drawing of the city as a series of situations
“One of the basic situationist practices is the dérive(dérive: literally “ drift ” or “ drifting.), a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiences.Dérives involve playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects, and are thus quite different from the classic notions of journey or stroll.In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their work and leisure activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there.Chance is a less important factor in this activity than one might think: from a dérive point of view cities have psychogeographical contours, with constant currents, fixed points and vortexes that strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones.
Guy Debordand early Situationism was heavily based of psychogeography, presented in Guy’s Psychogeographiquede Paris .In it, he took a map of the city of Paris, cut it into pieces and glued different parts together.Among other things, the newly formed map was supposed to indicate locations which were able to evoke most emotions from people standing there.In Guy Debords theory he analysed that one comes to perceive their psychogeography through the movement of a modern city, discovering how ambiance of our surrounds is the main component of ones spatial localisation catalyst by ones actions, exits and defences through an urban setting.”
References:
- (“Théorie de ladérive” was published in Internationale Situationniste #2 (Paris, December 1958).
2.Guy Debord, “Theory of the Derive”, in Theory of the Derive and Other Situationist Writings on the City, edited by Libera Andreotti and Xavier Costa (Barcelona: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, ACTAR, 1996), 22–27.)
Situational is a process about how people lose themselves in the city and how to lose themselves, and then find some interesting things and buildings in the city.This technique involves gathering/sketching different parts of the city and forming a type of map by connecting all these places with arrows.This as a result(show as figure 1), shows a level of movement and the uniting of one place to another.I choose the works and documents of Guy Debord as a reference for my situational work. I used Guy Debord’s technique to splash ink and pointed, cut and paste. I depicted that one night, after a quarrel with my family, I ran out of my home and wandered in the city to try to lose myself. From my home, I went by train, hiking and taxi. I was hungry, so I bought some chips after a KFC. On the way, the road workers told me to walk around, and I sat in a long chair near the museum and wept. At that time, a woman walking was coming to give me tissue and asked if I needed help. I was impressed and moved. Then I went through a forest and Pyrmont Bridge, and went home by train. Home centered, from here also ends here.In my work, I describe a scene about the city, the experience of the people and things I met in the city,its a experience of losing in the city.The splicing of some beautiful buildings and good people together to build a whole: the popular ，more international and modernized city of Sydney.
