D R I F T I N G AMONGST CITIES
A Glimpse Inside Psychogeography
D R I F T I N G AMONGST CITIES
A Glimpse Inside Psychogeography
GR 330 Typography Three Project Book Design. Š Academy of Art University, Fall 2017 79 New Montogomery St. San Francisco, CA Printed in the USA by Asheville Color & Imaging 611 Tunnel Road Suite E. Asheville, NC Senior Production Coordinator William Culpepper Design & Development Tiffany Elizabeth Braden Photography Tiffany Elizabeth Braden United States Geological Survey
D E D I C AT I O N To my loving husband and charismatic son, for their support and patience while I devoting my time and efforts toward achieving the successfulness of this project.
C
O N T
E N T S
PS Y C H O G E O G R A P H Y
U R B A N M O V EM ENTS
11
An Inside Review Into The Psychogeographic Drift
21
Urban Drifting City Comprehension and Mapping
08
Smithfield Market Ciaran Carson
25
Modernistic Urban Diaries Surrealism and The Art of Flânerie
N O B L E M A S T E R MIND S
IS O LATED S PA C E
35
On Guy Debord When Poetry Ruled The Streets
63
Creactive Range The Study Of Urban Liminal Space
43
Psychogeography Will Self’s Mind Goes Into Overdrive
69
Détournment And The Appropriation Of Space
45
On ˜Psychogeography’ The Places That Choose You
77
Re-urbanization Of The Space Poem Rocket
Helens Bridge in Asheville‚ NC is known for its eerily influences on American novelist, Thomas Wolfe.
06
DRIFTING AMONGST CITIES
INTRODUCTION Capturing images is one of my personal sanctuaries and as a reserved individual‚ I have always taken an interest in subjects that has otherwise been lost and forgotten. It can be something as simple as a corroded store-front sign‚ or dilapidated buildings and structures that are hidden in the midsts of no mans land–there ̓s this emotional sense of “awe” when stumbling upon these unmarked paths of aesthetic curiosities‚ while it entraps a cluttered mind within its urban space, resting somber in its naturally progressive state. To take what others may deem as anything less than optically alluring and framing it in ways that gives if breadth of infinite longevity, as it grasps on to life within the shadows.
P S Y C H O G E O G R A P H Y
Aged piano keys shot in an antique shop found within a secluded town right outside of Atlanta, GA.
AN INSIDE REVIEW
Eye Magazine
INTO THE PSYCHOGEOGRAPHIC DRIFT
01
While most twentieth-century isms ̓ are perceived as historical phenomena representing outdated attitudes and approaches‚ the Situationists’ continues to exert a hold on contemporary thinking. For some‚ they represent the last of the genuinely avant-garde movements within the arts. The period of the Situationist International (SI)‚ from 1957-1972, disbanded‚ coincides with the rise of the consumer society. If the Situationists’ have lasted better than some earlier avant-gardes‚ it s̓ because their views have remained highly relevant to situations we are in today. By the 1960s‚ most of the features that defined daily life in an affluent society, such as: refrigerators, washing machines‚ television, pop music‚ intensive advertising‚ package holidays‚ supermarkets‚ credit cards, mass-market fashion‚ and disposable income for personal indulgence had been in place.
02
The Situationist critique remains trenchant as they saw it all with a clarity that later generations‚ taking these conditions of superabundance for granted‚ often lacked. As a key figure in the group‚ Guy Debord notes in his writings of The Society of the Spectacle‚ that “The spectacle is not a collection of images; but rather‚ it’s a social relationships between people that is mediated by images”. Key Situationist concepts became standard terminology in visual and cultural studies and long ago has since found a home at the critical end of popular culture.
03
Adbusters regularly invokes the Situationist device of détournement, used to describe tactical reversals of meanings that can be found in materials such as advertising. Not a single student project exploring the unconventional ways of experiencing the city that can be better explained without reference to the idea of the dérive–a “technique of transient passage through varied ambiances,” as the Situationists ̓ defined it. Psychogeography was the name they gave to their studies on the effects of the urban environment on an individuals emotions and behaviour. These days, it is the title of a column in a British broadsheet newspaper supplement known as the Independent, by novelist and broadcaster, Will Self. He is known as a key mastermind of our generation who has and continues to give insights to the pyschogeographic drift, and the legacies of Guy Debord.
One of many alleyways that are hidden in-between the streets of Wilmington, NC.
