HIATUS

After what had been one of the most productive years so far, we accidentally forgot what we were supposed to be doing and neglected to post anything in the latter half of 2017.

That is UNTIL NOW.

Sadly, all we have to offer is this sorry excuse for an explanation and the promise that next year WE WILL BE BACK...

...with greater focus...

(or a broader-angled lens, decisions are yet to be made).

In the meantime, what does PSYCHOCARTOGRAPHY mean to you?

Really, we're actually doing it... we're inviting you to... COMMENT BELOW:

(see you in 2018)

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Another homage to Tschumi:

Russian anarchist Michael Bakunin once claimed that “the urge to destroy is also a creative urge”. 

His great political rival, Marx, identified the concept of creative destruction as the process by which capitalism clears the ground (be it through war or economic crisis), to pave the way for new innovation. 

The organism sweeps across the landscape, consuming all.

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MAP OF THE WEEK #4

This week's map of the week arrives courtesy of artist Emma McNally. Like the previous two featured artists (Emily Garfield and Derek Lerner) Emma McNally's work is inspired by a vast range of phenomena, from cities to organic structures, all of which seem to relate to one another in that curious, fractal manner underpinning the machinery of the universe. In her own words: 

"I mine all sorts of ways of thinking visually about space and time: the spiral paths of particles in bubble chambers, which are infinitely fast and small; images of cellular mitochondria; the Hubble Deep Field images that probe deep time, where all time is held in the surface of the image but can’t be reached. I like looking at images that show fleeting events and images of aerial views of cities at night—all the emergent formations at a macro scale that look like deep-sea organisms in the dark water. I also love aerial images of airports, both in use and obsolete, as well as the Nazca Lines."

-Emma McNally, interviewed by Art Forum

The map above gives the impression of being a nautical navigational chart, or maybe a weather map, but ultimately the viewer lacks the key or legend to unlock the meaning of its symbols and lines. Without this, the map becomes appreciable only in terms of its own aesthetic, granting it a tantalising mystique. We are invited to peek into another world, one which may or may not exist beyond the limits of our own realm, but we cannot visit. This might be true for most of the maps featured here, but Emma McNally's work has a strong orthographic quality that makes it more... authoritative.

Have a look at her Flickr account, it's stunning:

Emma McNally 

MAP OF THE WEEK #3

This week's map of the week is taken from the sketchbook of artist Emily Garfield.

Emily Garfield creates maps from her imagination, explorations of cartography and urbanism in pen and ink. Much of her work is for sale at her site https://www.emilygarfield.com/.

The particular image is taken from her sketchbook, produced as part of a process of self examination, more of which can be read about on her blog.

24 HISTORIC STYLES DÉTOURNED: PART II of XXIV

An occasional series playing with historic garden plans taken from Turner's 24 Historic Styles of Garden Design, published by Gardenvisit.com.

What we might be looking at:

Bam. Circles, lines and a grid. This is clearly a constructivist painting! Except it isn't, it's a garden plan. So we have a wild outer edge- we can assume it's vegetation, but there's something spiky about the scheme which suggests that they could just as well be stalagmites.

The combination of spikes and the garden geometry conjures images of a violent sport, something like Speedball 2 or Salute of the Jugger. Actually, it's far more likely that the giant circle in the centre inspired that particular interpretation. It's now getting harder and harder to imagine how a game might be played here. Where's the goal? Where would the teams muster?

That said, there's something of a bowling green to the central rectangle. If this were a postmodern garden plan (which it is) then an ironic anachronism would be entirely in-keeping with that particular school of design. But by now I've revealed that I'm already familiar with the plan. This clearly references Tschumi's famous Parc de la Villette

What we are actually looking at:
Yes, this is a postmodern garden. Turner has a lot to say about postmodernism in City as Landscape, but in 24 Styles... he is more generous, noting the inventive use of geometry and materials that characterise postmodernism in landscape design:

"Geometrically, postmodernism is associated with a layered and deconstructive geometry. Rectangles clash with circles and are interscected by hapazard diagonals, as in a Russian constructivist painting. Steel and concrete structures are painted in bright col ours. Glass and other reflective surfaces help create illusions and startling visual effects."

-Twenty Four Historic Styles of Garden Design , page 71

MAP OF THE WEEK #2

This week's map of the week is brought to you by New York based artist Derek Lerner, ASVIRUS 39.

Taken from a series of paintings (ASVirus##), the hand-drawn image very closely resembles a city plan, albeit one that is fragmenting or being reconfigured. Lerner states on his website that he has an interest in systems, urbanism, and disease, amongst many other things, and this is reflected in the cyborg aesthetic that he is somehow able to convey through these monochromatic plans.

In a statement for the Conveniant Gratification exhibition at which this work was exhibited, Lerner said that all these pictures are produced using a simple rollerball pen. No drafting or planning is carried out, with the drawings growing organically as ink is applied to paper.

To enjoy more of his work, please have a look at the thumbnails page of his website http://dereklerner.com/Art/Thumbnails.

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A homage to Tschumi:

THE REALM OF HUNGRY GHOSTS

"Finish your bowl!" she said, as though admonishing a naughty child.

The small bowl was nearly finished... it had been his third, after all, and he was sated. He had made the mistake of pushing it away from himself, indicating he was done, and was immediately shamed. Generations brought up in times of scarcity rear a generation of scolds, but these in turn tend to begat profligate sons and daughters. He laughed, nervously, and with guilt, as he finished the remaining grains.

