concrete, crows and calluses

concretecrows &

calluses

Tina RichardsonUniversity of Leeds

For the University of Huddersfield7th May 2014

Outline of Talk

What is psychogeography?

How do you undertake psychogeography?

What might you discover?

What the heck is the point of it?

What is psychogeography?The study of the specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.

[the] active observation of present-day urban agglomerations

cities have psychogeographical contours, with constant currents, fixed points and vortexes that strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones.

[A psychogeographer is] One who explores and reports on psychogeographical phenomena.

(Situationist International)

Discovering Psychogeography

Nick Papadimitriou

Nick Papadimitriou is drawn to the taking of extended exploratory walks in the outer zones of London. In the mid-1980s, he went on to develop what he describes as ‘Deep Topography’, a form of psychogeography. Papadimitriou’s books are: Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Barnet, Finchley and Hendon (2009) and Scarp (2012). He was the subject of The London Perambulator, a film directed by John Rogers, with whom he has also written and produced two radio series for Resonance FM.

Film: Deep Topography

Leeds Psychogeography Group

The White Horseman Dérive

Lee Farm Drive Dérive

The Blue Fork Dérive

The Miniature Boulder Dérive

The Prozac Walk

Inventing SchizocartographySchizocartography offers a method of cartography that questions dominant power structures and at the same time enables subjective voices to appear from underlying postmodern topography. It is the process and output of a psychogeography of particular spaces that have been co-opted by various capitalist-oriented operations, routines or procedures. It attempts to reveal the aesthetic and ideological contradictions that appear in urban space while simultaneously reclaiming the subjectivity of individuals by enabling new modes of creative expression. Schizocartography challenges anti-production, the homogenizing character of overriding forms that work towards silencing heterogeneous voices.

How Schizocartography Works

psychogeography

schizoanalytic

cartography

(Guattari)

urban

walking

research and

archival

investigation

theoretical

analysis

'Marxist'

critiqueoutput

A Line of Flight

Deleuze and Guattari

Blog: Psychogeography Outside

The Cootie Catcher Dérive

“Along with a dice, which I had made specially for the event, that gave instructions on turning in particular directions (e.g. first left), I also made this device. We used to play with these at school, but I couldn't remember the name of them - neither could anyone else. Having searched for it on the web, it appears to be a Paper Fortune Teller. How dull! I thought it was going to have a much more exciting name. . . But then I found out it was also called a 'Cootie Catcher', which sounds a bit dodgy, yet much more interesting!”

Blog: Particulations

Blog: Psychogeography Inside

The

Westin

Bonaventure

“...the Bonaventure aspires to being a total space, a complete world, a kind of miniature city; to this new total space meanwhile, corresponds a new collective practice, a new mode in which individuals move and congregate, something like the practice of a new and historically original kind of hypercrowd.”

Fredric JamesonPostmodernism or

The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

Blog: Particulations

Film: Hello From Hunstanton!

Project: Reading the Arcades/Reading the PromenadesFilm: Hello From Hunstanton! (sensecam and autographer)

Film: The Sound of the Sixties

Film: The Sound of the Sixties

Discoveries: St George’s FieldSt George’s Field is at odds with itself, in being both a cemetery and at the same time a public park of sorts. Can it simultaneously reconcile itself as a place of leisure and a sacred burial space? In a way it is a cemetery of a cemetery. The garden has become a monument (a graveyard) to itself, to a past self.

juxtaposes in a single real place several sitesheterotopias of illusion and compensation

absolutely real and absolutely unreal

In Loving Memory of a Dear Sister

In memory ofPauline Mavis White

Died 1946 ages 6 monthsWill be forever in our Hearts

R.I.P

The Undercroft

Discoveries: CovanceAlthough it remained a university building for a while after the Chamberlin, Powell and Bon period of development in the 1960s, it now belongs to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology company Covance. It is a clinical research unit that has a relationship with the university’s dental school and carries out drug trials on campus, recruiting volunteers in the student population.

SpringfieldHouse

Maps: Guide Psychogeographique

Maps: Situationist Stylie

Axis of Exploration and Failure

Axis of Exploration and Failure in the Search for a Situationist ‘Great Passage’

Guy Debord 1957

Axis of Exploration and Failure in the Search for a Situationist ‘Great Strike’

Tina Richardson 2010Film