting is a recording device for the event as it is for the particular individual subject as diner. How the place setting is left at the point the diner leaves the table is an audit trail for the actions of the subject during their dinner party. If the recording could be played back the subject’s steps could be retraced. The used place setting, at the moment the diner leaves and prior to the point it is finally removed by the attending staff, alludes to an absence. The dining subject leaves their signature (their autobiography), in the rumpled silk placemat, in the not-quite-finished glass of vintage port, in the highly-polished unused silver dessert spoon. Disorder replaces order. But this disorder is telling. It speaks of a past, of an attendance.

Each individual diner will leave their history behind on the table: an archive of the event left behind in their wake. The dining subject has left their mark. Their absence leaves a sign of a past presence. ‘Elvis has left the building’ but he still exists in the discarded crumpled gig programme and trampled cigarette butts of the deserted dance hall.

The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago 1974-79, the Brooklyn Museum

References:
Derrida, Jacques. 1987. The Truth in Painting. Trans. by Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press).

Psychogeography News - August 2021

Hello Folks. Here is my take on psychogeography, and related, news for August. I hope there is something of interest for everyone. Tina

Psychogeography and Walking

This The Guardian article is about an art trail along the coast of Suffolk and Essex (you do need an account to access it though: ‘I will walk 500 miles…’. And a final reminder of 4WCOP – The Fourth World Congress of Psychogeography – which begins on September 3^rd: click here for all the details (and maybe I will see you there).

Cartography

Here is an academic research centre (CAMRI) that takes a look at the artist Cezanne as cartographer, providing a precis of Geographies of the Imagination by Doug Specht. This Wallpaper article is about the new addition to Blue Crow Media’s Modernist maps: a Modern Map of Prague. I would highly recommend their maps. I have the Brutalist London Map (please note, I am not getting paid to advertise this).

Cities

Heart Health is a The Conversation article that takes a look at cities in regard to longevity. And this New Yorker article I found after watching a BBC programme about a really interesting artist (Philip Ashforth Coppola) in New York who is trying to preserve the memory of the original subway art-based architecture of the network before it gets destroyed (I am unable to find the BBC link online, but I saw it on the BBC news channel on 31^st July). And, this The Guardian article is about a hidden London tram line which has just been reopened (as a museum) to the public at Kingsway.

Travel

In The Conversation you can find an article on some unconventional ways to travel if you can’t go away this summer. It includes micro-domestic travel, virtual reality and (believe it or not) psychogeography!

Architecture

And finally, an article in The Guardian about architecture and “modernist myopia”. This article includes discussions on Liverpool, Glasgow, London and Edinburgh.

Psychogeography News - July 2021

Hello psychogeography lovers. I came across a lot of related news in the last month, so will continue to post the links with a brief description under a respective heading. I hope you find the newsletter interesting. More in August…

Psychogeography and Walking

It seems that Nick Cave (yes, he of Bad Seeds fame) has unintentionally been doing some psychogeography. You can read about him photographing lost gloves on his walks in The Guardian. Here’s another The Guardian articles on walking the Limestone Way of the Peak District. And, here, another piece of accidental psychogeography which includes interesting photos of bricked up windows in London, from the BBC website. Whereas this Youtuber is doing some ‘proper’ psychogeography by walking the most direct route on his “straight line mission” across Scotland (from The Guardian). The final two articles under this section look at ‘well-being’ and walking: one on walking with friends in The Guardian, and the other is research on mental health and hiking from The Conversation.

Architecture

Yanko Design has an interesting article which includes some lovely futuristic images of imagined spaces looking at green skyscrapers, while The Spaces has an alternative architectural guide to Venice. Here is a guide to the 2021 London Festival of Architecture in The Wallpaper and I am including this really useful link to all things Charles Jencks, as it has loads of useful resources on his work.