"Good. I wouldn't want you to become a hungry ghost when you die."

Hungry Ghost- what a collocation. It seems so apposite: the disembodied spirit refuses to let go of some shred of life from hunger, from lack. And above, pictured, No-Face (or even Noh-Face): spurred by his desire to befriend a sympathetic girl, he ate his way through a bathhouse of rogues and fiends, shitting gold.

Noh-face was but one of many characters in the movie Spirited Away, and by no means central to the story, which was principally concerned with a little girl from the "normal" world negotaiting the complex and bizarre world of ghosts in order to rescue her parents. The standard reading of Spirited Away is that it is a kind of coming-of-age story, albeit one in which the protagonist transitions from infant to juvenile rather than adolescent to adult. Ultimately, Chihiro/Sen leaves the magical world for the mundane, as we all most do (apparently) as part of growing up.

The universe according to the child is undoubtedly a more terrifying yet magical place, and in many respects parents are agents in the creation of this landscape. Figures from folklore, myth and religion are used to manipulate children into conforming. Sometimes, this is a performance that the child realises (eventually), is intended purely for the aforementioned effect; at other times, this practice is an embedded cultural artefact as real to the parents as the children uttering it. Warnings that bad behaviour will result in a eternal damnation, perpetual immolation in the flames of hell are, right now being issued to Muslim and Christian children all across the globe, even as you read this. Many will carry a subtle fear of that fate to their grave.

The creative intellect of the child is quick to populate their immediate universe with invisible spirits. It is a facet of our psyche that is evolutionarily advantageous: establish agency, be wary of revealed agents, fear those agents that cannot be seen or understood. On top of this multifarious cosmologies have been constructed, but on top of this layer children build their own folklore, spending, as they do, a great deal of time in the realm of the imagination.

The six realms of Buddhism (Animal, Human, Jealous Gods, Hungry Ghosts, Gods, Hell) were "depending on what one read... mystical states, psychological states or actual physical places", according to Roy Bayfield in Desire Paths. Bayfield had been exploring Buddhism in the aftermath of major surgery, and seeking to engage more directly with the subject (and, one suspects, to give himself an excuse to do some walking), took it upon himself to explore the six realms in person. Superimposing a simple mandala-as-map over the United Kingdom, the six realms converged at the traditional centre of England, somewhere near Coventry. Over a period of two days, Bayfield utilised the "Finding" approach (discussed briefly here), "externalising my mediation practice into physical territory.." The Six Realms were psychological and mystical states and actual, physical places, because he said they were!

The idea of alternate realms of ghosts and spirits operating on a parallel plane to our own is common to the mythology of many European and Asian folk traditions: the Sidhe of Celtic legend, the world of the Kami in Shinto, the elemental planes of the western mystery tradition. Likewise, the Hungry Ghosts of Buddhism seem to occupy two worlds simultaneously, that of the living and the dead... or, rather, their world exists within our own, but is invisible most of the time.

Re-constructing the mythology of the hungry ghost in Vietnamese culture is complex, not least due to the cultural layering that seems to take place in Vietnamese and other Asian cultures. Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity and Communism have all impacted the folk practices of the Vietnamese to lesser or greater extents, with no doctrine completely able to oust the other one. This might explain why ostensibly Catholic families still maintain ancestral shrines and whilst otherwise secular families might make an offering to the ancestral spirit of Ho Chi Minh. Perhaps this is no more remarkable than the appropriation of pagan festivals by the Christian calendar, but it is hard to draw objective conclusions when one sat in the midst of the subject.

So, whilst the threat of becoming a hungry ghost might be familiar to Hue's children, in parts of China the phrase hungry ghost  is synonymous with ancestor worship. This may or may not tie into Buddhist tradition, wherein those who have committed the least evil spend a period in the realm of Hungry Ghosts prior to rebirth, a kind of purgatory. Whilst there it is confusing for the layman outsider to negotiate the nomenclature and the architecture of indigenous belief systems, there are some obvious takeaways to be had, not least that to the majority of Vietnamese people ghosts are a real and important part of life, and their intentions are not always benign.

Dr. Gabor Maté is a physician who has worked with "hardcore drug addicts" (his words) for most of his career. Drawing upon his experiences working with these people he has concluded that addiction stems principally from childhood trauma, rather than genetics or the psychoactive properties of the substances themselves. When his experiences were published he chose the title In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction. The title is evocative, and speaks sympathetically to those among us who have encountered addiction in our own lives or those close to us. Dr. Maté offers this explanation for his choice of title:

"Now, the hungry ghost realm, the creatures in it are depicted as people with large empty bellies, small mouths and scrawny thin necks. They can never get enough satisfaction. They can never fill their bellies. They’re always hungry, always empty, always seeking it from the outside. 

"That speaks to a part of us that I have and everybody in our society has, where we want satisfaction from the outside, where we’re empty, where we want to be soothed by something in the short term, but we can never feel that or fulfill that insatiety from the outside. The addicts are in that realm all the time. Most of us are in that realm some of the time. And my point really is, is that there’s no clear distinction between the identified addict and the rest of us. There’s just a continuum in which we all may be found. They’re on it, because they’ve suffered a lot more than most of us. 

In other words, to Maté we are all Hungry ghosts, to a lesser or greater extent, and that extent is defined by the degree to which we have suffered in childhood. Whether one can be led into permanent exile in the realm of hungry ghosts merely by being traumatised with threats of being turned into a hungry ghost is open to debate....

