psychogeography
“The study of the precise effects of geographical setting,
consciously managed or not, acting directly on the mood and behavior of the
individual.
Psychogeographical
Relating to psychogeography. That which manifests the direct effect of geographical setting on mood.”[21]
Situationists’ psychogeography tries to find specific impacts of the geographical environment on the emotions and behavior of individuals. Psychogeographical can be applied to the findings achieved by this type of investigation, to their influence on human feelings, and more generally to any situation or conduct that seems to reflect the same spirit of discovery.[22]
As mentioned before Situationists used the technique
of experimental dérive to realize the psychogeographical contours of urban space.
In the “Theory of Dérive” Debord wrote:
“The lessons drawn from dérives
enable us to draw up the first surveys of the psychogeographical articulations
of a modern city. Beyond the discovery of unities of ambiance, of their main
components and their spatial localization, one comes to perceive their principal
axes of passage, their exits and their defenses. One arrives at the central
hypothesis of the existence of psychogeographical pivotal points. One measures
the distances that actually separate two regions of a city, distances that may
have little relation with the physical distance between them.”[23]
But beyond the interpretation of individual’s interaction with the geography Situationists used psychogeography to criticize the machine-like rationalized environment of Modernist urban space. Situationists’ critiques particularly were against the Corbusian schemes of modern urban renewal and Baron Haussmann’s urban renewal of Paris in 19th century. Haussmann opened up broad thoroughfares allowing for the rapid circulation of troops and the use of artillery against insurrections. Corbusier than invented the notion of “streets in the air” that sacrificed the streets to the rapid flow of motor vehicles:
“Haussmann’s
Paris is a city built by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Present-day urbanism’s main problem is ensuring the smooth circulation of a
rapidly increasing number of motor vehicles. A future urbanism will undoubtedly
apply itself to no less utilitarian projects, but in the rather different context
of psychogeographical possibilities.”[24]
Psychogeographical studies of the Situationists in Paris of the 1950s and '60s and Kevin Lynch’s analysis of legibility on American cities in 1950s indicates a similar critique on modernist understanding of urban space in postwar period. But their methods and solutions were distinct in many ways. (Table 1)
Table 1. Comparison of Lynch’s and Situationists methods and understandings
| Lynch's Image of the City | Situationists' psychogeography |
| Scientific methods, interviews and field maps provided by trained experts | Experimental, through drifting |
| Aim is to find spatial elements that make the city legible | Aim is to understand individual's emotions and behaviors on urban space |
| Concentrated on physical aspects of city design | Focused on impacts of urban space on people's behaviors and passions |
| Legibility, need for orientation | Disorientation, labyrinthine networks for play and adventure |
Pre–Situationist texts on techniques of “dérive” and “détournement”, “psychogeography” and “formulary for a new urbanism” constituted the basis of Situationists’ critique upon modern city space and life in 1960s and 1970s.
unitary
urbanism (urbanisme
unitaire)
“The theory of the combined use of arts and techniques
as means contributing to the construction of a unified milieu in dynamic relation
with experiments in behavior.”[25]
Like Henry Lefebvre, The Situationists attacked modern urbanism as a “technique of separation” based on the rationalization of certain aspects of the city and of human existence such as production and circulation.[26] For example they see traffic circulation as the organization of universal isolation. Similarly in Western world around 1960s many philosophers, social scientists and urbanists criticized the totalizing rationality, functionalism, Taylorizm (separation of specialization), the machine metaphor (mode of production as a model for the city and for architectural practice) and zoning (separation of functions) of modernity project:
“Urbanism, as it is understood by today’s professional
planners, is reduced to the practical study of housing and traffic as isolated
problems. The total lack of alternatives involving play in the organization
of social life prevents urbanism from attaining the level of creation, and the
gloomy and sterile appearance of most modern neighborhoods is a shameful reminder
of this.”[27]
As mentioned previously according to Situationists modern capitalism is the primary force that organizes the reduction of all social life to a spectacle. They saw city planning as the integral arm of the capitalist state:[28]
“Power is the greatest town-planner. It parcels out lots of public and private survival, buys up vacant lots at cut price, and only permits construction that complies with its regulations. Its own plans involve the compulsory acquisition of everybody. It builds with a heaviness which is the envy of the real town-builders that copy its style, translating the old mumbo-jumbo of the sacred hierarchy into stockbroker-belts, white collar apartments and workers flats.”[29]
Situationists strongly emphasize that organization of cities is controlled by the spectacle system. It produces and reproduces again the existing condition of life. Therefore people blind to the possibility of a living critique of this manipulation of cities and a critique stimulated by all the tensions of everyday life.
Situationist tried to provide people’s looking to their surrounding environment from a different perspective. To them the attitude with which they accept it can be changed immediately. Their goal was to establish the bases for an experimental life where people can come together to create their own lives.
