from Mancubist:

… a month after Manchester's accidental festival of psychogeography ended, Morag from Twangorama has been back in touch:

After the accidental festival a few of us decided we'd like to keep exploring psychogeographical territory together—and that we would meet on the first Sunday of every month to go for a wander.

We'll be meeting at the basement [24 lever street] at 2pm on sunday 4 february—Alex has some exciting plans for a topical dérive—no clues but it looks like a winner to me.

according to Mancubist, it also sounds like there is another loiterers resistance movement zine on the way.

Tim Devlin is currently working on a project documenting Providence RI-area residents' memories and associations with specific locations in their city and he needs help from Providence people, past and present.

He's specifically looking for bittersweet/melancholy memories of the last time you saw someone who meant something to you, but who you no longer speak to; and the exact location where this final sighting/meeting took place.

all stories will be presented in a way that will ensure participants' confidentiality.
more information → http://timdevin.com/providence.html.

it appears that glowlab has agreed to a kickball match with pips and the "ENTIRE FATE of the future of Psychogeography in America is at stake and ALL could be LOST"!

while we enjoy kickball as much as the next hipster, there are a few things we're curious about, such as why the event is subtitled "psychogeography vs. neogeography," since neither glowlab nor pips identify with the term neogeography [though we do] or who is trying to change the name psychogeography to neogeography in the first place [no one that we're aware of].

we're also unsure how an "ideological battle" for the "very name and soul" of psychogeography will be solved by a kickball game, but, well hell, drunken dismemberment on the field is usually a good time, so we'll be there.

via Great Map:

Resistant Maps, artistic actions in the interconnected urban territory. The representation of territory holds a historical role in the privileges of power. Geographical data has always been in its hands. The regaining of this representation goes through description and sharing practices [often in personal perspectives too]. This is possible thanks to collaborative tools and the consequent value shifting of maps. Maps are not granted anymore by structures of power, but built by individuals who, drawing on the ideas of the psychogeographical movements, redraw the urban space according to fresh new coordinates.

Villa Croce Contemporary Art Museum
via Jacopo Ruffini 3, Genoa [Italy]
25–26 November 2006

via Glowlab:

As part of Southern Exposure's OFFSITE [a series of major commissioned public art projects investigating diverse strategies for exploring and mapping public space], Neighborhood Public Radio will be producing a yearlong series of projects collectively titled Radio Cartography.

Radio Cartography "seeks to investigate strategies for exploring and mapping public space using the medium of radio in nontraditional ways. The project attempts to merge technology-based endeavors with more conventional tactics of walking, performance, and interventions."

→ tune in

mindy, claire bear, mrs. hahn, beth, judith, kim, anabelle, jackie, carla, kessie, abby, kira, paula, rebecca, toni, ?, suzie, ellen #1, ellen #2, hanna, ina, chelsea, karena, meagan, chrissie, wendy, carol, tessa, vivian, dr. lara, holly, irene, nancy, uma, rosemary, olivia, sue, theresa, ruthie, isabelle, ilyssa… at least those are the ones he can remember.

thanks megan

via Pedestrian Culture:

"I am doing a little zine and wanted to include a piece on psychogeography, especially of the British variety. I was wondering if anyone reading either has written or would be willing to write me a few hundred words briefly explaining the term and talking about some of their own experiences. I can pay in copies—if you supply a list of people you want to receive copies, I can send them directly. So far I have some good poetry, a longish manifesto on 'the new Imagism' in poetry by a group in California, beautiful photography—I am interested also in personal memoir, interviews, travel writing, food writing, and music or film writing. I would sincerely appreciate the contributions and would only reject for this issue if I run out of space.

"My email is donthepoet [at] yahoo com"

via britta:

In April 2006, placekraft wrote:
"[neogeography is] a much needed term to replace the often overused psychogeography. The term is sufficiently abstract to serve as a broad category of un/non-professional geographic practices (walking mapping, tagging, etc.). It would often be appropriate to replace a number of activities/projects currently denoted as psychogeographic, with neogeographic. Psychogeography could then be a narrower term evoking the implicit political ambitions of the Situationists."

At the time, we agreed with replacing the generalized use of psychogeography with neogeography, allowing for a more specific usage of psychogeography, though we disagreed with limiting this use to the "implicit political ambitions of the Situationists." We felt that psychogeography shouldn't be tied to politics, but to psychology. When describing how concrete places make one feel, the emotions they evoke, the ambiances they are capable of, this is psychogeography. When analyzing abstract places such as home, the "father-" or "motherland," utopia, this is psychogeography. Such psychogeographical research could then be used as the basis for political action or an urban intervention, but in and of itself, we didn't feel psychogeography should have an implicit political agenda.

