concrete, crows and calluses
DESCRIPTION
Tina’s talk introduces her urban walking practice and discusses how she has developed it as a critical tool which can be used to analyse the urban spaces of postmodernity. She uses her work – which takes the form of blogs, maps and films – to illustrate how the make-up of the spaces we occupy affect us. Using the accounts of others, and her own, Tina shows how a critical form of psychogeography can not only help reveal a social history in the terrain that may otherwise remain hidden, but can also elucidate a way of responding to urban agglomerations that may be counter to their intended use.TRANSCRIPT
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