Sidelong to the glassed-in arcade, the April cloud– fleeting, pewter-edged– Gets lost in shadowed aisles or inlets‚ branching into passages and cul-de-sacs‚ Stalls, compartments, alcoves, a gust of sunshine catching undiscovered Edges of the fabric: mouldering books‚ the brass studs of an ottoman‚ rusty piles Of nuts and bolts and electrical spare parts: an ammunition dump in miniature. Since everything went up in smoke‚ there are no entrances, no exits. But as the charred beams hissed and flickered, I thought I glimpsed a map Of Belfast in the ruins: obliterated streets‚ the faint impression of a key; Something many-toothed, elaborate, stirred briefly in the labyrinth.
Old farmhouse barn found in a secluded‚ small-town outside of Raleigh‚ NC.
14
DRIFTING AMONGST CITIES
SMITHFIELD MARKET CIARAN CARSON
Corner city street looking out to USS NC Battle Ship off the Cape Fear River in Wilmington, NC.
01
Carsons̓ poem details the city as a map of the city. The market is a locus of memory and this poem offers a connection between the past and present, showing how they can exist simultaneously. Important to consider in this regard, is how the space within the city can be produced by layers of history. It is not just a single city, but multiple cities. Carson cycles to find his old home, but it no longer exists. His memory has overlaid it and since embedded it within the fabric of the place, which makes it utterly impossible to disentangle the two; therefore forming a spectral or a dream city. This is détournement, the integration of the past and present, into a superior construction of space based on the traces of the things that had happened. Carson has become lost within a city he once knew, enacting the motions of Debord s̓ dérive. He's mapping the city on the basis of his memories and psychological states, that follows a path of least resistance–drifting, the very definition of that makes up dérive.
U R B
A N
M O V E
M E N T
S
Abandoned mill window pane‚ shot in downtown Marshall, NC.
20
DRIFTING AMONGST CITIES
URBAN DRIFTING
Christopher Luessen
CITY COMPREHENSION AND MAPPING
01
Cities are made up of complex‚ multi-layered‚ and artificial environments. A hefty interactive “database” of sounds, smells, faces, images, notions, and ideas that are dispersed throughout smaller parts, that all together converge into forming an “urban puzzle,” known as the city. Each of these places can either attract or repel us by emitting a psychologically warm or cool, hostile or friendly, an interesting or simply indifferent sense of feeling, in a way that can be recorded and thus mapped. However, all these notions and “clues” describing the city and its components, are not always apparent and require additional skills as well as the techniques in order to be traced. We need to discover or to rediscover the ways and methods needed to fully understand and depict our cities in order to preserve their originalities along with these characteristics that constitute them as they are important to their inhabitants.
An abandoned mill frontal view, shot in downtown Marshall, NC.
02
22
DRIFTING AMONGST CITIES
Urban drifting can be used as an experimental way of recording and mapping all these data that can enhance areas with a unique and distinct “aura.” Urban drifting is walking within urban environments (cities, towns or metropolises) without any destination or predefined plan in mind. The stimulus given by urban ambiance, varies from visual incentives; (built tangible environment) towards invisible olfactory flows and sonant fluctuations (sound-scape and smell-scape.) Interpreting the notions and relationships that are formed within the urban web, all the while being unprejudiced and receptive to situations and paradoxes by all means. Discovering the dynamics created by an urban flow, hidden histories of the surroundings, uncharted paths, obscure stories and eventually the existing interrelationships among the differing parts that make up the city.
03
Essentially‚ urban drifting—strolling‚ wandering and straying—is the process of being part of an urban environments through long walks or detours, with an ulterior aim to comprehending specific urban locus' and all its characteristics, rendering it a site of architectural, artistic, political, as well as social interest. Urban drifting is “urban deviation,” a subversive process of urban walking, while re-establishing the sense of “spirit within a place” along with our experiences of familiar surroundings.
The crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and the water of fishes. His passion and his profession are to become one flesh within the crowd. For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy toset up house in the heart of the maltitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. - Charles Baudelaire
MODERNISTIC URBAN DIARIES: AND THE ART OF FLÂNERIEʼ
01
Close-up shot of an abandoned warehouse door in Raleigh, NC.