Cities

The Conversation has an article on the queer city and inclusivity and The Science Museum Group Journal has a brilliant journal article on science and the city, which seems to be open access. Here’s a The Guardian article about the pedestrianisation of Oxford Circus in London. And, on a more light-hearted note, here is a link to a novel entitled The Cat and the City by Nick Bradley (I am a big fan of both). Finally, under cities, this super 20 min film called ‘Organism’ by Hilary Harris (1975) from the Aeon website, shows “the city as an emergent form, with architecture as the skeleton and roads as the veins”.

The Weird or Random

On the more random side of all things spatial: bleak spaces that you come to love (this The Guardian article requires you to already to be a signed up member, although it is free). And, I will finish this blog on a bit of bonkerity: this chappy accidentally annexed France by moving some rock (from The Conversation).

Psychogeography News - June 2021

 

Here’s June’s psychogeography-related news. I hope there is something of interest for you here. Thanks for reading.

Psychogeography

The Fourth World Congress of Psychogeography is convening again in September, please click here for the up-to-date info (I apologise for missing the call date). Here’s a 2020 article in FAD Magazine about the Greek-American artist Gerasimos Floratos and his psychogeographical renderings exhibited at that time. And this BBC article looks at the art of ‘drain spotting’.

Cartography

This super online resource, from Stanford Libraries in the US, is about working with historical maps online. It includes geo-referencing, overlaying and exporting and comes in the form of a tutorial.

Architecture

The Biennale Architecttura 2021 is now on. Here’s the official website. It’s on till November 2021 in Venice. I appreciate we can’t necessarily travel, but there looks like lots of useful links on there, and there may be online talks. This article in ArchDaily looks at the threat of demolition in regard to the brutalist Nagakin Capsule Tower in Tokyo. And, this website looks at 3D printed architecture.

Other

This is an interesting article in The Conversation about a farmer who moved a rock and accidentally changed a national border. And, finally, in The Guardian there is an article about some sewage works in Edinburgh: it's about exploring local spaces during lockdown.

Psychogeography News - May 2021

 

Hello Folks. I hope you are enjoying the resurrected news. This is May's selection. I've got quite a few this month, so I am going to do my best to categorise them. I apologise if it is a bit The Guardian heavy!

Architecture

This month in architecture we have a discussion in Domus on Brutalism and post-punk, a connection I wouldn’t have made myself, even though I am a fan of both. There is some more news on Modernist architecture in The Guardian on the post-war architecture of Derby’s Assembly Rooms (and the hope to save them from the bulldozers), and another general discussion on Brutalist architecture which includes useful links to other sources.

Images and Films

The Guardian has an article on somebody who (probably doesn’t even realise he is a psychogeographer) and photographs social distancing signs. This artists fills potholes and manhole covers in beautiful mosaics and this photographer takes images of America by streetlight. The last one in this section is a super 3 min film of an urban commute by Hiroshi Kondo.

Walking and Psychogeography

Here you can read about the proposed green walks in London. This article will provide you with ten Great British walking trails and here is an article about getting lost in a new place.

Outside of the UK

And finally, an article on walking around Menorca during lockdown and a very good article on the Swedish architect Sigurd Lerewentz in The Wallpaper.

Psychogeography News - April 2021

 

After a hiatus of a few years, I have decided to attempt to resurrect the psychogeography news for this blog. I used to do it monthly, prior to that I did it via a mailing list. Anyway, it seems like I stopped it in November 2016, so that’s over 4 years! Anyway, I am going to give it another go. The news will contain anything related to: walking, the city, urban space, landscape, public art, architecture, space-related activism, and so on – so whatever loosely comes under the rubric of ‘psychogeography’. I hope you find it interesting:

The Guardian: A joyless trudge? No, thanks: why I am utterly sick of ‘going for a walk’

An entertainingly cynical, article by a Canadian living in the UK during lockdown. It covers anything from dodgy footwear to Margaret Thatcher. Click here for full article.