Now, we're not so sure.

→ continued at neogeography.net

An interesting conversation by two Conflux attendees, Ben Schaafsma and Adam Wolpa, who also attended Provflux this year. Their discussion compares, contrasts, and critiques the two events. A few excerpts are provided below, but it's worth it to read the entire thing.

via lamb [little art mag blog]:

B: So we went to this conference, Conflux, a few weeks ago. How did you like it compared to Provflux?

A: Well. I don't know. I guess in a way I liked Provflux more because of a more activity based perspective, or there was more involvement, I think. Everyone who came was able to get in the mix a bit more and then this one—it seemed like you could just be a fly on the wall.

B: Right, it was hard to tell who was there for the conference and who was just walking by. I think the problem was that small McCaig-Welles Gallery—using that as a home base rather than using a more multiuse facility that could house lectures and group activities.

A: Yea, and people were staying there.

B: … yeah, all in one place. I think it's funny how those conferences that are all about getting to know people and that concentrate on the exchange of ideas and things like that, tend to—Conflux was a good example of, how it didn't do that. It seems like that would be at the top of the list of priorities for putting this conference together—like creating a forum where people can get together and are kind of forced to spend time with each other.

A: Yeah—and I think that technology had something to do with that because when we first arrived at Provflux we were greeted by people. I mean, we had to find people initially—our first interactions were … these people were talking to us, but when I first arrived at Conflux, it was actually before you got there, and in that room about this size there were about six people all on their laptops, ya know. It seemed like everyone was just in this technology interface.

…

B: But the lecture series I thought was the strong point of Conflux.

A: Yeah, I thought so too. I like all those presentations. A lot of them had to do with mapping, which I think is a really strong component of psychogeography that, I don't know, I guess some of the other project did too—Trace did in a way. I really liked that aspect more than the lifesize Othello game.

…

B: I don't think I would go back to Conflux, I don't think I would waste my time. What I experienced on their website was no more than I really experienced as far as what they were offering in Brooklyn, except the lecture series. But Provflux, I'll be there next year.

→ read the entire conversation

thanks kickball jesus

The Museum of Sex invites you to participate in its national project, Mapping Sex in America. Record your personal sex history and become a part of this ongoing archive chronicling Americans' stories of sexual practice and the evolution of America’s sexual customs.

Mapping Sex in America takes our private stories and allows us to share them in an environment that encourages our contemplation. What are our boundaries? Prejudices? What turns us on and what offends us? What are the implications in terms of sex education, crime prevention, and disease control?

From the mundane to the passionate to the scandalous and everything in between, these stories have the capacity to captivate us, heal us, and educate us; but perhaps most importantly they connect us in a colorful world heretofore shrouded by the conventions of discretion.

Mapping Sex in America takes its inspiration from the Works Progress Administration [WPA] of the 1930s, through which oral-history interviews with everyday Americans across the country were recorded; StoryCorps, a national project whose aim is to record peoples’ stories in sound; and Alfred Kinsey, whose lifetime ambition was to thoroughly and thoughtfully document the sexual histories of anyone willing to share their sexual past.

thanks, ess

An interesting review by Jayson Harsin of Paris's city-organized festival "Nuit Blanche" [Sleepless Night] was posted to blogcritics.org today.

After briefly summarizing psychogeography, Harsin analyzes Nuit Blanche, an event that "is part art expo, part carnival of eating, drinking, and extended leisure time. Its official aims will sound familiar to the last living situationists."

"From 7 at night until 7 the next morning, various establishments across town stay open: museums, cafés, and movie theaters as well as churches, libraries, and swimming pools. And there will be art and lighting displays at landmarks like the Hôtel de Ville. Streets, buildings, monuments, and so forth are re-imagined by artists and transformed into spaces and encounters that aim to deviate from, even revivify, the everyday."

"While it was free, and largely a jovial affair and marginally reoriented everyday consciousness of lived urban space the situationists seemed to adore, there was just one big problem with all of this from a situationist point of view. It was not organized by people themselves, nor by avowedly radical artist-thinkers who wanted to reclaim space from complete market colonization. It was organized by the local government as a kind of controlled version of situationist psychogeography, detournment, and dérive."

Ultimately, Jason finds Nuit Blanche to be spectacle, raising "questions about the degree to which metaphors of art are exploited by governments to maintain order, allowing citizens the temporary pleasures of participating in a symbolic marketing version of transformation, which never loves you the morning after—especially after a nuit blanche."

→ read the entire review

thanks, christopher