The origin of urban drifting as a conceptual spatial practice, traces back to the mid-late nineteenth century Paris and the emergence of the flâneur, an urban wanderer or “botanist of the sidewalk,” as Baudelaire described. An enigmatic yet rather creatively radical figure was drifting through the elegant arcades of Paris and along the notorious alleyways in East London, elevating his aimless strolls to an art form; a political statement. As a romantic lover of street life, the flâneur bounded up his fate with the fate of the city he inhabited. His “street journals” can provide useful information and historic facts about the city and its ever changing forms through time.
02
26
The Primacy of the term can be granted to Charles Baudelaire within his essay entitled, The Painter of Modern Life, where the term flâneur was first described as the symbol of modernity as well as the rise to a modern city. A few years earlier, on the other side of the English Channel, the descriptive words of E. A. Poe within his exceptional, The Man of the Crowd, introduced the very first urban wanderer. The monomaniacal narrator had an obsession with a certain character within the play, that led him to places as well as situations of mid-nineteenth century London, as he potentially would never have experienced. E. A. Poes ̓ character was some how a flâneur, acting like a “detective,” whom was part of the hoi polloi and at the same time, became detached from it. As Franz Hessel noticed, “in order to be engaged in flânerie, one must not have anything too definitive in mind.” In both occasions, the flâneur was driven by chance, desire, advice, history and his senses, rendering conventional navigation tools inactive and opening up a new chapter within a cities comprehension.
DRIFTING AMONGST CITIES
03
From the initial works from post-Romantic English writers such as William Blake‚ Thomas De Quincey or Robert Louis Stevenson, the city, with its exploration and depiction, had became the main focus of Romantic and post-Romantic era literatures. William Blake was a Londoner writer, poet and also an urban wanderer whose works began to describing real street life along with radicality (as influenced by the French Revolution) of eighteenth century London. Thomas De Quincey, within his autobiographical piece Confessions of an English Opium Eater, laid the foundations for the later movement of psychogeography and highly influenced the Situationists of the 1950s. He remarked, “I could almost have believed, at times, that I must be the first discoverer of some of these terrae incognitae (in the city of London.)” Robert Louis Stevenson, in his famous novel, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, depicted the social differences of late nineteenth century London, between the wealthy in the West along with the notorious degradation of the East End.
Reection of downtown bridge with a piece of glass against a brick store, shot in Raleigh, NC.
04
The rise of flâneur and his urban tales of wandering the cities of Paris and London may be described as a process of the political awakening. His existence acts as an indication of the struggles that later generations of urban drifters (walkers) will have to face as the cities re-develop in an increasingly hostile way in reaction to their activities. The re-developing project (1853-1870) as led by Georges-Eugene Haussmann, changed significantly the French capital, giving way to the large boulevards and the grandiose facades over old, crowded neighborhoods. This newly developed environment, the wanderer was soon engaged in an attempt to reclaim these streets all while preserve the original histories of the city. From Baudelaire to Benjamin, Paris was represented as a place of the growing unrest and radicalism. The notions of flânerie along with the Surrealist movement of early twentieth century, aimed to transform these experiences of daily life, challenged these citizens ̓ perspective of the city, and had replaced their dull, urban existence with an appreciation of the extraordinary. Urban drifting as an activity, was established as a cultural and revolutionary act that became the ultimate methodological tools for the Situationist movement in psychogeographical mapping and critic of the post-modern, capitalist city.
01
03
AS HEV I L L E ‚ N C
A drifters course has no plan nor structure, the will to wander, has in a sense created an extraordinary map that is less traveled.
06
DRIFTING AMONGST CITIES
W IL MIN G T O N ‚ N C
02
RAL E I G H ‚ N C
04
AT LA N TA‚ GA
N O B L E M A S T E R M I N D S
Cracked‚ brick sidewalks found throughout an old cemetery shot in center-city Atlanta, GA.
ON GUY DEBORD
Roy Christopher
WHEN POETRY RULED THE STREETSRoy Christopher
01
The writer‚ filmmaker‚ instigator and revolutionary‚ Guy Debord is most notable for his involvement with the Situationist International along with the concepts of dérive and détournement they had practiced; the former of which is one of the core ideas of psychogeography, then the latter which went on to defining the culture jamming movement. Their slogans had become words tagged over the walls during the May 1968 uprisings in France. They had published the proto-Adbusters of the time and their spirit hung heavy over the works of: Shepard Fairey, Banksy, The Yes Men, Kembrew, McLeod and other post-modern-day culture jammers and media hackers alike. Greil Marcus put them in lineage of resistance movements: Dadaism, Surrealism, the Situationists ̓ and punk rock. Wherever we attribute his inspirational influences, Debord had lived and loved in-line with the thoughts he wrote.
