DiShevelled La Pelle
(This is a piece I wrote for the MFA Art,Society and Publics blog after an afternoon of art activism experiments in Dundee.)
To be guided through a city space at the whim of another is to give up ones habitual pattern of travel and to enter into the nuanced space of the unfamiliar, it becomes an experience of re-visualising and rediscovering urban environments and is both an act of subversion and disobedience.
This particular exercise granted licence for the participants to witness the cityscape in a new and unusual way. It was for example refreshing to be able to stand aimlessly on the street without fearing the suspicious glances of the public, psychologically bolstered by the silent reassurance of the art action and the complicity of the group. This sense of social liberation allowed one to indulge in a feeling of playful wonder and discovery. Of course, in the old tradition of the psychogeographic Dérive one begins to notice details and hitherto unacknowledged features of the urban topography. Decorative facets and roof lines become suddenly significant, when the psycho babble of ones life drama is temporarily put on hold, the mind is able to re-invest the world with meaning which has been lost or taken for granted. Acts such as holding a conference on the green, drawing self portraits in a cafe, ritualistically hanging around outside a locked church and making a fuss in the local record shop become delightful diversions from the humdrum monotony of social conformity. The walk becomes an act of social disobedience undermining preconceived and accepted societal behaviours and norms and if accusations of mental illness or suspicious loitering are brought to bear, one can reveal the trump card; artists at work.
authoritarian regimes in particular object to any expression of loitering or idleness, seeing it as a manifestation of subversion; Hitler, for example, banned both prostitutes and vagrants from the streets. The loiterer refuses to submit to the social controls of modern industry. http://psychogeographicreview.com/?p=2568
Many architectural and cultural signs and signifiers burst into consciousness as we traverse the commercial, academic, artistic and religious sites of the city's West end. Including, significantly, a glittering panoramic view of the entire topography, a symbolic whole as seen from the intellectual ivory Tower Building of the University.
There we were, playing our games in the sky while a thousand personal dramas unfolded beneath us.
To be guided through a city space at the whim of another is to give up ones habitual pattern of travel and to enter into the nuanced space of the unfamiliar, it becomes an experience of re-visualising and rediscovering urban environments and is both an act of subversion and disobedience.
This particular exercise granted licence for the participants to witness the cityscape in a new and unusual way. It was for example refreshing to be able to stand aimlessly on the street without fearing the suspicious glances of the public, psychologically bolstered by the silent reassurance of the art action and the complicity of the group. This sense of social liberation allowed one to indulge in a feeling of playful wonder and discovery. Of course, in the old tradition of the psychogeographic Dérive one begins to notice details and hitherto unacknowledged features of the urban topography. Decorative facets and roof lines become suddenly significant, when the psycho babble of ones life drama is temporarily put on hold, the mind is able to re-invest the world with meaning which has been lost or taken for granted. Acts such as holding a conference on the green, drawing self portraits in a cafe, ritualistically hanging around outside a locked church and making a fuss in the local record shop become delightful diversions from the humdrum monotony of social conformity. The walk becomes an act of social disobedience undermining preconceived and accepted societal behaviours and norms and if accusations of mental illness or suspicious loitering are brought to bear, one can reveal the trump card; artists at work.
authoritarian regimes in particular object to any expression of loitering or idleness, seeing it as a manifestation of subversion; Hitler, for example, banned both prostitutes and vagrants from the streets. The loiterer refuses to submit to the social controls of modern industry. http://psychogeographicreview.com/?p=2568
Many architectural and cultural signs and signifiers burst into consciousness as we traverse the commercial, academic, artistic and religious sites of the city's West end. Including, significantly, a glittering panoramic view of the entire topography, a symbolic whole as seen from the intellectual ivory Tower Building of the University.
There we were, playing our games in the sky while a thousand personal dramas unfolded beneath us.
On
a fundamental level the experience was an investigation of roles:
activists, observers, reviewers, leaders, followers, the dominant and
passive but even more than this it begat existential reflections such
as; what is my role in society, what public costume do I choose to wear
and how do my creative actions disrupt or interfere with the wider
sphere of my life and the lives of others, where do I place myself in
this vast amorphous sea of culture?
Dérive: a
technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances. Dérives involve
playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical
effects, and are thus quite different from the classic notions of
journey or stroll. In a
dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations,
their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives
for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions
of the terrain and the encounters they find there. Chance is a less
important factor in this activity than one might think: from a dérive
point of view cities have psychogeographical contours, with constant
currents, fixed points and vortexes that strongly discourage entry into
or exit from certain zones.http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/2.derive.htm
