urbanize! 10 Years **dérive
laboratoire dérive
INTERNATIONAL EXPEDITIONS
Time: Sunday, 10th October, 17.00
Meeting Point: Nørreport (infront of Nørreport Bodega, Nørre Voldgade 70)
(http://maps.google.at/maps/ms?hl=de&ie=UTF8&t=h&msa=0&msid=114611543158204392444.000491517ef7db3465771&ll=55.682569,12.571535&spn=0.006037,0.013711&z=16)
or individually at any other traffic intersection
No registration, participation is free!
Berlin, Hamburg, Zürich, Wien, København: We’re celebrating 10 years dérive, a magazine for urban studies based in Vienna, Austria!
Inspired by the Situationist International, the theories of Guy Debord, and the idea of *psychogeography, we’ll allow chance to choose the direction of our aimless drifting. We’ll wander aimlessly along paths determined by squares, streets and places. Everything and nothing remains to be researched in a state where there are hardly any expectations or plans. The urban expedition is documented in freely chosen forms and media of sound, text, picture. The results should be shared with other laboratoire dérive researchers on the dérive website and thus form a continuous worldwide multidimensional memory of the fluidic city.
The dérive (with its flow of acts, its gestures, its strolls, its encounters) was to the totality exactly what psychoanalysis (in the best sense) is to language. Let yourself go with the flow of words, says the psychoanalyst. He listens, until the moment when he rejects or modifies (one could say detourns) a word, an expression or a definition. The dérive is certainly a technique, almost a therapeutic one. But just as analysis unaccompanied with anything else is almost always contraindicated, so continual dériving is dangerous to the extent that the individual, having gone too far (not without bases, but…) without defenses, is threatened with explosion, dissolution, dissociation, disintegration. And thence the relapse into what is termed ‘ordinary life,’ that is to say, in reality, into ‘petrified life.’ In this regard I now repudiate my Formulary’s propaganda for a continuous dérive. It could be continuous like the poker game in Las Vegas, but only for a certain period, limited to a weekend for some people, to a week as a good average; a month is really pushing it. In 1953-1954 we dérived for three or four months straight. That’s the extreme limit. It’s a miracle it didn’t kill us.
Ivan Chtcheglov, excerpt from a 1963 letter to Michèle Bernstein and Guy Debord, reprinted in Internationale Situationniste #9, p. 38.
laboratoire dérive rules of play
1. FORM EXPEDITION TEAMS
5-7 people, at most, join together as an expedition team at Nørreport or an arbitrary public transport node on Sunday 10.10.10. – 14.hrs. Utensils required: dice, daily public transport ticket, notebook, various media for documentation (film, photo, paper, sketchbook, internet, etc.)
2. DOCUMENT BY ALL MEANS
The tasks of documentation are split up amongst the participants: logbook, photography, film, audio, sketches, text, etc. Besides an accurate documentation of time, expedition team and route, the choice of what is documented and how this is done is free to decide upon. Ideally, the trip is captured by each participant individually.
3. LET THE DICE DECIDE
The available means of public transport are appointed a value from 1-6. As required, first the type of transport (bus, train, bike), secondly the line (M1, 5A, …) and thirdly the number of stops is determined. The drifting can begin.
4. YIELD TO *PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY
After leaving the public transport, the expedition team surrenders to the psychogeographic impressions of the encountered surroundings. A curious gaze becomes the guide for reconnaissance of your environment. The group chooses when and where the trip continues, ideally with a new line or different mode of transport. If several options are available, the dice decide which one to take and for how many stops. Follow this concept until the group declares the expedition for completed.
5. SHARE YOUR EXPEDITION-FINDINGS
The accrued documentary material is collected and assembled, the explored paths recorded. Subsequent research is welcome. The expeditions will be published on www.derive.at – the laboratoire-dérive-entries creating a growing international network of applied urban research that in total forms a multidimensional memory of the city.
All material (photos, videos, sketches, texts, sounds, or their respective links) for publishing on the dérive homepage, please send to laboratoire@nullderive.at
*Psychogeography is the study of the effects of geographical setting, consciously managed or not, acting directly on the mood and behaviour of the individual. Psychogeography research is carried through non-scientific methods such as the dérive – aimless drifting through the city, trying to record the emotions given by a particular place.
Nottingham Psychogeographical Unit. What is Psychogeography?
**dérive – magazine for urban research is published quarterly in Vienna since 2000. It defines itself as an interdisciplinary platform for urban research. The fields discussed range from architecture, urban, regional and landscape planning as well as the fine arts to geography, sociology, political sciences, media and communication sciences and philosophy. The central themes are global issues approached on a local level that interpret and expose information and developments in contemporary urban spaces. (www.derive.at)
For further questions call me (isis) : 0045 525 828 78
or write me!