Statue a top of a cemetery tomb shot in historic Asheville, NC.
02
36
DRIFTING AMONGST CITIES
Debords best selling book known as‚ The Society of the Spectacle and the “spectacle” concept it defined have remained a mainstay of media criticism ever since. Debord s̓ biographer Anselm Jappe wrote, “The spectacle does not reflect society overall but organizes images in the interest of one portion of society only, and this cannot fail to affect the real social activity of those whom merely contemplate these images.” Debord himself wrote, “All that was once lived has become mere representation.” He continues, “The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather, it s̓ a social relationship between individuals that is mediated by images.” Debord s̓ clarification on this, is that the spectacle has in fact two foundational attributes: “incessant technological renewal” as well as the “integration of State and economy.” Nonetheless, Debord s̓ work has yet to receive the widespread reverence it deserves.
Looking upward within an old abandoned hospital, outside of downtown Raleigh, NC.
Alienation of the spectator to the proďŹ t of the contemplated object (the results of his own unconscious activity) are expressed in the following manner: the more he contemplates the less he lives; the more he accepts recognizing himself in the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own existence and his own desires. The externalities of the spectacles in relation to the active man appears in the fact that his own gestures are no longer his but those of another who represents them to him. This in turn is why the spectator feels at home nowhere‚ because the spectacle is everywhere.
- Guy Debord‚ The Society of the Spectacle
What remains of an abandoned hospital, located in downtown Raleigh, NC.
A Corroded tank outside of an abandoned Marshall, NC mill.
PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY
WILL SELF ʼS MIND GOES INTO OVERDRIVE
01
Guy Debord was part of a group that consisted of Marxist cultural theorists who made an attempt to make any sense of modern urban landscapes in the context of capitalism and psychology; and tried to figure out just what the modern city was doing to the mind of the individuals. Guy Debord was the founder of the avant-garde revolutionary organization known as the Situationists ̓ and had been well versed for the theories of The Society of the Spectacle, which argues authentic social life has been replaced by mere representations of social life, resulting of a confluence of capitalists ,̓ media and government forces which drags populations into degradation. The London Psychogeographical Society were affiliated with the Situationist International, which formed a loose society around the idea of psychogeography:
the study of precise laws and specific effects on geographical environments, whether consciously organized or not‚ on the emotions and behaviours of an individual.�
02
Will Self continues the traditions of the SI with his long-running columns that are showcased in the Independent. Self claims himself as a 21st century flâneur, while viewing psychogeography as a radically response to isolating enormities within modern megalopolis. It all may sound very highflown and intellectual; it really is not. He basically just walks around, while covering long distances on foot, through cities and countrysides in many different parts of the world. As he walks, he contemplates about what he finds. How has this city come to be this particular shape? What have the paths meant to varying groups of people? Self s̓ only rule is no cars. Self has often been accused of over-cleverness, prententiousness and contrarianism but his verbosity, wit and erudition are perfectly suited to the psychogeographic form. He digresses humorously and colours whatever he happens to be walking over with a host of cimmerian anecdotes from within his past. Self is generally at his best when going off the map, which he doesn ̓t seem do enough. He also slips occasionally into pieces which end feeling more like travelogues than psychogeographical experiments.
Close-up of an old tattered label of a cabinet, found in an antique shop outside of Atlanta, GA.
A window side mirror reecting the rooms contents found in a local antique shop in downtown Raleigh, NC.
ON ʻPSYCHOGEOGRAPHY ʼ World Hum THE PLACES THAT CHOOSE YOU
01
As a student of psychogeography‚ Will Self found a kind of fulfillment in adventures that he couldn ̓t otherwise find while traveling in planes, trains or automobiles. It had more to do with the way the physical world and the mind intersect when creating an experience, as explained within his book titled Psychogeography, as a collection of essays about his many strolls all around the world. In it, Self writes that the people today are “decoupled from physically geography.” As he has observed, walking “blows back the years, especially within urban contexts. The solitary walker is–as himself, an insurgent against the contemporary world, an ambulatory time traveler.” Self s̓ book is considered one the most original travel tomes in recent years. Its essays are illustrated by no other than Ralph Steadman and came at a time when individuals seem to be craving more of an immediate experience of the world and are ready to further explore with experimental travel. Frank Bures of World Hum talks with Self all about it.
