Wednesday 25 March 2015

Walking Inside Out – Introduction Extract 3

Where to Now, Psychogeography!


Please click here for part 1 and part 2

In 2002 Iain Sinclair said of psychogeography that "the next step is to bury it completely! Let it go and let it re-emerge. I think it needs 15 years to gain some new energy, as I think this energy is rapidly running out" (cited in Pilkington and Baker 2002, ‘City Brain’, Fortean Times). Since we are now fast-approaching the end of Sinclair's 15 year embargo, perhaps this is a salient moment to begin to discuss psychogeography again in a critical way, and take a serious look at the work being carried out in the field. I hope this text contributes to this discussion. Sinclair further comments on this problem when discussing the work Stewart Home did with the London Psychogeographical Association (LPA): “Stewart Home says that the LPA deliberately mystified and irrationalised their psychogeographical ideas in order to prevent them from being academicised in the future. But they inevitably will be because Stewart himself is a sort of rogue academic, so it's self-contradictory in some ways. By doing it, it becomes part of this machinery in talks and interviews” (ibid.).

Nevertheless, Sinclair is in praise of walking despite his concerns with the term psychogeography. One thing that many walkers are preoccupied with, from activists to The Ramblers, is not just the marginalisation of our public spaces, but the marginalisation of the very act of walking itself. As Sinclair says in an interview in the Ramblers own publication: "We're at the bottom of the food chain and the day will come when we'll have the equivalent of bike lanes: a narrow suicide strip chucked in among the traffic. We'll have to have ghost walkers, like the white ghost bikes you see to commemorate dead cyclists" (2012, ‘My Perfect Day’, Walk). So, it seems, psychogeographers perhaps do have more in common than can be expressed in their differences.

Related Links:
Walking Inside OutAvailable for Pre-order

Wednesday 18 March 2015

Walking Inside Out – Introduction Extract 2

What Doth a Psychogeographer Make?


To provide an aphorism of what psychogeographers do and why they walk assumes they are a generic group, which is not the case. It is as difficult as trying to provide a pithy sentence to describe what a writer or artist does and why they do it. Nevertheless, there are some universal qualities that are representative of many psychogeographers and that may help explain their intention. For instance, they attempt to connect with the terrain in a way that is other to that of a casual stroll, bringing a focus to the walk that takes it beyond both a ‘Sunday walk’ in the country (where the landscape almost appears to be placed their in order to be admired) and that of the Saturday shopping expedition in the local high street. It is neither of these. Nor is it about getting from A to B - it is absolutely about the process itself, however clichéd that may sound. The walker connects with the terrain in a way that sets her/himself up as a critic of the space under observation, but at the same time they unite with it through the sensorial acknowledgement of its omnipresence. The space becomes momentarily transformed through this relationship. The psychogeographer recognises that they are part of this process and it is their presence that enables this recognition to occur.

The form and purpose behind the critique of the topology/topography will be very dependent on the individual walker. It might involve making mental connections with the space through a song or piece of literature or it may involve a philosophical/theoretical analysis of particular objects under scrutiny. It could also be an overtly political process which applies an assessment of the power structures in play in a given situation or even a physical act of challenging those very structures directly in the moment. This could be thought of as a kind of traversing, whereby the walker sees this as a negotiation of the space which questions established routes and draws attention to the possibility of approaching the territory in a different way.

Please click here for other extracts: Introduction 1

Related Links:
Walking Inside Out – Available for Pre-order

Thursday 12 March 2015

Walking Inside Out – Introduction Extract 1

What is British Psychogeography?


This is the first of a series of short extracts from the upcoming publication Walking Inside Out: Contemporary British Psychogeography.

While this volume concentrates on British psychogeography, dividing international and home-grown psychogeography into clearly delineated groups is not representative of the lineage of contemporary urban walking. Psychogeography is about crossing established boundaries, whether metaphorically or physically, locally or globally. The Situationists did not limit their psychogeography to their own location, Paris. They walked other cities, such as Venice and Amsterdam and incorporated existing maps of cities, for instance of the New York and London transport networks, into their own maps. Recent projects in the UK have involved international cities working together. One example was the Leeds-Dortmund Project (part of Superimposed City Tours 2003-03) and incorporated a simultaneous psychogeographical mapping of both cities and their accompanying narratives. The newly created superimpositions were then seen as a virtual city, this third city resulting from the overlap of the other two. So, too, British psychogeographers often do not limit themselves to just British towns and cities. Will Self’s Psychogeography (2007) includes walks in Liverpool and London, alongside those in Istanbul and New York.

