A psychogeography and cultural theory blog
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.
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
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 3rd: 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 31st 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
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).
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.
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.
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.