Psychogeography

 

‘psychogeography is ‘the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.’

Guy Debord (An introduction to a critique of urban geography, 1995).

Psychogeography is a new and intriguing concept to me as I have never thought of viewing the city and analyzing the way we use it.



The novel written by Daniel Defoe called A Journal of the Plague Year published in 1722 emerges you in the events plague epidemic of 1665 killing 100,000 people. This book explains a new concept of psychogeography in which you can map major events and disasters throughout history.

  ‘a person who walks the city in order to experience it’  

If I look back on my experience of traveling or more recently moving to London, I have never walked around the area aimlessly. I would be travelling for a reason such as to get to a certain destination this means I would not take in the environment I am travelling through. Looking back it’s actually sad that I have most likely missed out on a lot of knowledge of where I live and have been.

  “the crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. His passion and profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the perfect flaneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the middle of the multude, amid the ebb and flow of movement , in the midst of the fugilve and the infinite’ (Baudelaire 9)

The ‘flaneur’ is another new word for me and the artwork of Barbara Kruger below gives a general explantion for the text above.

He was able to stroll at leisure not a pace dictated by a crowd; one might even go to the extreme of allowing a pet turtle to set the pace, observing the people, the building facades, the objects for sale…

According to Simmel-The modern city was transforming humans, giving them a new relationship to time and space inculcating in them a “a blasé attitude”, and altering fundamental notions of freedom and being.

Basically saying the modern world can trap you if you are not careful. Brings me onto the artwork Sous les Paves La Plage which translates to beneath the sidewalk you find the beach. Literally saying you can only find freedom outside society.

You can overturn this way of thinking and take over the streets.