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Psychogeography
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==Development== {{Situationists |expanded=Concepts}} Psychogeography was originally developed by the Letterist International 'around the summer of 1953'.<ref name=":0" /> Debord describes psychogeography as 'charmingly vague' and emphasises the importance of practice in psychogeographical explorations.<ref name=":0" /> The first published discussion of psychogeography was in the Lettrist journal ''Potlatch'' (1954), which included a 'Psychogeographical Game of the Week':<blockquote>Depending on what you are after, choose an area, a more or less populous city, a more or less lively street. Build a house. Furnish it. Make the most of its decoration and surroundings. Choose the season and the time. Gather together the right people, the best records and drinks. Lighting and conversation must, of course, be appropriate, along with the weather and your memories. If your calculations are correct, you should find the outcome satisfying. (Please inform the editors of the results.)<ref>{{Cite web|date=22 June 1954|title=potlach #1: information bulletin of the french section of the lettrist international|url=https://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/presitu/potlatch1.html|access-date=2020-10-26|website=www.cddc.vt.edu}}</ref></blockquote>The Lettrists' reimagining of the city has its precursors in aspects of Dadaism and Surrealism.<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":2" /><ref name=":6">{{Cite book|last=Morris|first=Blake|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Kiy7DwAAQBAJ&q=Dada+Situationist|title=Walking Networks: The Development of an Artistic Medium|date=2019-11-05|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield International|isbn=978-1-78661-022-5|language=en}}</ref> The concept of the [[flâneur]] is also cited as an influence on the development of psychogeography.<ref name=":3" /><sup>:3;</sup><ref name=":5">{{Cite book |last=Elkin |first=Lauren |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0UcyCwAAQBAJ&q=psychogeography |title=Flaneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London |date=2016-07-28 |publisher=Random House |isbn=978-1-4481-9195-6 |language=en}}</ref><sup>18</sup> Widely credited to [[Charles Baudelaire]], who was influenced by Edgar Allan Poe's "The Man of the Crowd", it was further developed theoretically by [[Walter Benjamin]].<ref name=":3" /><ref name=":5" /><ref>{{Cite book |last=Baudelaire |first=Charles |url=https://www.amazon.com/Painter-Modern-Essays-Translated-Jonathan/dp/B0028UFFIC |title=The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays Translated and Edited by Jonathan Mayne |date=1964-01-01 |publisher=Phaidon Press |edition= |language=English}}</ref><!-- The following two paragraphs are confusing and do not help make clear the historical development of psychogeography. It seems the discussion of unitary urbanism could be condensed with a stronger reference to the specific page focused on it (similar to the section on this page for dérive). --> [[Ivan Chtcheglov]], in his highly influential{{Citation needed|date=January 2008}} 1953 essay "Formulaire pour un urbanisme nouveau" ("Formulary for a New Urbanism"), established many of the concepts that would inform the development of psychogeography.<ref name="Chtcheglov">{{cite web|last=Chtcheglov|first=Ivan|title=Formulary for a New Urbanism|url=http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/Chtcheglov.htm|website=Bureau of Public Secrets}}</ref> Forwarding a theory of [[unitary urbanism]], Chtcheglov wrote "Architecture is the simplest means of articulating time and space, of modulating reality, of engendering dreams".<ref name="Chtcheglov" /> 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".{{Sfn|Knabb|1995|p=50}} Following Chtcheglov's exclusion from the Lettrists in 1954,{{Citation needed|date=October 2020}} [[Guy Debord]] and others worked to clarify the concept of unitary urbanism, in a bid to demand a revolutionary approach to architecture.{{Citation needed|date=October 2020}} The Situationists' response was to create designs of new urbanized space, promising better opportunities for experimenting through mundane expression. Their intentions remained completely as abstractions. Guy Debord's truest intention was to unify two different factors of "ambiance" that, he felt, determined the values of the urban landscape: the soft ambiance — light, sound, time, the association of ideas — with the hard, the actual physical constructions. Debord's vision was a combination of the two realms of opposing ambiance, where the play of the soft ambiance was actively considered in the rendering of the hard. The new space creates a possibility for activity not formerly determined by one besides the individual.{{Citation needed|date=November 2009}} At a conference in Cosio di Arroscia, [[Italy]] in 1956, the Lettrists joined the [[International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus]] to set a proper definition for the idea announced by [[Gil J. Wolman]]: "Unitary Urbanism - the synthesis of art and technology that we call for — must be constructed according to certain new values of life, values which now need to be distinguished and disseminated."