The Claude Glass Revolutionized the Way People Saw Landscape

This is a really interesting academic, short, article about how a little mirror, named after the landscape artist Claude Lorrain, changed the way people viewed the landscape. For those Situationists amongst you, Lorrain was of interest to them due to his depictions of ruins (“the charms of the ruins”). The Situationists had a problem with the nostalgia engendered by images of ruins (and ruins themselves) and actually used one of Lorrain’s paintings in one of their maps. Click here for the article.

The Guardian: Is that a unicorn? No it’s a teenager taking a hike in the great outdoors.

This is about the Ramblers attempts to get young people out and about (and bumbling) in Britain’s wide open spaces. Includes some research and stats, for those who are interested in that kind of thing. Full article here.

Revisiting the Concrete Architecture of Belgian Icon Juliaan Lampens

I’m a big fan of brutalist architecture (and even included a large section on the work of Chamberlin, Powell and Bon in my thesis). I’m not an expert, though, and hadn’t heard of this chappy. An interesting article, with some nice images, here in The Wallpaper.

French Artist Unveils New Optical Illusion Installation in Italy

This uncanny installation appears on the façade of the Pallazo Strozzi in Florence. It’s really fabulous and must be super to see in person. It reminds me of the opening to Civilization and its Discontents where Freud talks about how memory, and the unconscious, has the effect of forgetting. Freud uses a beautiful analogy of the ancient city of Rome to help him explain how the unconscious works (click here if you’d like to read my take on that). Click here for some images of the installation.

Building a Feminist City

This editorial, discussing the current focus on women’s safety in public space following Sarah Everard’s death, takes its starting point as Haussmann’s Paris (very Situationist). Click here to read the article in The Guardian.

Mouse Hole Update

A Really cute one to finish on. This from a blog entitled ‘Walks Between the Commons: American mom living in London’. It’s about a little mouse hole installation that local people decorate and offer gifts up to the pretend mice that live there, such as Christmas cards. It’s, basically, a sweet little bit of guerrilla urban creativity. Click here for the images.

Online Cultural Theory Lectures by Doctor Hat

Below is a series of lectures available on YouTube which all took place in the famous Freud Disco Study in 2016. The lectures are predominantly of a cultural theory and psychogeography nature and cover areas such as: subjectivity, semiology, psychoanalysis, cartography, urban walking, ideology, etc. You can view an introduction here or click on the links below to take you to more information and to the online lecture itself:

Introduction to the Lecture Series
Are You Interpellated?
What is Myth?
What Does the Map Represent?

Introduction to the Lecture Series

Are You Interpellated?

Abstract: A lecture on the theory of ideology by Louis Althusser. By providing examples from popular culture and psychogeography, this lecture explores the concept of interpellation as discussed by Althusser in 'Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatuses'.

Audience: Undergraduate students in the area of cultural studies, psychogeography, politics, psychology, media and philosophy. Anyone interested in: neo-Marxist approaches, how ideology operates on individuals and how subjectivity is socio-politically formed.

What’s covered: ideology, interpellation, structuralism, the State, civic life, the family, subjectivity, psychogeography, popular culture (film).

What is Myth?

Abstract: A lecture on Roland Barthes’ Mythologies. Concentrating on his essay ‘Myth Today’, this lecture introduces Barthes’ second-order semiological system and demonstrates how to carry out a semiological analysis.

Audience: Undergraduate students in the area of cultural studies, literature, media and philosophy. Anyone interested in advertising, language or literature.

What’s covered: semiotics, language, myth, ideology, popular culture, structuralism.

What Does the Map Represent

Abstract: A lecture on mapping that critiques the modernist cartographic project. Themes explored are: the centred subject, inside/outside, map/territory and reality versus representation. This lecture compares the traditional analysis of maps with the psychoanalytical approach to dream analysis.

Audience: Undergraduate students in the area of cultural studies, cartography, postmodern geography, history and psychoanalysis. Anyone interested in maps in general.

What’s covered: cartography, ideology, dream analysis, representation, praxis, Sigmund Freud, Claudio Minca, world fairs.