They described unitary urbanism as the opposite of a specialized activity. Unitary urbanism consisted of making different parts of the city communicate with one another. To them this new urbanism could only be flourish in the lands that were out of the spectacle system. These lands were the places that made up by “constructed situations”:
“The Situationist destruction of present conditioning is already at the same time the construction of situations. It is the liberation of the inexhaustible energies trapped within a petrified daily life. With the advent of unitary urbanism, present city planning will be replaced by a technique for defending the permanently threatened conditions of freedom, and individuals will begin freely constructing their own history.”
Their message is so clear that unitary urbanism is related to construction of situations. By constructing situation people actually would create the temporary zones isolated from existing conditioning of everyday life. It was such a zone that allows free play, creativity, and the expression of passions and emotions that are never freely circulated in the channels of spectacle system:
“A constructed situation is a means for unitary urbanism, just as unitary urbanism is the indispensable basis for the construction of situations, in both play and seriousness, in a freer society.”[30]
Although revolutionary Situationists’ proposal of “construction of situations” has never been realized. “Construction of situations” could only be provided by the techniques of derive and detournement, psychogeographical analysis of the historic quarters of the city. Beginning with early 1960s in France and some other developed countries decentralization of historic city quarters and enlargement of city by mass housing projects and suburbs made Situationists tools of transformation useless. The different parts of the city have already lost communication each other. After 1960 they abandoned the theory of unitary urbanism and accepted all urbanism as a bourgeois ideology. They continued their critique on ideological and political grounds.[31]
In Lettrists periodicals “Potlatch” (1955) Debord, Wolman, Bernstein and few others offered new uses of public buildings like churches, museums, cemeteries, monuments, and train stations for Paris. Their rage against the components of existing urban system aimed to distort, or sometimes destroy, the present perception of these buildings and symbols in people’s mind and everyday use:
· Debord offered the complete abandonment of all religious buildings. Bernstein, on the other hand, suggested that churches should be partially demolished, so that the remaining ruins give no trace of their original function.
· Train stations should remain untouched. They find them very attractive place for their aims. If all the information regarding to departures could be removed this chaotic environment would be better for derive.
· Cemeteries should be eliminated. All corpses and memories of that sort should be totally destroyed.
· Museums should be abolished and their masterpieces distributed to bars.
· All monuments, the ugliness of which cannot be put to any use, should make way for other constructions. All remaining statues whose significance has become outmoded should be removed.[32]
This pre-Situationists conception of urban space was based on the destruction of static elements of urban components, the technique of “negation”. They tried to create the “architecture of dérive”.
Alike from other members of SI Constant argued not only the critique of modern urbanism but also the production of the Situationists City. Unitary urbanism was based on construction of situations and remarkably at abstract level. On the other hand Constant has offered concrete model of their ideas on the future of cities. In his article “Another city for another life” (1958) Constant gave clues of his utopian model of the new city: “New Babylon” has arrived.
As
Constant himself pointed out that Situationists’ conception of urbanism is social.
Like Henry Lefebvre, Constant saw spatially as the expression of social relations.
In New Babylon, social space is social spatiality. Space as a psychic dimension
(abstract space) cannot be separated from the space of action (concrete space).
His utopian architecture supposes a new society. Therefore in order to understand
Constant’s projects in detail we need to explain both social and spatial structure
together in his utopian model of New Babylon.
“In an industrial society which confuses work and productivity,
the necessity of producing has always been an enemy of the desire to create.
What spark of humanity, of a possible creativity, can remain alive in a being
dragged out of sleep at six every morning, jolted about in suburban trains,
deafened by the racket of machinery, bleached and steamed by meaningless sounds
and gestures, spun dry by statistical controls, and tossed out at the end of
the day into the entrance halls of railway stations, those cathedrals of departure
for the hell of weekdays and the nugatory paradise of weekends, where the crowd
communes in weariness and boredom?”…Never before has a civilization reached
such a degree of contempt for life; never before has a generation, drowned in
mortification, felt such a rage to live.”[33]
As Vaneigem asserted above, to Situationists “people are murdered slowly in the mechanized slaughterhouses of work”. Work is the antithesis of creativity. To Constant the factor of play and creativity is a very fundamental part of life. New life space of society should be constructed to allow free play and creativity. In the future, the man’s way of life will be determined not by profit but by play.[34] Therefore New Babylon is projected as a giant game, a house for homo ludens.
“ Civilization is rooted in noble play”[35]
Anthropologists Johan Huizinga’s book “Homo Ludens: A study of the Play-Element in Culture” became one of the main theoretical grounds of Constant’s new society. In this book Huizinga sees “play instinct” as one of humanity’s primary instincts, one that provides the fundament for other elements of society such as religious, ritual, war and poetry. Inspired by Huizinga’s analysis Constant defined New Babylon as the world of Homo Ludens. In New Babylon one does not have to work. In this new society one can in agreement with his desires. He would be shown to full advantage as a creative being. He would become a homo ludens.
Utilitarian society, according to Constant, is a social design that measures everything with productivity (capacity for work) namely as its utility. Oppositely He offered “ludic society” in where the human being freed by automation from productive work. Unlike utilitarian society in ludic society “play” would be the major instinct that give way to individual’s creativity and freedom.