<ref>{{cite conference|last=Wolman|first=Gil|year=1956|title=Address by the Lettrist International Delegate to the Alba Conference of September 1956|conference=ALba: Lettrist International}}</ref> It demanded the rejection of functional, [[Euclid]]ean values in [[architecture]], as well as the separation between art and its surroundings. The implication of combining these two negations is that by creating abstraction, one creates art, which, in turn, creates a point of distinction that unitary urbanism insists must be nullified. This confusion is also fundamental to the execution of unitary urbanism as it corrupts one's ability to identify where "function" ends and "play" (the "ludic") begins, resulting in what the Lettrist International and [[Situationist International]] believed to be a utopia where one was constantly exploring, free of determining factors.{{Citation needed|date=January 2008}} One of the first collaborations between Debord and Danish [[Asger Jorn]] is their screen printed [[Guide psychogéographique de Paris]]: discours sur les passions de l’armour (Psychogeographic Guide of Paris: 1957). Later they created ''The Naked City (psychogeographic map of Paris:1958),'' for which they cut apart a typical map of Paris and repositioned the pieces. The resulting map corresponded with parts of Paris that were ‘stimulating’ and “worthy of study and preservation”;{{Citation needed|date=October 2020}} they then drew red arrows between these parts of the city to represent the fastest and most direct connections from one place to another, preferably made by taxi,{{Citation needed|date=October 2020}} as it was seen as the most independent and free way to travel through the city as opposed to buses.{{Citation needed|date=October 2020}} Eventually, Debord and [[Asger Jorn]] resigned themselves to the fate of "urban relativity". 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". Despite the ambiguity of the theory, Debord committed himself firmly to its practical basis in reality, even as he later confesses, "none of this is very clear. It is a completely typical drunken monologue…with its vain phrases that do not await response and its overbearing explanations. And its silences."<ref>''A Critique of Separation'' (1961). Complete Cinematic Works ([[AK Press]], 2003, Trans. Knabb. K)</ref> "This apparently serious term 'psychogeography'", writes Debord biographer Vincent Kaufman, "comprises an art of conversation and drunkenness, and everything leads us to believe that Debord excelled at both."<ref>{{Cite book|last=Kaufmann, Vincent, 1955-|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/65165348|title=Guy Debord : revolution in the service of poetry|date=2006|publisher=University of Minnesota Press|isbn=0-8166-4455-1|location=Minneapolis, MN|oclc=65165348}}</ref><sup>:114</sup> Before settling on the impossibility of true psychogeography, Debord made another film, ''On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Unity of Time'' (1959). 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.{{Original research inline|date=October 2020}} Among the rants which construct the film (regarding art, ignorance, consumerism, militarism) is a desperate call for psychogeographic action: {{Blockquote |When freedom is practised in a closed circle, it fades into a dream, becomes a mere image of itself. The ambiance of play is by nature unstable. At any moment, "ordinary life" may prevail once again. The geographical limitation of play is even more striking than its temporal limitation. Every game takes place within the boundaries of its own spatial domain.<ref name="auto">Debord G. Sur le passage de quelques personnes à travers une assez courte unité de temps (1959)</ref> }} Moments later, Debord elaborates on the important goals of unitary urbanism in contemporary society: {{Blockquote |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.<ref name="auto"/> }} Giving a quote that he attributed to [[Karl Marx]], Debord says: {{Blockquote |People can see nothing around them that is not their own image; everything speaks to them of themselves. Their very landscape is animated. Obstacles were everywhere. And they were all interrelated, maintaining a unified reign of poverty.<ref name="auto"/> }} 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.{{Original research inline|date=October 2020}} 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.{{Original research inline|date=October 2020}} 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.{{Original research inline|date=October 2020}} The researches undertaken by WNLA, AAA and the London Psychogeographical Association during the 1990s support the contention of Asger Jorn and the Scandinavian Situationniste (Drakagygett 1962 - 1998) that the psychogeographical is a concept only known through practise of its techniques.{{Citation needed|date=October 2020}} Without undertaking the programme expounded by Chtchglov, and the resultant submission to the urban unknown, comprehension of the Formulary is not possible.{{Original research inline|date=October 2020}} As Debord himself suggested, an understanding of the 'beautiful language' of situationist urbanism necessitates its practice.{{Citation needed|date=October 2020}}
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