‘Two Psychogeographic Walks around London, guided by the sound of quietness and nature’
Collage, cut-outs, photographs (by author), graphite. 2019.
Walk 01, from my front door to Regents Park, (841 x 594mm)
Walk 02, from Park Crescent to Buckingham Palace, (1682 x 1188mm)
A set of ‘Psychogeographic Maps’ exploring and documenting two separate walks around London. The destinations of the walks were not predetermined. Rather, the act of navigating the city streets was guided by the principle of, ‘following quietness and the sounds of nature’. This brought about a new way of navigating the busy city, by way of exploration and tuning in with one’s auditory senses. A detailed transcript of location and time was done while walking, while a sound recording running the length of the walk, provided a sound-scape of the wander.
Mainly underdeveloped, these maps begin to explore a different method of reading spaces and the sensorial experiences of those places of intrigue along the walks... sights, sounds, time, composition, etc. The maps have words collaged with cut photographs and fragments of OS maps, which are composed in such a way as to ‘linearly’ read the journey (the x-axis is time). Just as Perec used words to describe his wanderings around Paris in ‘L’infra-ordinaire’ or Debord’s iconic ‘Guide Psychogéographique de Paris’, this is an attempt to map my own dérives around London.
(Initially part of an exercise for my thesis work on the Act of Walking around London, and it’s evolution as a practice of experiencing our urban environment. Looking at works by Jane Rendell, Patrick Keiller’s London, Antonioni’s Blow-Up, Situationist practices, Iain Sinclair and others)