DEVENIR NOMADA

HISTORY OF UNITARY URBANISM AND PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY AT THE TURN OF THE SIXTIES
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EXEMPLES AND COMMENTS OF CONTEMPORARY PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY

Ewen Chardronnet (ewen at tiscali dot fr)
(lecture notes for a conference in Riga May 2003)


The topic of our panel discussion this afternoon is about " local media, maps and psychogeography ". I think it's necessarry to come back first to a brief history of psychogeography, Unitary Urbanism and the Situationnist International at the turn of the sixties. The end of the fifties and the beginning of the sixties were a period of acceleration in urbanism of European and world cities. In Paris, this period is the explosion of what politicians and urban planners called " new cities ". Paris was exploding outside its " ring road" and cities such as Sarcelles were created with totally new urban models. There was a strong feeling in that time that the cities were losing their human dimensions. I will first try to show how this acceleration of modernisation of urban
society had an influence on the tactics of the SI as an avant-garde concerned with the uniformisation of society through urbanism, mass media, and the dichotomy of work and leisure. I will especially focus on Unitary Urbanism and 4 years of intense activities (58-61) that finally culminate by totally abandonning these theories. We will then discuss actual initiatives that use tactical medias in the streets and how this is link to the new rise of psychogeography and the necessity of reclaiming the streets.

The Situationnist International emerged in 1957 from the Lettrist International, the Imaginary Bauhaus and the London Psychogeographical Comittee, with new fields of interests and a revolutionnary program that was
focusing on the " suppresion and realisation of art in life " and what they called the "construction of situations ". The preliminary idea for many of their members, as many avant-gardes tried to, was to make creativity appear again in the social sphere.

Constructed Situation, Psychogeography and Unitary Urbanism were the key concepts at the foundation of the Situationist International. In 1958, the first issue of the Situationist International bulletin directed
by Debord gives these definitions :

# posted by alvaro @ 2:17 a. m.