Constant Niewenhuis has worked over twenty years on the development of his utopia New Babylon. He published his early sketches in 1949 but his work was not exhibited for 12 years. (Fig.9) In the making of New Babylon the drawings remain of secondary importance throughout the project. Rather he produced the detailed architectural models of his utopian city.[36]
Constant inspired by a “gypsy camp” near Alba in Italy to construct his spatial model for New Babylon. Gypsies’ nomadic way of life and architectural elements that used for shelter became the basis of first architectural expression of the scheme for New Babylon:
“That was the day I conceived the scheme for a permanent
encampment for the gypsies of Alba and that project is the origin of the series
of models of New Babylon. Of a New Babylon where, under one roof, with the aid
of movable elements, a shared residence is built; a temporary, constantly remodeled
living area; a camp for nomads on a planetary scale”[37]
According to Constant a person’s living quarters become less important to him due to his increasing mobility and his growing demand for temporary accommodation such as hotels, caravans and tents. He saw the future society bearer of nomadic culture. To him the needs of an emerging race of nomads must be satisfied.[38]
Free flows of nomads would by provided by links of networks, and living quarters of his city would be made up by different sectors. Architectural materials of this city would allow to change and flexibility in interior spaces. (Fig.10)
Fig.10. New Babylon: a nomadic town, home of homo ludens, 1959
Constant presents New Babylon as a network. But his system is very different from rational arrangement of utilitarian society:
“While in utilitarian society one strives by every means
towards an optimal orientation in space, the guarantee of temporal efficiency
and economy, in New Babylon the disorientation that furthers adventure, play
and creative change is privileged. The space of New Babylon has all the characteristics
of a labyrinthine space, within which movement no longer submits to the constraints
of given spatial or temporal organization.”[39]
Using labyrinth Constant was interested in the experience of the loss of orientation. With mazelike networks nowhere has center one has to reach (discovery of previously unknown routes) and nobody have to arrive quickly from one place to another. (disruption of high tempo of life) Therefore his existence will gain quality through the loss of orientation allowing him to shape his time and space. (breaking of usual time- space relations)
Constant used labyrinth as a metaphor for change. He named this process of change as “dynamic labyrinth”. To him in a playful society, city planning will automatically accept the qualities of a dynamic labyrinth.[40]
Constant designed his sectors as a series of units that mainly can be found 15 to 20 meters above the ground. (Fig.11) These sectors, are independent from a construction point of view, and will be placed on top of the existing city. After a period of time the sectors will gradually grow towards each other making the traditional living areas unnecessary. The ground surface mainly consists of uncultivated space, meant for agriculture, nature reserves and for forests and parks but also offers space for throughways, the fully automated production centers and other objects for which is no place within the sectors.
Fig. 11. Detail from hanging sectors, 1960
Constant’s sectors are arranged suited to needs for
nomad that can allow the refurnishing the interior space easily. Even though
the base structure (macro –structure) cannot easily be changed because of the
dimensions and the place within the network, basically everything is possible
within a sector. (Fig.12) The ludic life of inhabitants of New Babylon imagine
regular transformation of the interior of the sectors.
Interior space gives more space to play and fun. In a sector about 70%
of the living space are reserved for collective activities:
“…Labyrinth houses consisting of large number of rooms of irregular form, stairs at angles, lost corners, open spaces, cul-de-sac, would provide place for adventure. Other spaces – the deaf room, fitted out in insulating materials; the screaming room, decorated in bright colors and loud sounds; the echo room; the room of images (cinematographic games); the room of reflection: the room of rest; the room of erotic play and psychological influences- would allow for the free play of the senses.”[41]
Fig.12. Orient Sector, 1959; Architectural material of the sectors would be aluminum, iron wire, and plexiglas.
It is hard to put a clear conclusion for Situationist and their critique on everyday life and vision of urban space. Rather I will give here some extensions and parallels between fragments of Situationists ideas and today’s world briefly under three categories:
a. Social and Philosophical:
b.
Architecture and Urbanism:
c.
Cyberspace
FOOTNOTES
1. Anthony Vidler, Architectural Uncanny, 1994
2.
Constant and Debord “The Amsterdam Declaration”, Internationale
Situationiste Vol:2 , December 1958
3. Constant Nieuwenhuis, “New Babylon”, 1974
5.
Constant Niuwenhuis, “New Urbanism”, Provo, Vol:9, 1966
13.
Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A study of the Play-Element in Culture,
Beacon Press,1970
14.
Mark Wigley “The Hyper-architecture of Desire” in -New Babylon and the end of the avant-garde-
discussion, at: http://www.archined.nl/extra/babylon/newbabylon_01.html
19. Unsal Oskay, “Modern Toplumda Serbest Zamanýn Ýþe Koþulmasý”in Yýkanmak Ýstemeyen Çocuklar Olalým, Yapý Kredi Yayýnlarý, 1998
20. W. Ted Rogers, “Detournement
For Fun And [Political] Profit” in the book “Disrupted Borders: An Intervention in Definitions
of Boundaries”, London: Rivers Oram Press, 1993, at C-Theory http://www.ctheory.com/r-detournement_for_fun.html