This volume sets out to demonstrate the diversity of urban walking in Britain today through the numerous factors that make up the walk itself: the individual walker(s), the space of the walk (town/city, rural/urban/suburban, and so on), the ‘method’ (if there is a defined method being utilised and, in fact, if there is no method is this also a type of method for carrying out psychogeography), and the phenomena under observation/critique (urban décor, surface textures, prohibitive signs, other people, buildings, cars and so on). These are just a few of the factors that influence the walk itself. One could look further at factors such as night versus day-time walking, as this also greatly changes the experience, and also the weather, especially in somewhere like Britain where it can change from moment to moment. The city looks hugely different on a bright sunny day than when it is overcast. These features of the walk change the subjective nature of the walk in the same way the intentions of the individual walker does.

Please click here for extract 2.

Related Links:
Walking Inside OutAvailable for Pre-order

Wednesday 11 March 2015

Kitsch and the Danger of Guilty Pleasures – Pt 3


Please click here for part 1 and part 2 of the blog.

The song Independent Women vs. Dreadlock Holiday, when played at The University of Leeds Guilty Pleasures clubnight, was an alternative version to that on the album by 2 many djs as heard on radio soulwax pt.2. On the album the song begins with the classic Dreadlock Holiday intro but contains no vocals to the actual song Dreadlock Holiday. After a few bars of the Dreadlock Holiday intro Independent Women cuts in. The reggae accompaniment of Dreadlock Holiday continues through the song but the song is predominantly Independent Women; there are no vocals from the 10cc song on it. There are intervals when the Dreadlock Holiday melody appears, but there are no parts that are exclusively Dreadlock Holiday after the initial few bars. This song would be recognised by the contemporary popular music listener as a particular mix of the Destiny's Child song, although if anyone who knew the 10cc song heard the opening bars of this song, they would be expecting Dreadlock Holiday.

At the Guilty Pleasures clubnight Sean Rowley played either another mix or his own mix of Independent Women vs. Dreadlock Holiday. This was a much more equal balance of the two songs and included large exclusive parts of Dreadlock Holiday where whole verses were played interspersed with verses from Independent Women. This made it much more appropriable in terms of the signification of Guilty Pleasures. When becoming a relatively equal hybrid of the two songs the power of the myth is increased through its generic attraction. It is not quite one song or the other; its appeal is spread over a greater possible reception to it. Many individuals will connect to it due to its interpellative calling: like I did myself to Dreadlock Holiday, like the other students did to Independent Women. But, not only was I in a different 'headspace' to my fellow clubbers (it is possible I was the only person interpellated by the Dreadlock Holiday aspect of the song on that particular night), but they were all in different spaces to each other because of their mapping of their own personal histories onto the song. Yet they (we) all felt connected (actually I was alerted to the more obvious differences because of my age and because I had a sudden realisation at the time that they were dancing to a different song to the one I was dancing to). But, what I want to make specific reference to here, is the specifically individualised face of the myth in that it appears to speak to 'me' in a special way. This is what Roland Barthes means when he says that the myth acts like “a magical object springing up in my present life without a trace of the history which has caused it.” (2000: 125).

Like Theodor Adorno, Barthes spells out the danger of this 'calling' and how it has a specific relationship to history. However, Barthes explains particularly well how we are effected as individuals when caught, in the moment, by the ideology of the myth. Guilty Pleasures both affects us. We have a sensation of something - of a past life, of someone we once were, of a 'happier' time, perhaps. We are caught up in the myth of Guilty Pleasures, we do not recognise that “this interpellant speech is at the same time a frozen speech: at the moment of reaching me, it suspends itself, turns away and assumes the look of a generality: it stiffens, it makes itself look neutral and innocent.” (Barthes 2000: 125). The language of the myth becomes selective and partial because of what we choose to connect to in the history presented to us; at the same time it presents itself in such a way that what it is saying is taken 'as read', it is how things are, it is 'natural'.

