A diary and reflective summary of research, self-directed project and visual experiments

Introduction

During this unit I have investigated, critically reflected and done photographic sessions on the broad theme of psychogeography. 

All this has allowed me not only to refine many concepts, but also to achieve greater awareness regarding my emerging practice. 

Basically, I gradually figured out which photography I want to pursue in the future.

I remember when I thought that psychogeography would be the main theme of my photography and why: between the "Identity & Place" and "Landscape, Place and Environment" units.

At the time, I believed that this elective affinity had strictly to do with street photography.

Even today, I wonder how much my inclination is pure street photography or something directed towards psychogeographic exploration and flaneuring. 

Even if I believe that there is no need to draw a rigorous dividing line between these themes, I gradually realized that what I was looking for was oriented towards something wider than not the strict street photography.

 

Informing my emerging practice

From the foundations of psychogeography and its interdisciplinarity in a time span ranging from the late 1700s to the present day, my research path started to inform and inspire me in conceiving the foundations of my emerging practice.

All this, and the further research and insights I conducted in a time span of 12 months, informed and inspired my practice.

When I began to reflect on the theme on which I would develop the practice project, I was focused on the primary technique that characterizes psychogeography: drifting..

Defining drifting as a technique is an understatement, since entire currents of thought, theories, and applications have formed around it.

In excess of practical enthusiasm, I took the first steps without a real awareness of what I was doing and, above all, of what content I was developing.

In reality, the practice of drifting is the result of more than 250 years of reflections, conceptualizations, practices and literature that have been addressed by dozens of authors in interdisciplinary fields. 

Themes such as psychogeography have been enriched and from these experiences, the figure of flaneur has emerged

I was inspired by the research I did on authors who interpreted these concepts from various points of view, and my subsequent drifts were much more conscious. 

I also did some experiments, inspired by authors like Eugene Atget. 

Gradually I built my own personal interpretative and visual technique, which I would like to continue refining in the future and adopt definitively: I understood that my photography is on the street and in urban space, and this is what I want to do in the future.

 

Understanding dérive and wandering

In "Théorie de la dérive" (Les Lèvres nues, # 9, November 1956, Brussels), Debord affirms the contrast between the classic notions of travel and walk and the affirmation of a "playful-constructive behaviour" on the part of the drifter, which would lead to effects of a psychogeographic nature.

 

"....... and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the

terrain and the encounters they find there ..... "

(Debord, G., Théorie de la dérive, 1956)

 

Debord repeatedly speculates on the risk that conscious behaviour and the force of habit can interrupt those emotional flows that, by governing the drifter, keep him detached from the established topography and lead him to wander under the effect of pure emotional perceptions:

 

"....... But the action of chance is naturally conservative and in a new setting tends to reduce everything to habit or to an alternation between a limited number of variants ...... We can say, then, that the randomness of a dérive is fundamentally different from that of the stroll, but also that the first psychogeographical attractions discovered by dérivers may tend to fixate them around new habitual axes, to which they will constantly be drawn back .... "

(Debord, G., Théorie de la dérive, 1956)

 

Robert Macfarlane, in 'A Road of One's Own: Past and Present Artists of the Randomly Motivated Walk', describes drifting as an act preceded by planning (choosing the place and boundaries of drifting) and by the application of precise methods that determine what Debord defines an insufficient mistrust of chance and the consequent difficulty of an anti-determinist liberation.

 

"...... Unfold a street map of London, place a glass, rim down, anywhere on the map, and draw round its edge. Pick up the map, go out into the city, and walk the circle, keeping as close as you can to the curve. Record the experience as you go, in whatever medium you favor: film, photograph, manuscript, tape. Catch the textual run-off of the streets; the graffiti, the branded litter, the snatches of conversation . Cut for sign. Log the data stream. Be alert to the happenstance of metaphors, watch for visual rhymes, coincidences, analogies, family resemblances, and the changing moods of the street. Complete the circle, and the record ends ...."

(Robert Macfarlane, 'A Road of One's Own: Past and Present Artists of the Randomly Motivated Walk', Times Literary Supplement, 7 October 2005, 3-4, p. 3)

 

According to Debord, we need intensity, purity, letting moods flow and personal disorientation.

 

".........If in the course of a dérive one takes a taxi, ..... one is concerned primarily with a personal trip outside one's usual surroundings......   In the “possible rendezvous,” .... the element of exploration is minimal compared to that of behavioral disorientation."

(Debord, G., Théorie de la dérive, 1956)

 

Francesco Careri, in his book "Walkscapes - Walking as an aesthetic practice" (2006, Giulio Einaudi Editore) quotes Walter Benjamin, who, in "Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert", confirms the principle of disorientation and of getting lost:

"Not knowing how to orient yourself in a city does not mean much. But getting lost in it as one gets lost in a forest, is something to be learned. Because the names of the streets must sound like the crunch of dead branches to the ear of the wanderer and the internal lanes must clearly reflect them as the mountain gorges ".

(Benjamin, W., 1930-33, quoted by Careri F.)

 

What Francesco Careri writes in the chapter "Errare Humanum est" (trad: "to err is human") is interesting, where the Latin term "Errare" takes on two distinct but equally important meanings in both the Latin and Italian languages: "errare" in the sense of making mistakes (to err), and "errare" in the sense of wandering (to wander). 

Thus the manipulation of the Latin sentence by Lucius Annaeus Seneca "Errare humanum est, perseverare autem diabolicum" is promoted so that the Latin statement can also have a meaning that attributes to the human being the prerogative to wander aimlessly. 

 

Drifting in my emerging practice

Walking is an essential act in solidarity with the practice of drifting; drifting is necessary to fully practice psychogeographic exploration.

I am an individualistic drifter.

I let myself go, but I am also sensitive and rationally focused on the stimuli that come to me from what I encounter while wandering, be they objects, texts, drawings, people, signs, events, situations or views. 

I am a detached observer, an outsider, and an emerging flaneur. At the same time, I marginally authorize myself to imagine emotions and get in touch with the environment and the people I meet to feed my reactions and be influenced by them. 

I conducted drift practices alternated with research on various topics in one of the islands that surround the city of Venice, Giudecca island.

The photographic outcome that I have developed comes from five days of photographic drifts and one day of virtual drift, using Google Streetview.

The five drifts were originally 800 photographs, which, in repeated selections and reworks, I finally condensed into sets. 

The final result consists of three main sets (“Presences”, “Absences”, and “Impressions”), and two secondary sets (“Virtual” and “Flaneurial Views B&W).