Rusted entry-way to tomb found in a cemetery of Asheville, NC.
48
DRIFTING AMONGST CITIES
Veteran grave sites at the Riverside cemetery in Asheville, NC.
An old tattered cabinet latch in an antique shop on the outskirts of Atlanta, GA.
WH
FOR THE UNINITIATED, WHAT EXACTLY IS PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY? WS: The term derives from the French Situationists, who
were a part of post-Marxian groupuscule in 1950's Paris. Their leader, Guy Debord, coined it. For him, what he had fervently hoped, was that “late capitalist” society was a kind of illusion, or spectacle, in which city dwellers were thrust hither and thither by the commercial imperatives– work, consume, die–unable to experience the realities of their environment. Guy Debords ̓ solution was the dérive, or drift, really a resurrection of the time-honored tradition of the Parisians flâneur, which the solitary walker ambles through a metropolis, experiencing richness and diversity when freed from the need to utilize it. Since the Situationists–whose main dérive was picking up a few bottles of the cheapest red wine, get drunk on them, totter through the streets of Paris to the Ile de la Citee in the Seine and then sleep it off–psychogeography has mutated in many ways, but most who practice it–and it is a practice, not a field per se–take on view that by walking, you can decouple yourself from the human geography that defines the contemporaries of urbanity.
52
DRIFTING AMONGST CITIES
WH
HOW DID YOU BECOME INTERESTED IN PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY? WS: My epiphany came in 1988, when one day I d̓ found
myself standing in Central London with a day to kill. I realized from out of the blue; that I had never seen the mouth of the Thames River which flows through London, though I was born in the city and lived there all of my life. Not only that, I had never even seen a representation of it. It struck me, that if you were to encounter a peasant 30 miles from the mouth of the Amazon, and while asking him just what it was like at the river mouth, and he was to say that he d̓ never seen it, you would think him a very benighted peasant. Yet that peasant was in fact me. I Immediately got in my car, driving straight to the mouth of the Thames River. Needless to say it was nothing like I imagined. But as an indication of how strongly this human-defined geography still holds sway, I recently asked a large London crowd at one of my readings, just how many of them have seen the Thames ̓ mouth, and only a handful raised their hands.
WH
WHAT INFLUENCED YOU TO BE A LONG DISTANCE WALKER? WS: My father was a big walker. It was my way of being
with him as we walked. We did long walks–hikes, really– when I was a child. Impulse to walk went underground for a long while–walking doesn ̓t really mix well with a drug addiction, unless you r̓ e going to score–but it re-surfaced eight years ago when I cleaned up. Ever since then, it has been burgeoning and burgeoning.
WH
YOU WRITE THAT TOURISM IS A SEARCH FOR A PLACE THAT WILL EMBRACE YOU. IS THAT PARTLY WHAT YOU’RE DOING WITH YOUR WALKS? WS: No, not really. I am an unrepentant Londoner, so the places that have chosen me (because I think it is that way round–places tend to choose you, rather than vice versa), have already done so in that moment. I think you can only have room for about two or three serious affairs of places within a lifetime, just as you can only have the emotional space for two or three serious love affairs.
WH
WHAT HAS BEEN ONE OF YOUR MOST MEMORABLE WALKS? WS: One that springs to mind is at the mouth of Thames.
On the north bank of the river there s̓ a large, 10,000-acre island called Foulness, and has been a British army firing range since the First World War. It s̓ completely off limits except for those going on shore from boats. You can then walk across this eerie land, that time has passed by–and out on to the Thames estuarial mud, this is all in part of a Medieval causeway that s̓ called the Broomway, because it s̓ made up of bundles of broom that is buried within the mud. I ̓ve walked with a handful of companions for about six miles upriver over this mud, before tending back shore –an utterly bizarre, dislocatory, and beautiful experience.
54
DRIFTING AMONGST CITIES
Doorway to an ominous corridor in an abandoned asylum located outside of Atlanta, GA.
Decaying door from an old Mill set in downtown Marshall, NC.
