Podcast: What on Earth is Psychogeography

I had the great pleasure of being interviewed live onstage at the fantastic Wanstead Tap about the subject of walking and psychogeography for the Tap Into Podcast. And appropriately I did ramble all over the place a bit.

Here are some of my notes.
Original definition of Psychogeography by the Situationist International:
“the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.” S.I.
dérive
A mode of experimental behavior linked to the conditions of urban society: a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances. The term also designates a specific uninterrupted period of dériving.

Note on psychogeography from my book This Other London:
“In 1953 a young poet and activist, Ivan Chtcheglov, writing under the pseudonym of Gilles Ivain, produced an article called ‘Formulary for a New Urbanism’, in which he put forward this utopian vision: ‘Everyone will live in their own cathedral. There will be rooms awakening more vivid fantasies than any drug. There will be houses where it will be impossible not to fall in love. Other houses will prove irresistibly attractive to the benighted traveller.’

Quote about the S.I and the City
One article from 1958 sums up the group’s feelings about the city: “The world we live in, and beginning with its material decor, is discovered to be narrower by the day. It stifles us.
“We yield profoundly to its influence; we react to it according to our instincts instead of according to our aspirations. In a word, this world governs our way of being and it grinds us down.”

Video I made about Mathieu O’Neil’s Situationist Library in Paris.

Link to part of the Chris Gray Memorial Lecture at Housmans bookshop October 2012.

Extract from an article I wrote about British Psychogeography and the 90s psychogeography revival:
The revival of the London Psychogeographical Association had been announced with a statement in their first newsletter in 1993, “The revival of the LPA corresponds to the increasing decay in British culture, and indeed of the British ruling elite. It has been, in fact, an historical inevitability”. In an essay entitled ‘Why Psychogeography’ Stewart Home reinforced the point, “Psychogeography is not a substitute for class struggle, but a tool of class struggle.”

Sacred alignments of London map
Lud Heat map

London Psychogeographical Assocation Newsletter – Why Psychogeography
“There is a spectre haunting Europe, nay, the world. The spectre of psychogeography”
The publications of the London Psychogeographical Association forthrightly present a reconstruction of urban life.

Previous posts about Iain Sinclair and Psychogeography

Proto-psychogeography
The Fringe of London
“On rambling round the outskirts of London, and the unexpected turns, trials and triumphs that lie in the path of the wayfarer”. 

Discovering Maxwell’s The Fringe of London had been an epiphany for me, realizing that there was a heritage for this odd practice of wandering around neglected streets, following the city’s moods, tracking myths, retracing old paths and uncovering forgotten histories. – out-take from TOL

“The border-line between folk-lore and fairy-tales is not more nebulous than that between topographical research and “nosing about.”
The former, in either case, is but a grander name for practically the same thing. I mean the outdoor part of topography, not the many hunts in the land of books that usually follows later.”

“There are two ways of topographical hunting: one is to follow the “scent” of a clue, and the other is to go into the unknown to find what may be. Each way has its own charms and surprises. “

“The way of the topographical rambler is sometimes hard, often muddy, usually interesting; but never dull.” – Gordon S. Maxwell – The Fringe of London, 1925

England’s Character by SPB Mais 1936
“So make up your mind to be bound by no programme, to travel with complete irresponsibility, to start nowhere in particular, and the odds are that you will catch a glimpse of England that is vouchsafed only to the privileged few.”
“What you are looking for is as elusive as the faery music of the piper at the gates of dawn. What you see may be incommunicable to others, but it will provide you with a vision that may well alter the whole of your outlook on life.”

“Londoners live and sleep in places that in one’s lifetime had been remote and inaccessible”
Walter George Bell, 1926

“… I decided that these little towns must be celebrated. I would lock up, gather toothbrush, comb, and razor, and revisit them; make a Grand Tour of the true heart of London”
The Outer Circle Rambles in Remote London, Thomas Burke 1921

Some previous posts about psychogeography

Sonic Perambulation: Chrisp Street Market to Stratford

It’s great to be back on the essential Resonance FM. “Sonic Perambulation: Chrisp Street Market to Stratford” – is a collaboration with sound recordist Joel Carr with the intention of capturing the shifting sounds experienced on a walk – along with my spontaneous narration. This walk starts at Chrisp Street Market in Poplar as the market traders packed up for the day. It’s one of London’s older street markets and is currently caught up in a regeneration project. We then walk through the streets to the Limehouse Cut and follow this to Stratford via the Lea Navigation. Recorded in July 2023.

Podcast recording with Joel Carr and John Rogers on the Limehouse Cut - Sonic Perambulation broadcast on Resonance FM 24th November 2023
Podcast recording with Joel Carr and John Rogers in Poplar - Sonic Perambulation broadcast on Resonance FM 24th November 2023
Podcast recording with Joel Carr and John Rogers on the Limehouse Cut - Sonic Perambulation broadcast on Resonance FM 24th November 2023

We hope to record more Sonic Perambulations in 2024.

Kensal Rise Has A Story – video

At the beginning of 2020 I was commissioned to create a project by Brent 2020 London Borough of Culture in collaboration with Kensal Rise Community Library. The resulting project, Kensal Rise Has A Story, launched in September 2020 as part of the inaugural Brent Biennial. This is how I described the project in an interview with Art Review:
“It’s a geographic sound map or trail of Kensal Rise. The form the project takes has partly been informed by the COVID-19 restrictions. I had planned this beautiful archive inside the library and some of the sound works were going to be burnt onto vinyl which could be listened to within a listening booth. We’ve not got those, but its ok, those were outcomes, they weren’t really the work itself which is a portrait of the community in their own words. By ‘community’ I mean the community of the library. Where it becomes geographic is that the emphasis is on the subjective responses to the environment and the changes within that environment rather than looking for some objective, dry, historical overview of the area, or even contemporary commentary on the area.
The ethos of the Kensal Rise Library is at the heart of the project. About 60 percent of the contributors are connected to the library, as users or in some other way. You can’t listen to any of the clips without feeling the presence of the library.”
You can read the rest of the interview here

It gave me enormous pleasure putting this video together with snippets of footage captured on some of the walks with local residents and some of the 51 audio clips that made up the audio trail.

You can listen to the full list of audio clips here

Massive thanks to everyone who contributed interviews, Brent 2020, Kensal Rise Community Library, curator Henry Coleman, designer Joe Hales, Willesden Local History Society, Winkball (James, Tom, Gideon), and Brent Borough Archives.

The Pleasure of Discovery psychogeography podcast

Radio Wolfgang on Wanstead Flats

It was a great pleasure to work with Radio Wolfgang on the production of this podcast as part of their Good Nature series. We used the device of the algorithmic psychogeographic dérive to talk about how to unlock the ‘unknown facets of the known’ (in the words of Greil Marcus) and explore the world around you anew.

I first came across the idea of the algorithmic dérive via Wilfried Hou Je Bek some time around 2002 and it proved very useful in generating community participation in the Remapping High Wycombe project (2004-05). It was subsequently used in a psychogeographic intervention in artist Bob and Roberta Smith’s 2015 General Election campaign and became the subject of one of his paintings that ended up in a feature in Elle Decor.

You can download the podcast here