Dérive & Psychogeography
The solitary figure roams aimlessly through space and this journey without destination references the dérive (which literally means drift) that comes out of the Situationist International movement in France. The Situationist International were a loose collective of European artists and intellectuals interested in removing the separation between culture and everyday life by transforming artistic practice with the goal of reconciling both separate activities by the ‘suppression of art’. The name Situtioniste International came from the magazine founded in 1957 by the post-war collective Lettrist International. The LI, created by poet and writer Idisdore Isou aspired to fuse poetry and music and transform the urban landscape.
"The sudden change of ambiance in a street within the space of a few meters; the evident division of a city into zones of distinct psychic atmospheres; the path of least resistance which is automatically followed in aimless strolls (and which has no relation to the physical contour of the ground); the appealing or repelling character of certain places - all this seems to be neglected."
Psychogeography was a concept invented by the Situationist International in which the dérive was its principle form. It was a way of experimenting with the possibilities of everyday experience. The idea of aimless wandering by an observing pedestrian takes its historical precedent from Charles Baudelaire’s 19th century flâneur and also found practice amongst the Dadaists and the Surrealists. For the Situationists the dérive was a 'technique of locomotion without a goal', in which 'one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there'. The dérive also functioned as a model for the 'playful creation' of all human relationships and an example of a situation-creating technique.
A key development towards an artistic urban praxis, the dérive was not entirely random as one was led by the way in which certain areas, streets, or buildings corresponded with states of mind, inclinations, and desires, and the active resistance of moving contrary to the way in which the urban environment had been designed. It was an attempt to find the "psychogeographical articulation of the modern city" and not unlike a psychoanalytic investigation into urbanism, the city was considered an instance of repressed desires.
Taking inspiration from Guy Debord’s Psychogeographical Map of Paris, 1953 I drew a map of Paris by memory when I was in London on a large piece of black cardboard which I had taken from a stack that was Gonzales-Torres’ work at the White Cube gallery. I scored and folded the cardboard in a way that is typical of a foldable street directory and gave it to my friend Vincent. He was able to locate three items on the map and eventually all the major landmarks as well, with the aid of an actual street directory. Interestingly, upon later questioning he was unable to locate anything he had seen in central Paris on a map but had acquired a detailed understanding of his co-ordinates outside of Paris, in the banlieus where he had taken walks by himself in search of new urban development. Finally I set up the work in my room and allowed people to ‘correct’ my wildly inaccurate cartography with 15 by 12 centimetre pieces of white paper that they could tack onto the map. This side-project was created to shake off a sense complacency and indifference that invariably settles in once we have become accustomed to our living arrangements and location.
Section 7