56
DRIFTING AMONGST CITIES
“ The cynics are correct–our sense of freewill is only the feeling we have when taking the necessary options that most appeals to us.” -Will Self
WH
WHAT SEPARATES A PSYCHOLOGICAL ACT FROM STUNTS, OR GIMMICKS? IS IT DIFFERENT BY INTENT OR OUTCOME? WS: Well, I ̓m too old for gimmicks or stunts. The kind of
psychogeography I practice really works, at least for me. It inspires my prose, it soothes my soul. It makes it possible for me to deal with the hideousness of the globalized man-machine matrix.
WH
IN SUCH A HYPER-MEDIATED WORLD, WHAT KIND OF ROOM IS THERE FOR AN IDEA LIKE PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY? WS: Like writing–which is low start-up, all you need is a pen and a piece of paper–psychogeography simply put is bare-bones. You have to get yourself out there and experience. It does not require the hyper-mediated world, it is more akin to a meditational practice.
Krog Tunnel‚ is one of the most vandalized locations nestled in the heart of Atlanta, GA.
I
S
O L
A
T
E D
S P
A C
E
Bike remnants that are embedded into a sidewalk in Asheville, NC.
CREACTIVE RANGE
THE STUDY OF URBAN LIMINAL SPACE
01
Urban space is the space of the city‚ the metropolitan area embraced with its architecture and its population. It is the space where the community performs everyday life that unfolds its collective memories, imaginations, and desires. Therefore, urban space is not just the physical space of the constructions, but the primary locations for our human interactions, it s̓ the space where, by the fact that we live in it, we express ourselves: our individual identities, our needs for transgression as well as our differences. These processes, and the urban space are in a constant dialogue while creating urban scenes: spaces that facilitate the unfolding of collective and individual identities.
02
There is a human need–biosocial and economic need for individuals physically to interact, to create and inhabit scenes. These scenes are strictly related to the concept of performance, in the fact they “create space for cultural manifestations taking place in an actual time and space.� On one hand, the city can be regarded as a performance: the performance of individual and collective memories, values, desires and aspirations. On the other hand, the city can be viewed with its buildings and infrastructures, having material and long lasting characteristics that a performance may often lack. In this sense, the cities and their spaces and frames can facilitate or impede these performances. Urban spaces that can embrace the idea of liminality, creating a peculiar encounter between architectures and performances: urban liminal spaces.
Restored Mill turned into a coffee shop right outside of Raleigh, NC.
64
DRIFTING AMONGST CITIES
03
66
Within studies of anthropology‚ liminality connotes “a quality of disorientation or ambiguity that may occur in the middle stage of a ritual, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status while not yet having to begin transitioning to the status they will hold when the ritual is finally complete.” Arnold Van Genneps ̓ Rites de Passage and later, Victor Turner, had conceptualized the idea of liminality referring to the status of “neither here nor there; betwixt and between these positions assigned and arrayed by customs, conventions, law and ceremonial,” assumed by such individuals in the context rites of passage.
DRIFTING AMONGST CITIES
04
This definition lends itself to our conceptualization of liminality, as an attribute governing the descriptions of certain spatial dimensions, as found in these cities and settlements of the modern day, where rituals within this context can be understood as the day-to-day processes and sequences that constitutes the operation of society. Hence, its concepts as it applies to urban spaces refers to those places, through their placement, architecture, and/or function, assuming an ambiguous status. These places can experience destruction, creation and at the same time, as suspension of the common structure of societies and may also be characterized by temporality. The dissolution of order during liminality‚ can create a fluid, malleable situation, enabling new institutions and customs, into becoming established. Such spaces exist today, in smaller towns as bazaars and marketplaces, many of which are not permanent fixtures on the urban fabric‚ that nonetheless form an integral part of social interactions spectrum of societies. Other commonly known examples include: borders and frontiers, hotels and airports, construction sites and abandoned buildings. Within the urban landscape, we can refer to spaces as having multiple functions or placed in a context, altering functionalities by making use of the spatial dynamics in a different manner, as it is in the case of urban gardens.
Close-up of a rusted sink outside of an abandoned house found on the outskirts of Asheville, NC.
Wagon wheel on an old cottage found outside of Raleigh, NC.
DÉTOURNEMENT
AND THE APPROPRIATION OF SPACE
01
According to its given definition‚ in the SI texts‚ in 1959, “détournement is an integration of past or present artistic production into a superior environmental constructions.” These intentions are the disappearances of meaning, the substances of a converting element (even to a point of complete loss of its primer meaning) and a new simultaneously the formulation of a new semantic total, as it comes to re-define the meaning of an element. Everything can be transformed into symbols and gain new content in new context. On the contrary everything that constitutes a symbol can remain void of meaning, when ceasing to be linked with its original context. These intentions of distorting (visual or perceptive in any way) significance can already appear as various manufacturing techniques of collages by the dadaists, surrealists, along with many more in the practices of the Lettrists.