Back in Blighty, Roy Bayfield ventured to Coventry in his quest to externalise his understanding of the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, "a place of endless, unsatisfied consumption and continuous, grasping poverty" (the Realm, not Coventry), and did not initially find hat he was looking for. However, it soon occurred to him that his feelings of discomfort and dissatisfaction was entirely in keeping with the feelings that a hungry ghost would encounter, thus "job done", he took a train to the next stop in the six realms, that of the Realm of Jealous Gods.

In the Human Realm the man finished his bowl of rice, and asked his wife if she really believed in Hungry Ghosts.

"Don't be ridiculous." she said, and finished her rice porridge.

MAP OF THE WEEK #1

This blog is named psychocartography. What the means is still very much up for grabs, and I suggest there are psychocartographies as much as there are psychogeographies, but within my own praxis I'm still nowhere near arriving at a satisfactory definition.

It should- I suggest- have something to do with maps. Seems appropriate that from time to time an especially interesting map should be shared. Welcome, then, to Psychocartography's inaugural map of the week, courtesy of Anthony Boguszewski.

The map above is taken from the following blog http://edouardcabayatelier.blogspot.fr/2012/09/anthony-boguszewski.html, and traces the movement of chairs in the Jardin de Luxembourg park in Paris. When this was first published, Anthony Boguszewski was a student of Edoard Cabay  at L'Ecole Speciale d'Architecture (ESA). Cabay's atelier, Re-, developed "a process-focused approach to design which is based on the creation of cartographical catalogues of the physical context revealing emergent patterns creating opportunities for design."

Of the interesting piece of cartography his study produced, Boguszewski remarked: "Chairs do not migrate anywhere but closer to the other chairs."

This may or may not continue into a series labelled map of the week.

THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

All maps are political. Right now, there's only one political map that counts for UK citizens, and after Thursday, that map looks something like this:

Map courtesy Guardian UK

The map above was created by the Guardian and typifies that newspaper's high standards of graphical communication. At a glance, and following a brief explanation of the UK political system, the uninitiated are able to assess the political geography of the United Kingdom. The blue team are stronger in the South and rural areas; the red team in the North, Wales and metropolitan areas. Both teams are struggling to make in roads in Scotland, where the yellows hold sway... and Northern Ireland does its own thing.

Such was the case when one of my Vietnamese colleagues took an interest in the colourful map upon my screen, making those precise observations above. What the map does not display is how it has changed. The story of this most recent election is not told in one image, it is a series of images, a series of maps of as many elections as one would wish. 

So whilst there is so much to talk about- the decimation of moderate parties in Northern Ireland; the declining fortunes of capital "L" Liberalism; the growth of regional nationalism- this is not really the place for such things, but an opportunity to reflect on the limitations of the map. 

No graphic is capable of displaying data equivocally. The politics is in the selection of which data to display. But beyond that, maps are limited by the constraints of their dimensions. A 2D image may be able to display 3D data, but that fourth dimension is trickier to pin down.  Thus maps show us only a snapshot of history, a moment frozen in time, devoid of any context apart from geography. 

THE GREAT SILENCE

Recently, I have been listening to a lot of podcasts. Most recently, an episode of This American Life grappled with the issue of loneliness, starting at a cosmic level. Given that I listen to podcasts principally out of a kind of loneliness (living and working in a non-English speak environment), it was amusingly apposite. In a very short time, however, my amusement gave way to a feeling of existential dread.

The programme bore the title “Fermi’s Paradox”, and used the conundrum of cosmic loneliness to springboard into the more general topic of loneliness. For the uninitiated, Fermi’s paradox is the contradiction presented by the apparent likelihood of intelligent life existing in our Galaxy and the complete lack of visible evidence that this is the case. In Fermi’s words, “Where are they?” (“they” being technologically advanced aliens).

For the show’s producer, David Kestenbaum, the possibility that humans are alone in the visible universe made him feel profoundly sad. I do not share this feeling: perhaps when there are fewer things to feel sad about within human civilisation I will start to grow melancholy at the silent universe. I did allow myself to consider Fermi’s paradox yet again, however, and this led me to a darker place.

The predominant hypothesis concerning the apparent absence of intelligent life is quite simple: there are no aliens. The Rare Earth Hypothesis states that the conditions necessary to create life, even in its most simple form, are exceptional. Technologically sophisticated, culturally complex civilisations such as humanity are therefore beyond an oddity: the evolutionary coincidences that have led to our development amount to probabilities of trillions-to-one, we are alone in the Universe. This was what rendered Kestenbaum so upset. The universe, within which our tiny planet is barely a pinprick, is teeming with death: it is a cold, desolate, empty expanse, which will ultimately consume all human endeavour.

The show was a journey of reconciliation- allowing Kestenbaum to come to terms with his feelings of cosmic isolation. Part of this process seemed to focus on gently mocking his sensitivity, and allowing him to recognise that there are far more pressing things to worry about in the world. Additionally, other reasons for the Great Silence were touched upon, suggesting that Fermi’s Paradox need not preclude the existence of alien life.

One of the reasons explored was the so-called “Zoo Hypothesis”: the existence of alien civilisations is being deliberately kept from us so that our cultural and biological evolution can follow its own course, without external influence, presumably for similar reasons to those of conservationists preserving endangered species in their natural habitat. It was a thought I’d had before, but had not pondered for some time… least not since the Simulation Hypothesis had been re-popularised by Elon Musk. It was putting these two ideas together that sent me into my own existential tailspin.