The myth disguises itself through this innocence. Because “the truth of kitsch is its falseness” (Adorno 2002: 362), something is presented to the myth reader that appears to be non-threatening and inviting. For Guilty Pleasures this could be thought of as a past version of the individual being interpellated: how could a former 'me' be a threat? However, whereas in the past warnings were given to individuals not to buy kitsch because it was 'bad taste' and mass produced, nowadays individuals generally understand the concept of kitsch, it is much more recognisable. Nevertheless, I believe this knowledge does not make the individual impervious to its calling. Because the individual is aware that something is kitsch (in the sense of falsity) they enter into a relationship with it on the assumption they have total agency in this exchange, but kitsch operates on another level. I would describe this relationship with kitsch to be rather like that of the simulacra: a reflective mirroring which continually circulates and has no resting place. The present looks back at the past which is what creates the calling; the calling emanates from the individual but they have projected it onto the song and believe it to be outside them; the song, in its very personal way, hooks the psyche (the unconscious) of the individual; and yet the individual feels they are controlling this process because they 'know' this thing to be kitsch. The knowledge that something is kitsch does not prevent one being interpellated by it: the chosen object has already interpellated you before you consciously realised it was kitsch!

Finally, I would like to return to the history aspect of this blog (although we have never left it) and see what might be recuperated in Guilty Pleasures. Much more can be said about how history operates through ideology, especially by Adorno and Barthes, however I have been selective in my references to history in order to include the other aspects of the kitsch object that relate directly to Guilty Pleasures. But it is the history that is available in the object that the individual chooses not to see that is what might actually save it. Adorno cynically describes the positive aspect of kitsch as being the possibility that in the moment you may “realiz[e] that you have wasted your life” (1998: 50). And, Barthes explains that the concept in the second semiological level is “open to the whole of History” (2000: 121). Just because the interpellated dancer at the Guilty Pleasures clubnight chooses to see her own past in the nostalgic song does not mean other histories are not available. The histories available are endless, but they need to be sought out, as Adorno says we need to participate in history by engaging in an active way.

It has been my intention here to help Guilty Pleasures reveal its own secret. I did not have a particular end result in mind when I set out, and, as a fan of Guilty Pleasures, I was cognisant of not putting too positive a slant on it (although I hope because of that that I have not done the opposite). Critiquing a cultural object you actually enjoy, and in which you participate, makes for an interesting and self-reflective experience. Not that the enjoyment and the attempts to understand that process are separate.

As I stated in the opening to my blog: Guilty Pleasures is overdetermined in terms of areas available for critique. But it has been my intention here to look for something within Guilty Pleasures that is consistent: irrelevant of gender, time or class. I have attempted to find a common thread which would be relevant to all individuals who have participated in Guilty Pleasures, or will do so in the future. And if that moment represents a history to the individual - and if, as Adorno says, history takes place in language (2000 p.248) – then the Guilty Pleasures dancer/listener, in their communion (communication), is also participating in a present and (and future) history that is unfolding around them. As Adorno says: “The comprehension of an artwork as a complexion of truth brings the work into relation with its untruth, for there is no artwork that does not participate in the untruth external to it, that of the historical moment.” (1997: 347). Whilst the listener/dancer engages with a past self that is projected onto the song, they are simultaneously engaging with Guilty Pleasures and in everything it represents, which can only ever exist in the moment of its own production, in the now of the listening or the dance.

Click here for more Roland Barthes related work: The Semiotics of Space and the Culture of Design

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Books and Articles
Adorno, Theodor W. 1997. Aesthetic Theory, trans. by Gretel Adorno and Tiedmann (London: The Athlone Press).
----- 1998. 'Motifs', Quasi una Fantasia: Essays on Modern Music, trans. by Rodney Livingstone (London and New York: Verso) pp. 9-36.
----- 2000. ‘Extracts from Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life’, The Continental Aesthetics Reader, ed. by Clive Cazeaux (London and New York: Routledge) pp. 234-256.
----- 2001. 'The Schema of Mass Culture', The Culture Industry, ed. by J. M. Bernstein (London and New York: Routledge) pp. 61-97.
----- 2002a. 'On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening', Essays on Music, trans. by Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press) pp. 288-317.
----- 2002b. 'Kitsch', Essays on Music, trans. by Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press) pp. 501-505.
Barthes, Roland. 2000. 'Myth Today', Mythologies, trans. by Annette Lavers (London: Vintage) pp. 109-159.
Broch, Hermann. 1973. ‘Notes on the Problem of Kitsch’, Kitsch: An Anthology of Bad Taste, ed. by Gillo Dorfles (London: Studio Vista) pp. 49-76.
Jenkins, Jennifer, ‘The Kitsch Collections and “The Spirit in the Furniture”: Cultural Reform and National Culture in Germany’, Social History, 21, 2 (1996), 123-141.
Leppert, Richard. 2002. ‘Commentary’, Essays on Music, trans. by Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press) pp. 327-372.
Witkin, Robert W. 2003. Adorno on Popular Culture (London and New York: Routledge).