02
The implement of détournement in everyday life is called hyper-détournement and in architecture it would involve the transformation of buildings as well as its decors which would contribute to the alteration of the psychogeographical ambiances of the cities. According to Guy Debord, “Architecture must advance by taking emotionally moving situations, rather than emotionally moving forms, as the materials it works with. And the experiments conducted with these materials will lead to new, as yet unknown forms.” However, there can also be emotionally moving forms, that motivate emotionally moving situations! For this to occur, we need to in fact “evolve” the objective subjectivity of our needs into the subjective objectivity of our own personal experiences.
An abandoned house and bug found in a town outside of Asheville, NC.
70
DRIFTING AMONGST CITIES
03
To be more specific‚ nowadays‚ an architectural form that raises questionable issues or constitutes as a bizarre spectacle within a city, nevertheless, is being constructed, since everything that is “happening” are through the needs and the profits of commercialism. Maybe, we should all stand still for a moment and wonder about those true qualities of life (and not life-style) and their complete absence from the designing process! We in fact, are heading straight towards the construction of buildings that merely display themselves in a cities exhibition! In these terms‚ it is believed, that the values of the concept has been way overestimated. Meanwhile, public space in the sense of living space is being ignored‚ or commercialized. Public space has to motivate a playful behaviour and activate the sense of desire.
An abandoned house in a rural community found out of the outskirts of Asheville, NC.
Rundown building in the River Arts District in Asheville, NC.
Unkempt barn corner‚ shot in a town outside of Raleigh, NC.
Here is the new trend: Examine the implications in the public and in the private sectors, in the maps, and in the orthographic projections. The City Presents: The Center That Moves. It moves like this: Here is the new trend: Audience participation in creating the mythology of the great American city. The City Presents: The Center That Moves. It moves like this: Here is the PSA (Public Service Announcement): The center of the city moved like the shadows of the clouds on the architecture of the skyscraper, on the sidewalks. On the cement, “hello” to interchange and integration, systematic competition. A project for revolution: The erotic urban transformation where the space around the buildings is the soul of the city.
76
DRIFTING AMONGST CITIES
RE-URBANIZATION OF THE SPACE: POEM ROCKET
Graffiti covered train as it passes through downtown Raleigh‚ NC.
I
IN N D D E XE X
adbusters 13, 35
Asheville 06, 36, 48, 50, 67, 73, 75
Gennep, Arnold Van 63
Quincey, Thomas De 27
Geronta, Antigoni 66
Atlanta 10, 34, 45, 52, 55, 58
Raleigh
avant-garde
14, 24, 28, 38, 36, 47, 64, 68
11, 43
Haussmann, Georges-Eugene 29
Romantic English 27
Hessel, Franz 26
Banksy 35
hyper-détournement 70
Self, Will
Baudelaire, Charles
13, 43 - 45, 48, 57
24 - 26
Situationist International (SI)
Blake, William
11 - 13, 29, 35, 43 - 45, 43, 52, 69
27
Bures, Frank 48
Letterists 69
liminality 64 - 67
liminal space 64
Carson, Ciaran 18 - 21
Luessen, Christopher 21
spectacle 12, 17, 35, 36 - 39, 43, 52
Steadman, Ralph 48
Stevenson, Robert Louis 27
Surrealism/Surrealist 27, 35, 69
Christopher, Roy 35
Marcus, Greil 35
Dada/Dadaism 35, 69
Debord, Guy 12, 13, 17, 27, 36 - 39, 43, 53
dérive 13 - 17, 35, 52
Marshall 20, 22, 44, 56
Marxist 45, 53
urban deviation 23
urban drifting 21 - 25, 29
urban space 63, 64, 67
McMahon, Kieran 43
détournement 13 - 17, 35, 69
Wilmington
drifting/drift
13, 17
11, 17, 52
Poe, E. A. 26
Poem Rocket 76, 77
flâneur 24 - 29, 45, 52
Psychogeography 13, 27, 35, 43 - 48, 52, 53, 57
Psychogeographic drift 11 - 13, 29
World Hum 47, 48
D R I F T I N G
AMONGST CITIES