An extension of the Zoo Hypothesis posits that in their efforts to conceal the rest of the universe from us humans, the advanced alien civilisation(s) have somehow isolated our world and its immediate astral environs, surrounding them with an incredibly sophisticated simulation of the rest of the universe, which has been created bereft of other sentient beings. For me, Fermi’s paradox naturally dovetails into the Simulation Hypothesis: our entire reality is a digital simulation that has been created to observe how a human civilisation might develop in a universe lacking any other sentient beings.

Imagine those early pioneers of agriculture, trading the uncertainty of the foraging lifestyle for the relative security of sedentary life. These men and women ultimately set in motion an unprecedented revolution in culture and technology, culminating after tens of thousands of years in the exploration of space.

Along the way they have created hierarchy, religion and war. To facilitate their industrious exploitation of their planet’s resources, they have poisoned their own environment against them. Whilst they have made progress in reversing the inequality that has sprung up over the centuries of cultural evolution, it is unclear as to whether this progress is sustainable given the scale of the environmental problems and capacity to annihilate themselves over political disagreements.

Cue intervention by an interstellar civilisation. Detecting the emergence of a technologically advanced civilisation within range of their spacecraft, said civilisation decide to introduce themselves. They are dismayed to find that Homo sapiens has been unable to resolve its social differences in spite of its huge leaps forward technologically. They issue dire warnings to the terrified denizens of earth, having witnessed this behaviour in previous civilisations. Almost universally, world leaders surrender to the superior beings and follow their recommendations, in order to steer humanity from its path to destruction. Not all of earth’s citizens are so eager to comply, resulting in a bloody war.

Reluctantly, the aliens assist earth’s leaders in the suppression of the global insurrection, but in doing so they reinforce support for the rebel forces. The whole planet is in the throes of a bitter, bloody civil war. The aliens have failed utterly, and after much discussion, decide that their only option is to intercede directly: follow our road map to peace and prosperity, or face annihilation- annihilation at their hands.

The threat is enough to at least get the leaders of the significant parties to agree to meet. The dividing line is clear and stark. On the one hand, the establishment opinion holds that humanity will be destroyed unless the aliens’ instructions are followed. On the other hand, insurrectionists argue that it was the aliens who created this situation in the first place, are now threatening the earth directly, and better to die fighting for freedom than to continue living with no control over their fate.

The divisions and arguments are predictable, but the alien civilisation is able to steer a way through the debate with their trump card: simulated realities. They have the power to create incredibly accurate hologrammatic simulations, and are capable of demonstrating the outcome of actions on a galactic scale by tweaking the simulation’s parameters. Hundreds of these simulations are run, each demonstrating that if humanity was simply left to their own devices, the only possible outcome is increased misery and suffering and ultimately, the extermination of all biological life.

Naturally, the insurrectionists suggest that these computer models are weighted in favour of the extra-terrestrials preferred outcome. As a measure of good faith, the aliens induct the top computer scientists and programmers from the insurrectionist side into the inner workings of simulation construction. Across earth, an uneasy truce reigns.

After several years, the insurrectionists are convinced by the civilisations validity, but this does not put an end to the conflict. The debate turns to the age-old issue of individual agency and the greater good, the Platonic/Aristotelian dialectic that has plagued public discourse since the dawn of civilisation. However, faced with annihilation, the wider populace overwhelmingly choose life as well-fed slaves than hungry free men. A new world government begins to institute the aliens’ original programme for cultural and environmental recovery.

Naturally, pockets of resistance still exist across all continents. Though they can no longer count on the same levels of popular support as before, they are still able to interrupt the recovery programme and cause misery, pain and suffering. For some, this is the price of progress, and anticipate the remaining insurrectionists slowly dying out. For others, it is unnecessary and hideous, and are dismayed by the establishment’s inability to stamp it out completely.

Once again, the aliens manage to steer a path through the fog. Human leaders are urged to reach out to the remaining extremists and offer amnesty: not in return for ceasing their actions, but for the opportunity to negotiate and discuss once again. The aliens are desperate to understand the desires and motives of these men and women, and to do what they can to end what they see as unnecessary suffering. Amongst the myriad demands and aspirations lurked something curious: it wasn’t that the insurrectionists wanted the aliens to just go away, they wanted them never to have arrived.

So: in order to demonstrate at least some degree of compliance, the aliens agreed to run a simulation in which they never came to earth. In fact, they agreed to run a simulation of the universe entirely devoid of other sentient life forms. They hoped this would demonstrate the hopelessness of the remaining insurrectionists’ cause. I cannot speculate on the outcome, because I believe that this is the simulation in which we now live.

I snapped out of my reverie in a manner similar to Dhasa in the Glass Bead Game: I found myself back in the present, doing something completely mundane, having lived through not just one life time but tens of thousands of years of parallel history. Like Dhasa I was by water, pouring from a shower head not a gently babbling forest stream. My heart rate felt higher than usual and I was aware of a great deal of chatter in my head. I resolved to practice some mindfulness, in an effort to return myself to normality.

Inhale, exhale: as long as you are breathing, there’s more right with you than wrong with you.

I felt the cold, wet torrent immerse my head and body.

I looked at the soap bubbles forming between my fingers.

I observed the complexity of the iridescence on the surface of each bubble, each one, containing within it its own universe.

