Jul 31, 2007

please read the COMMENT by Margarida, she wrote some notes relating my project TRAJECTOS ...about psychogeography & dérive in situationism
posted by claudia tomaz at 12:21 PM

1 comment:

Margarida Carvalho said...

ola claudia
On my way between wikipedia and Sadie Plant’s «The Most Radical Gesture», I found some remarkable ideas and authors whom might be linked to your Trajectos project in a rather thrilling way.
I’ll share them doing a short assemblage of quotes & links:
Ivan Chtcheglov wrote Formulary for a New City (Paris, 1953) at age nineteen under the name Gilles Ivain. This manifest was published in June 1958 in the first issue of the journal Internationale Situationniste. Unfortunately he was subsequently confined to a mental institution after planning to blow up the Eiffel Tower.
In his Formulary, Chtcheglov wrote: « the districts of this city could correspond to the whole spectrum of diverse feelings that one encounters by chance in everyday life.
Bizarre Quarter – Happy Quarter (specially reserved for habitation) – Noble and Tragic Quarter (for good children) – Historical Quarter (museum, schools) – Useful Quarter (hospital, tool shops) Sinister Quarter etc. And an Astrolaire which would group plant species in accordance with the relations they manifest with the stellar rhythm (…). Perhaps also a Death Quarter, not for dying in but so as to have somewhere to live in peace, and I think here of Mexico and of a principle of cruelty in innocence that appeals more to me every day.
(…) The principle activity of the inhabitants will be the Continuous Dérive».
If you want to read this exquisite text you can look for it in: http://www.uncarved.org/turb/articles/formulary/html

This last concept of dérive was one of the dearest to the situationists, developed namely by Guy Debord. As Sadie Plant writes: «one of psychogeography’s principle means was the dérive. Long a favourite practice of the Dadaists, who organized a variety of expeditions, and the surrealists, for whom the geographical form of automatism was an instructive pleasure, the dérive, the drift, was defined by the situationists as the “technique of locomotion without a goal”, n which “one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there”. The dérive acted as something of a model for the “playful creation” of all human relationships» (Sadie Plant, The Most Radca gesture, Lodon, Routledge, 1992, pp. 58-59).

Curiously i found this concept of psycogeography in the open studio last saturday in CAM, Gulbenkian. I felt intrigued and dwell on it today. i feel it has a resonance with your trajectos.
I've been enjoying a lot your pics!
i talk to u soon. beijinhos.

August 03, 2007

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