Psychogeografie & Dérive
Zoals eerder gezegd, heeft de term Psychogeografie, bedacht door de Situationisten inmiddels
een vaste plaats gevonden in de kunst. Er zijn hele genootschappen te vinden die zich op deze
praktijk richten. De methode is echter met zijn tijd meegegaan. Door de komst van
technologieën als het Internet en GPS zijn zowel het onderzoeksterrein, alswel de
onderzoeksmethoden uitgebreid.
"Great social movements leave the content of their critical politics behind, in the forms
of a new dominion. This was the destiny of the revolt against bureaucratic rationalism in
the sixties. The Situationists, with the practice of the dérive and the program of unitary
urbanism, aimed to subvert the functionalist grids of modernist city planning. They tried
to lose themselves in the urban labyrinth, while calling for the total fusion of artistic and
scientific resources in »complete decors« –»another city for another life«, as the radical
architect Constant proclaimed. With the worldwide implementation of a digital media
architecture – and the early signs of a move toward cinematic buildings – we are now
seeing the transformation of the urban framework into total decor (Lev Manovich: »In
the longer term every object may become a screen connected to the Net, with the whole
of built space becoming a set of display surfaces«. What kind of life can be lived in the
media architecture? And how to explain the continuing prestige of Situationist
aesthetics, in a period which has changed so dramatically since the early 1960s?24
Today, the sensory qualities of the dérive are mimicked by hyperlinked voyages through
the datascapes of the World Wide Web. The decades-old imaginaries of the Silver Surfer
still permeate our computer-assisted fantasies. Within this commercialized flux, the
proponents of »locative media« – like Ben Russel, the developer of headmap.org, or
Marc Tuters, of gpster.net – propose to add a personalized sense of place, a
computerized science of global ambiances, using satellite positioning technology. In this
way, the »geograffiti« of GPS waypoint marking seeks to promote a new kind of
locational humanism, tailored to the worldwide wanderer. »Know your place« is the
ironic HeadMap motto. But what would it really take to lose yourself in the abstract
spaces of global circulation?”25
In het licht van deze uitbreiding van het Psychogeografische werkveld laat ik een aantal
voorbeelden van hedendaagse kunstenaars zien die in meer of mindere mate gebruikmakend
van deze verschuiving bezig houden met deze praktijken.