What kind of technology would simulate this? Even at a level observable by the human senses, what power would be required to simulate something so complex, so convincingly?

It looks so real. It feels so real.

But then again, it’s all we’ve ever known. How do we know that this is what wetness feels like?

Embrace the matrix. There is no way out.

You can listen to the podcast that inspired my melancholy here.

HUE/BECKTON - STRATEGIC VS> TACTICAL [PSYCHO]CARTOGRAPHY (PART THREE)

FINAL PART IN A SERIES OF THREE. READ PART ONE HERE

In the event, i hit a wall. A ten metre fucking thick wall of brick and earth. Then I walked beneath the arch instead of through the wall, which was a more sensible option. Then I hit another wall (pictured). This time there was no massive arch, but an entry fee and tickets and electric vehicles and i wasn't in the mood for any of that.

It was a cool, overcast, February day in Hue, city of walls, and I was at the citadel, the citadel not even noted in Full Metal Jacket, where the rebel army had holed themselves up for several weeks until they were ultimately bombarded out of hiding by American air power. There's not a lot of that in the local histories, nor about the initial atrocities they insurrectionists committed, nor the vicious reprisals they and their sympathisers likewise endured. Instead, the story is focused on Vietnam's Imperial past, the colonial protectorate of the Nguyen Dynasty, the anachronistic monarchy and life at court. I was not in the mood for all of that.

What I was in the mood for, I knew not. Somehow the disparate threads at which I'd been tugging had remained just that- disparate. For once, sticking a map on top of another one didn't really achieve anything other than make a nice picture.  It wasn't even my picture- it was Struan Brown's. The ingredients were there but it wasn't working: the military origins of psychogeography and cartography, the horrors of war aped, in children's play and cinema, but I felt disinclined to pull the pieces together, and I was not quite sure why.

I made a circuit of the inner wall, which amounted to a stroll of just under 2.5 km. This is not long for a walk, but it is long for a wall. As I patrolled the perimeter I tried to put my self in the shoes of one who would have made such a journey before: a guard, most likely, or maybe a penitent. Perhaps a bored concubine looking to sneak back in after attempting to escape palace life, but later having a change of heart. The shoes of the soldier felt small on me, not because soldiers have small feet, but because I'd pretended to wear them as a young boy, under similar circumstances, circumambulating Hadleigh Castle. That magnificent wreck is slowly crumbling into the Estuary after more than seven centuries. Hue's citadel has been around for a much shorter period of time, but it's historical significance is arguably greater.

In Roy Bayfield's book Desire Paths, the author describes: 

"..the finding approach described by Duncan Barford in his blog post  'Inside the Entrances to Hell': "

Perhaps this is what I should have done, instead I wandered around, eyes flitting at materials, looking for something that would make everything fall into place. I didn't find that. Instead I found this:

HUE/BECKTON - STRATEGIC VS> TACTICAL [PSYCHO]CARTOGRAPHY (PART TWO)

PART TWO IN A SERIES OF THREE. READ PART ONE HERE

“Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.”

-Charlie Chaplin

Looking back at the Hue psychocarte from 2014, experiencing disappointment: a pretty picture, but practically useless. A fraction of a battle map, spliced out and blown up, the details blurred and indistinct, all before the overlay… The plan had been to trace a random path through the citadel using the overlay, the route of a dérive, but the streets were barely visible.

"All space is occupied by the enemy. We are living under a permanent curfew. Not just the cops — the geometry" -Raoul Vaneigem, The Unitary Urbanism Manifesto

The roots of the dérive (as opposed to its routes) are supposedly in urban warfare: the “aimless drift” was used as a means of reconnaissance. DeBord and the Situationists were engaged in cultural warfare, and via détournement (cultural re-appropriation and re-purposing) these tactics were being turned back against the state. Like war, psychogeography was a political act. But like the actors portraying Joker and his comrades in Full Metal Jacket, there was also an element of play.

The closing chapter of Full Metal Jacket occurs in 1968/86 in Hue/Beckton. A crazed General, Kubrick, has ordered a platoon to wander through the remnants of a gasworks in search of a Vietnamese woman, whom they are to kill. She is the third and final woman, and the only one not to be presented by Kubrick as a sex object, though is equally disposable. The only enemy whose face is seen in close up- feminine, because the enemy must be emasculated. In the end, after a hard day’s play, the lads wander across the burning landscape, singing a song Mickey Mouse. In spite of yourself, you may just feel an incongruous warm glow inside.

Not only was 1968 a big year for Hue (just as 1986 was a big year for Beckton, although it would be made aware of that until long after the event), it was a big year for the Situationists. Increased militancy amongst industrial workers and students, culminating in a series of occupations, protests and a general strike nearly brought the French establishment to its knees. Though there were numerous socio-economic causes for this period of civil unrest, the Situationist International can take credit for providing some degree of leadership, and its writings strongly influenced the political graffiti of the time, which have provided some of the most enduring images of the period. 

Via http://radicalgraff.tumblr.com/post/143899675528/be-realistic-demand-the-impossible-may-1968

Ultimately, the status quo prevailed, state power managed to suppress the protestors, and returned stronger and more resilient. Likewise, in Vietnam, the Tet offensive was ultimately crushed by the combined ARVN and US forces, and the rebel forces were expelled from all the major urban centres they had assaulted. In Europe and the USA, 1968 is often remembered as the last gasp of the counter-culture, a glorious failure. In Vietnam, the Tet offensive was a dress rehearsal for 1975, and victory for the revolutionaries (who, predictably, went on to impose their own repressive regime of state power). Ho Chi Minh’s forces succeeded, perhaps, because there was a coherent strategy in play, one which would outlive its progenitor.

