Saturday 26 December 2020

psychogeography

Being a committed and rather incurable flรขneur myself, learning about the playful praxis that combines elements of anarchy and the surreal in urban exploration and understanding how built environments and pathways influence residents and guests struck me as engrossing and endearing for its vagaries of association and membership.

One central tenet—though more nuanced than I am describing it—is that of dรฉrive, drift, and how we’re attracted to those zones that conform to our neighbourhood and comforts and to let oneself go and take a penny-hike like I used to do (and still sometimes at an unknown crossroads) and flip a coin at a corner to decide if you’ll proceed right of left. Of course, proper reconnaissance admits more directions and apparently there’s an app for that too. Societies once dedicated to this movement that I could find seem to have gone inactive in the past few years but organised activities including loitering with intent, scavenger hunts, immersive challenges and workshops that called out gentrification, overtourism and eroding public transportation schemes as well as unearthed the legacy and vestigial signs of the architecture of exclusion. It seems like a good time to revive interest and start our own psychogeographical chapters.