精品SM在线影片

Key Word: Psychogeography

There are about ten songs I repeat in my mind, which I鈥檓 not sure make them my favorites, but nonetheless, one of their lyrics is: 鈥淚 got tired of living with depression so I went for a little walk鈥� (鈥淗ands in the Dirt鈥� 2011). This punchy song is a young adult鈥檚 Southern reckoning with a loss of thrill. And it鈥檚 practical. The instructions are a how-to for coping with grownup sadness. After your walk, if all else fails, 鈥渟tick your hands in the dirt.鈥�

My mom used to leave the house for an hour each evening when we were old enough to bath ourselves and walk in the darkness of the neighborhood. I became a walker shortly after. I continually choose to walk alone over rotting leaves and through foreign cities to peek at the unknown.

If you keep walking, eventually you鈥檒l end up far from where you started. This is when psychogeography takes hold, because you鈥檝e changed, and the land saw it happen.

Psychogeography is coined an 鈥榓rt term鈥� by the Tate in London: 鈥淸It] describes the effect of a geographical location on the emotions and behaviors of individuals鈥� (鈥淧sychogeography鈥�). When I first heard this term, I had no idea what the internet had concurred to define it as, but my gut immediately knew. Something important is in this name because I鈥檝e felt it my whole life. In our human bodies we have operated with-by-through psychogeography to write origin stories, fulfill desire, and ultimately glimpse 鈥渉ome.鈥� Everyone has.

Guy Debord christened psychogeography (1955) via his avant-garde background of Marxist theoretical systems: 鈥淧hilosophy must become reality鈥� (qtd. in Chambre and McLellan). He credits land as an ultimate reality as a start for the environmental justice-combination. That 1960鈥檚 name might yet bring 鈥渃limate change鈥� down from lofty politics and back to the moral space. 鈥淓nvironmental justice!鈥� is a cry by BIPOC communities, from a deep respect for psychogeography: America鈥檚 most polluted environments are intentionally established in areas where people of color and the poor live and walk.

Inspired by the concept of the fl芒neur, an apolitical observer of modern life (Charles Baudelaire, 1863; 鈥渢his wanderer of the city, chronicler of the present, and contradiction-laden figure of the crowd, has always been a myth鈥�(qtd. in Livingstone and Gyarkye)), Debord emphasizes the importance of play (鈥渄rifting鈥�) when attempting a 鈥渓ess-functional鈥� navigation of modern architecture and spaces. He writes, 鈥渞eflective nostalgia is a form of deep mourning that performs a labor of grief both through pondering pain and through play that points to the future鈥� (qtd. in Boym 54). He was a founding member for Situationist International (1957) which organized creatives who longed to engineer radically different situations in opposition to culture, to expose previously unrecognized forces of homogeneity. Walking is one of the first things they could agreed upon as a revolutionary action. He writes that, 鈥渁ctivities like walking the city aimlessly were reimagined as statements against a society that demanded production, and maps were cut up and reassembled to facilitate wandering鈥�(鈥淪ituationist International鈥�).

With this history in mind, I understand psychogeography as a reconciliation. To the absurd, to the exhausting, to the places our food comes from, to the quiet, to the uncontrolled, to the other stories, to 鈥溾��the possibility of hidden patterns, patterns that, if unearthed and understood, would somehow explain me -my life- to myself鈥�(Birkerts 5). Walking takes us away from the noise of stories we鈥檝e always heard so that we can remember what we鈥檝e always known. As Debord writes, 鈥渙ne becomes aware of the collective frameworks of memories when one distances oneself from one鈥檚 community鈥�. Collective frameworks of memory are rediscovered in mourning鈥� (qtd. in Boym 55). When reconciling with alternative narratives of living, simultaneously one is distanced from a previous reality: a continual cycle of loss. So we keep walking.

Loss is not necessarily an automatic trigger for sadness. Sally Mann writes, 鈥渦ltimate beauty requires that sweet edge of decay, just as our casually possessed lives are made more precious by a whiff of the abyss鈥� (Hold Still). Walking towards a deep, futuristic horizon is putting a finger on the source for why we鈥檙e sad. Theorist Ann Cvetkovich argues, 鈥渋nvestigating public 鈥榚pidemics of depression鈥� recognizes long-term histories of violence tied to colonization and power and might offer ways to 鈥榗ome to terms with disappointment, failure, and the slowness of change鈥� in response. Such negative emotions might sometimes be antisocial, but they may also serve to catalyze creative forms of affiliation or relationality鈥� (qtd. in Cohen 72). It is normal to think with our bodies. Our physical bodies can translate abstract heritages of violence in ways that feel too distant for cognition. In walking, I activate my body knowledges and simultaneously, reorient myself to notice the other stories on the land: As Sara Ahmed puts it, 鈥渄epending on which way one turns, different worlds might even come into view. If such turns are repeated over time, then bodies acquire the very shape of such direction鈥� (qtd. in Rifkin 2). A thought paradigm of moving and listening to bodies could work its way down to our feet, to remind us that our feet are on the ground, that we are never disconnected from this soil. Our responsibility to seek justice for the earth systems is referenced by these walking-feet.

Noticing the effects of psychogeography is never an unbiased or neutral experience. Walking and processing psychogeography is a methodology for reexamining perspective: As Claire Atherton writes, 鈥渉istory haunts landscapes to become a part of our gaze鈥� (鈥淟iving Matter鈥�). Or as Kathryn Yusoff writes, 鈥渓ooked at through the lends of geography and slavery, the descriptive opacity of the Anthropocene as a reckoning with geologic relations seems disingenuous鈥� (鈥淭he Inhumanities鈥�). Walking can be a beginning. The psychogeographic reimagining of space is kin to Dada and Surrealism because it depends on the subconscious and its capabilities to alter our perspectives. Our subconscious humbles us, as does walking, and I think this is a mighty combination for making displacement from land and ecologic relation (ours and alternative histories) intelligible.

I am interested in the future of thinking. As a globe, processing histories of colonialism and pain, walking is a labor that enhances our thinking into the depths of our bodies. This holistic thinking mends loss while causing it and if the loss of uniformity, popular stories, comfort, and understanding don鈥檛 freeze us, the reply of movement starts 鈥渁 future.鈥� Environmental justice is a horizon that urges us to keep walking, to come closer.

References

Atherton, Claire. 鈥淟iving Matter.鈥� Bomb Magazine, September 2019, vol. 148. Retrieved March 2021.

Birkerts, Sven. The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2007.

Boym, Svetlana. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books, 2001.

Chambre, Henri, and McLellan, David T. 鈥淢arxism.鈥� Britannica. Retrieved March 2021.

Cohen, Brianne. 鈥淭owards a feeling of animacy: Art, ecology, and the public sphere in Vietnam.鈥� Afterimage, Vol. 47, no. 3, pp 66-90. 2020.

Livingstone, Jo, and Gyarkye, Lovia. 鈥淒eath to the Flaneur.鈥� The New Republic. Retrieved March 2017.

Mann, Sally. Hold Still. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015.

鈥淧测蝉肠丑辞驳别辞驳谤补辫丑测.鈥� The Tate London. Retrieved March 2021.聽

Rifkin, Mark. Beyond Settler Time: Temporal Sovereignty and Indigenous Self-Determination. Duke University Press, 2017.

鈥淪ituationist International.鈥� The Art Story. Retrieved March 2021.

Yusoff, Kathryn. A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018.