Fire at the Albert DockVia http://www.invisibleworks.co.uk/ghosts-london-blitz-aerial-maps/

Tet is rapidly approaching, 49 lunar years having passed since the infamous offensive, and the Battle for Hue. 31 years have likewise elapsed since the Battle of Hue was recreated at Beckton gasworks. Both of these are prime numbers. The 49^th Boulevard was also the previous name given to Pham Van Dong Street in Hue. The time (and the cosmic numbers) is right for some kind of intervention. Yet without a coherent strategy- in this case, my psychocarte- there can be no opportunity for a successful operation. From the outset, the superimposition of a Hue map atop a map of Beckton (or perhaps the other way around) seemed like the best place to begin.

Sadly, it's been done before: here is Struan Brown's interpretation of Beckton overlaid on Hue. One cannot be startled by the fact that this has been done prior to it being imagined by me, but what is perhaps surprising is that Struan was actually a class mate of mine at the University of Greenwich. We studied together on the Landscape Architecture masters programme in 2014 (both of us had also been Greenwich students in 2013, but during different semesters). I have no memory of seeing this before, but was suddenly beset by a strange fear that I was experiencing cryptomnesia, the phenomenon of experiencing a memory as an original thought. 

Image by Struan Brown via http://struanbrown.blogspot.com/2013/12/beckton-gas-works.html

Perhaps of greater concern was the possibility that, having previously seen this image, the map of Hue had been buried in my subconscious, and that its presence there had subtly compelled me to find its origins. My journey to Hue, less than one year later, was not only on a whim but also somewhat serendipitous. Originally, I had obtained a job (via an agency) as an English teacher in Hanoi. Whilst booking the flights, I discovered it would be much cheaper to fly to HCMC and travel up to Hanoi independently than fly directly. On informing my agency, however, it transpired that this would not be acceptable to my prospective employer (I would have missed some "essential" part of the induction process whilst travelling from HCMC to Hanoi), and a new course of action was decided. Instead of teaching in Hanoi, I was told to meet up with a group of newly-qualified TEFL teachers in HCMC and travel with them to Hue, a city I believed I had never heard of.

It's hard to recall what was influencing my decision making processes at that time, the whole period prior to my departure is a miasmic blur. My memories of this period are a series of weird vignettes, mostly of one-on-one conversations with people who's lives are going to be somehow disrupted by my departure. There's no truth in them, really,: I've spliced and edited them back together too many times, there were filters on the lenses, and they're remakes anyway. 

PART 3 TO FOLLOW

24 HISTORIC STYLES DÉTOURNED: PART I of XXIV

I recently downloaded a copy of Tom Turner's 24 Historic Styles of Garden Design, published by Gardenvisit.com. Tom Turner was one of my teachers at Greenwich, on both the BA and MA programmes. In this book, Tom aims to provide  "a short illustrated history of western garden design from 2000 BC to 2000 AD". "Western", in this context, includes Egypt, the middle east and northern India. If, like me, this subject is of particular interest to you then I recommend it: the text may be brief (and there are one or two typographic errors) but the accompanying illustrations- especially the style diagrams- are incredibly useful. 

Cover of Twenty Four Historic Styles... via www.gardenvisit.com

The style diagrams (illustrated on the cover, above) are part of a larger series that Tom Turner has been developing over many years. Clearly delineating how the elements of buildings, paving, vegetation and water are organised within each historic garden, they also imply, with a little bit of imagination, how these gardens may have been used. It occurred to me that they were also ripe for a bit of détournement- all in the best possible taste, of course.

So: every so often, I will select one of the twenty four diagrams at random, re-arrange it a little, then attempt to ascribe it to a time period or cultural movement.

GARDEN ONE:

What we might be looking at:

An irregular shape in light green, surrounded by a lighter colour. There is  a suggestion of a perimeter wall. the irregular shape may be a consequence of landform- perhaps it is erected on top of a hill. Small dark green circles, most likely trees, are scattered across the plan.They seem able to cross the barrier between the light green and yellow areas- perhaps there is no wall at all, just a loosely defined fence.

A circular water feature sits at the centre of the plan, with other structures radiating out from this point. Closest to the fountain or poo are three small buildings, the largest of which is orientated on a north-south axis, adjacent to a wide avenue. This avenue connects two large, walled gardens: one running west-east, the other at slightly tilted to the north-west from the main axis.

The east-west walled garden contains a pool, and terminates in the east at a larger building, also facing east. No trees stand in front of this structure, perhaps giving it a commanding view from the top of the hill. This is most likely the main house.

The designer of this plan wants to invite the wild in from the outside, allowing it to run across the site (the trees), but is also keen to demarcate formal areas and keep them enclosed.

What we are actually looking at:

A classical villa, c100 AD. In the words of Tom Turner:

"Buildings and gardens were grouped together within a bounded enclosure. The spaces adjoining individual buildings were axially planned but, by the standards of renais sance villas, the lack of an axial relationship between buildings is surprising. Structures were scattered like parcels on a table. Either there was no overall plan or it was asymmetrical."

-Twenty Four Historic Styles of Garden Design , page 14

Twenty Four Historic Styles of Garden Design by Tom Turner can be downloaded at Google Play Books

HUE/BECKTON - STRATEGIC VS> TACTICAL [PSYCHO]CARTOGRAPHY (PART ONE)

Scale has a strong relationship with design intent...

