Art, Walking, and Psychogeographic Inspiration
Psychogeography: a beginner's guide. Unfold a street map of London, place a glass, rim down, anywhere on the map, and draw round its edge. Pick up the map, go out into the city, and walk the circle, keeping as close as you can to the curve. Record the experience as you go, in whatever medium you favor: film, photograph, manuscript, tape. Catch the textural run-off of the streets; the graffiti, the branded litter, the snatches of conversation. Cut for sign. Log the data-stream. Be alert to the happenstance of metaphors, watch for visual rhymes, coincidences, analogies, family resemblances, the changing moods of the street. Complete the circle, and the record ends. Walking makes for content; footage for footage.
- Robert MacFarlane
wake
This installation focuses on Lake Winnebago and fills Allen Preibe Gallery at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh with kaleidoscopic video imagery taken around the lakes, prints addressing the eutrophication of the lake and objects related the history and personal stories the surround the lake, a mirror mylar curtain that traces the branches of a certain tree along its edge . Some of the video was taken by collaborators in the biology, environmental science and marketing departments at the school. The entire piece was set to a soundtrack that was built on the sonification of Sagitarious A, the giant black hole at the the center of the galaxy that we all revolve around.
Yahara Watershed Multiverse Blues, Revisited
This Installation can be seen as a psychogeographic exercise, taking visual cues from walked parts of the watershed and mashing them up with its distant history, its projected future and the concerns of the people that live inside it. It was made for Future Possible, an exhibition at the James Watrous Gallery of the Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters in Madison's Overture Center. Future Possible artists, architects and desingers were asked by the curators to imagine Madison in 75 years. It included the work of Lou Host-Jablonski, Ed Linville, Ashley Robertson, Kate Stalker, Anders Zanichkowsky and myself, as well as members of Madison Design Professionals. Yahara Watershed Multiverse Blues, Revisited contemplates the complexities that will make Madison in 2093, for better or for worse. Check out the Gayle Worland's take in the Wisconsin State Journal. Check out curator Jody Clowes and landscape architect Kate Stalker talking with Neil Heinen on For the Record. You can access a guide to the work here.
More Psychogeographically inspired work
- Sift and Winnow explores a particular institution: the Madison Brass Works building. It was made for Forge, an art exhibition in the building before its renovation that featured installations inspired by its history, its workers, and the elements involved in the transfigurations that took place there. The large bronze “sifting and winnowing” plaques found on every UW campus were cast at the foundry, declaring the importance of academic freedom by quoting an 1894 university Board of Regents report defending a professor accused of involvement in pro-union and socialist activities. Check out the history and exhibition coverage in Madison Magazine, Wisconsin State Journal, and the Isthmus, and also photos by John Hart. Video documentation of Sift and Winnow is on vimeo.
- Nowhere Dreams uses a particular shape repeatedly that was inspired by train tunnel underneath my elementary school that I used to visit on my walks home from school. The work installed at the Caestecker Gallery, Ripon College, removes the shape from its original context and uses it as a void in which to place marks and textures to build spaces that have a similar psychological weight . You can see a video of a slide talk from the opening night here.