Image courtesy Getty Images

High up above the city, peeking out from under clouds, the Luftwaffe coordinate their strategic bombing methods. There, the West Ham stadium (not the Boleyn ground, nor latterly the Olympic Stadium, instead the home of Greyhound racing) a waymarker far below. To the pilots and crew this view is a tactical map, the individual targets part of the broader strategy, the scale distorted by greater considerations of space and time.

Wikimedia commons

Not too far below, but nearly fifty years later, a film crew coordinate the vision of another 20th Century icon. Beckton's gasworks, abandoned since 1970, have been an established location for feature film shoots, as well as pop videos (The Smith's Derek Jarman-directed promo for The Queen is Dead). Previously, television and film directors had used the mounds of toxic waste (The famous "Beckton Alps") as a stand-in for real mountains, but on this occasion the crew have a far more difficult transformative task ahead of them: the derelict gasworks must be dressed in the accoutrements of a southeast Asian city, which none of them have ever seen.

1980s Vietnam, taken by Michel Blanchard

At that precise moment, but more than six thousand miles away (and though he may not have known how fast he was going, Heisenberg knew precisely where he was), the enactment of the Đổi mới economic reforms has initiated a transformation in the fortunes of Vietnam's urban residents, but it's full effects are yet to be realised in the country's former Imperial capital. The Party's plans for a socialist state have been postponed, with the objective now being modernisation and economic development. The strategic aim remains the same: the tactics, however, have been significantly modified. 

Stay with us. Try to keep the big picture in view as we flit and jump-cut through time and space. It's just basic fucking physics, this "Big Bang" for the Vietnamese economy: cause and effect. It is not happening in a vacuum, there are bigger bangs blowing up all over the place. Just a few months earlier, Thatcher's instigation of the "Big Bang" in London’s financial markets was sending waves around the world, although it could be argued that forty years would pass before the world would feel its full effects. Beckton would feel something soon: watching towers of glass rise above its immediate horizon, later a dry ski-slope upon the mounds of toxic sludge.

For now, the towers are of iron and concrete, and attempts are being made “Vietnamese-ise” them, to turn Beckton, London formerly Essex) into Hue, Vietnam. It’s all in the name of someone’s grand vision, of course, that someone being Stanley Kubrick. His cast will spend but a few days here, re-enacting the 1968 Battle of Hue (following the Tet offensive) from the point of view of a squad of US Marines. It is a strange thing, grown men playing at soldiers in return for money.

All around the world, in cities separated by time and space, children play at war, play out their deaths over and over again. Perhaps some of them will make a career of it in the future. Regardless, children make treasure maps, skip down deserted alleyways, invent or re-invent urban mythologies, name slag-heaps after mountain ranges and dodge snipers in high towers.

Some even do it for real. 

A NEW YEAR'S DAY DRIFT

After a prolonged absence, I encourage myself to engage in some urban walking, with some automated assistance.

DRIFT- available from I-Store now!

Prior to the chiming of the bells, the banging of gongs and the curious absence of a fireworks display (the government of HCMC are apparently using the money saved to assist flood victims), I had already resolved to engage more vigorously in psychogeographical practice in 2017, and to grant some additional motivation, I thought I would download some psychogeographic apps. Sadly, I have had no joy with one of those (Derive- though I can get it to play some colliery brass band music), but DRIFT (already mentioned in my post concerning Minh Khai) was a little more successful.

The premise is simple: to encourage urban wandering by providing the user with a sequence of ten commands, each involving wandering in a particular direction for a specified number of blocks, or until some other criterion is  met, culminating with the user recording an image using the camera app on the phone. The images are then uploaded to the app's site (though I have so far been unable to locate this site), as well as being stored on the user's phone. The ten steps are saved as an individual "Drift", and the user is able to then initiate another drift, containing a completely new set of commands.

For the first time in many years I was joined on my drift by a companion, who for the reasons which may or may not be connected to some shocking revelations concerning Ho Chi Minh has opted to remain anonymous.

The app is available for I-OS and Android, and you can find out a little more about the ethos behind the product at the site of Broken City Labs.

STEP I:

Walk north for a block and try to find something out of the ordinary given the economic spatial cues of the area and document it.

From our starting point, it was impossible to travel north, and by meeting this stumbling block we encountered one of the glaring issues with the app. By relying on the cardinal points to navigate, the app restricts the available options. A relative system might have a greater flexibility, and hence variation.

Instead, we negotiated our way around until were able to follow a Phạm Ngọc Thạch northwards. This is Saigon's most architecturally refined district, and thus the giant plastic flowers struck us as somewhat out of the ordianry, althought they were decorations in preparation for the upcoming Lunar New Year.

STEP II:

Walk east until you find a trace of history and take a picture of it.



Our earliest opportunity to travel east presented itself at Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, and the story of what we found there is recounted at this post.

STEP III:

Walk north and look for a faucet or tap on the exterior of a building and take a close-up picture of it.





STEP IV:

Find the nearest reflection to you and take a picture of it.

STEP V:

Walk north until you see an unmarked path and take a picture of wherever it leads.



STEP VI:

Walk north until you find something wonderful and take a picture of it.



Perhaps this does not strike you as particularly wonderful, but this was a beautiful street.

STEP VII:

Walk south for a couple of blocks and empty your pockets on the nearest surface and take a picture of everything spread out on that surface.


                      

This step puzzled me at first, but I quite liked it for two reasons. Firstly, it encourages examination of the immediate surface. Secondly, it turns the walker into a performer. The action is not rational and, sonsequently, draws attention from other street users. It's a nice moment of inversion, with the observer (briefly) becoming the observed.

Note: due some uncharacteristically windy conditions I was reluctant to spread the content of my pockets all over the pavement... and yes, that is a cotton bud.

STEP X:

Walk south for one block, look for an example of an appeal and take a picture of it.

Yes, we did skip a step- or re-arrange the sequence of steps. You may have noted that heading northward would have meant tediously re-tracing our steps, and would not really be in the spirit of gettting lost, which is at the heart of "DRIFT".

Instead, we decided to jump to step ten and trace the remaining steps in reverse order. After walking south for one block, this sign was the closest thing we could find to an appeal. It is a recruitment notice for security staff.

STEP IX:

Walk in the same direction of the shadows you can see for two blocks and then take a picture of the nearest outdoor light source.

STEP VIII:

Walk north until you can find an example of a game and take a picture of it.

A note: play equipment, amusement park rides, jigsaw puzzles, any distraction at all are all described as "games" in the Vietnamese language. To my companion, this piece of playground equipment in the grounds of an exclusive primary school exemplified the concept of "game" absolutely. I was at first disinclined to agree: whilst it was easy to imagine the games that could be played upon it, it was bereft of human children making full use of the facility. In that state it was no more a "game" than any other piece of obscure sculpture or street furniture.

I thought about the distinction for a moment, of how in most cultures it is not acceptable for children to climb over public artwork (unless, of course, that was the artists' inital intent). Probably more to do with litigation than propriety, I would imagine. Unlike a public sculpture, this bit of play equipment was designed exclusively for children to clamber over, investigate and explore. It was therefore  a game wating to be played.

Having completed ten steps, no prize was awarded, though my companion compared the Drift to a game, albeit one with an invisible reward system. Homo ludens adrift in Saigon, investigating and exploring, and occasionally clambering over obstacles.

Drift  was a good way back into praxis, and an interesting introduction to psychogeography for my companion. Indeed, the simple format (and arbitrary instruction) makes it quite suitable for use in pairs or groups, as an introdution to the derive. It is a pity, however, that there is no online collection of the drifts of others, or at least not one that I have been able to locate. I have emailed the game's developer(s), and will post their response as soon as it is received.

In the meantime, if you wish to download the app it is available on  iOS only. If you have used this software previously, it would be wonderful if you could provide a link to a description of your own experiences in the comments section, because that's what we're supposed to do nowadays.

You can also find slightly different edits of the images at  this instagram hashtag (#driftPCHCMC1)

NGUYEN THI MINH KHAI

Vietnamese Revolutionary and prominent member of the Indochinese Communist Party.

Whilst engaged in a automatically generated DRIFT in HCMC's district one, my companion and I found ourselves searching for a piece of history. Walking is not a popular Vietnamese activity, and my companion was eager to complete the task as soon as possible, suggesting that we merely record the name of the street, seeing as that corresponded to thee name of a historical figure.

Suddenly the memory of last year's street name project came flooding back, closely followed by a wave of guilt- guilt at having fallen so far behind with the project I had actually moved 1000 km south of the city of its origin. That is a substantial dérive.

After a brief moment of reverie and self-admonition, I was brought back to the matter at hand, which was to engage in an automatically generated drift through HCMC. The dérive was generated by an app called DRIFT, and is subject to a parallel blog post. Essentially, the app provides a series of simple instrcutios which encourage users to explore their city, with each instruction generally concluding with the recording of a piece of photographic evidence. In our case, the instruction to "walk east until you find a trace of history" had been going on for much longer than might ordinarily be expected in a city as rich in heritage as Saigon, leading to my companion's suggestion of a cop-out.

I asked what was historically significant about Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai. My companion's memory was sketchy, but was sure that she had been involved in revolutionary activities in the last century, rather than a more ancient figure. My co-drifter's town of origin is Huế, and related that Huế also has a Nguyễn Thị Minh Khai street, intersected by Lê Hồng Phong Street. Hồng Phong had been her husband, and my companion recollected that they had both been executed by either "the French or Americans".

With each street in Saigon (and nearly every street in Vietnam) bearing the name of a Vietnamese historical figure, we instead continued to walk, until we came across a colonial rooftop rupturing the polyvinyl shell in which that trace of history had been hidden, and that was documented in Minh Khai's stead.

Later, we checked the English language entry for Minh Khai on wikipedia (from whence was procured the image above), and discovered that she had in fact been executed by the French in 1941, two years after her husband. The couple had travelled to Moscow in 1934 as the ICP's delegates to the 7th Comintern. What was most intriguing, however, was the article's claim that she had been a lover of (or perhaps even married to) Uncle Ho. As the article notes, and as my companion reminded me, the official party line in vietnam is that Uncle Ho had no romantic attachments throughout his entire life. It should be noted that the only reference to this fact is contained in William J Duiker's biography of Ho Chi Minh (Ho Chi Minh- A Life), and the Vietnamese people I have discussed this with so far have been incredulous about this particular story.

This is part of an ongoing series of articles concerned with the origins of Vietnamese street names, and the myths and legends attached to them. You can find the story of how this project came to pass at Huế Street Names.

Alternatively, you can look up all articles labelled street names