Music
10cc, The Very Best of 10cc (Mercury Records Ltd, 534 612-2, 1997).
2 many djs, as heard on radio soulwax pt.2 (PIAS Recordings, plasb 065 cd, 2002).
Brian Protheroe, Pinball and Other Stories (EMI Records Ltd, 0946 3 60718 2 4, 2006).

Online Resources
Sean Rowley, ‘The Gospel According to Guilty Pleasures’, Guilty Pleasures, (2007),  (para. 2 of 6).

Monday 2 March 2015

Kitsch and the Danger of Guilty Pleasures – Pt 2


Please see part 1 of the blog.

Adorno's main concern in regard to kitsch is with the social aspect of history, and more importantly with the lives people are living in the present. He explains how, when kitsch is employed, the “social moment” becomes formed through it: "by serving up past formal entities as contemporary, [kitsch] has a social function – to deceive people about their true situation, to transfigure their existence, to allow intentions that suit some powers or other to appear to them in a fairy-tale glow" (2002b: 502). When we are listening to the nostalgic kitsch of Guilty Pleasures we are not addressing the real everyday politico-social issues that matter and that could improve our lives, we are instead, according to Adorno, “tormented individuals” because we are proffered something in the music that we can never have (ibid.). In Guilty Pleasures this might be a harking back to a time when things were, supposedly, more 'innocent' and 'free': our childhood, for instance. And because Guilty Pleasures cleverly serves up music from every decade, all our childhoods are represented.

Adorno explains that “All kitsch is essentially ideology” (2002b: 502). In Guilty Pleasures this could be perceived as undisguised nostalgia (I will return to this 'undisguised' factor). This ideology appears as a momentary revisiting of the past in the form of what Adorno calls “musical small change” (2002b: 503) - fetishised elements that get circulated, in the case of Guilty Pleasures these elements are the old songs themselves. The tracks become uprooted, re-contextualised and re-circulated. They are dished up to the music fan of the day, without their historical roots being made apparent. This is the “forgotten secret” (2002b: 501) to which Adorno refers. Richard Leppert puts this particular point well in his commentary in Essays on Music:
Kitsch invokes a past which is nostalgically remembered; as such kitsch is a means by which to forget – but less to forget the past than the present. Kitsch offers consolation, not so as to change everything but to make the anything of the here and now slightly more tolerable. (2002: 361).
This past/present that is forgotten Leppert describes as “selectively (mis)remembered”, and explains that kitsch, for Adorno, is problematic because its relationship to history is not direct and therefore the truth of history is not spoken (2002: 363). The nostalgic element contained in Guilty Pleasures produces a sentimental moment, but not in a positive sense, because “Sentimentality is robbed of its implausible character, of that touching but impotent Utopian moment which for an instant might soften the hearts of those who have been hardened and take them beyond the reach of their even harder masters.” (ibid.). Thus, the momentarty and naive fleeting thought that life could be better, is just that, naive and fleeting, it has no power to do anything about concretely making life better. It does not last beyond the moment.

Whilst it may appear relatively easy to argue that Guilty Pleasures recuperates itself because it is not pretending to be something it is not (it is not pretending to be anything other than kitsch), there is a subtle but effective illusion existing in this very modelling of itself as 'innocent'. On one level it is undisguised nostalgia – everybody knows what they are getting with Guilty Pleasures – but this straight-forwardeness is itself part of the disguise. I do not believe that Adorno would see Guilty Pleasures as the worst kind of kitsch - he does grade kitsch in relation to severity, with “kitsch with 'class'” being the very worst (2002b: 504) - but I believe in its supposed openness Guilty Pleasures lulls the listener/participator into a false sense of security. As Leppert says: “Adorno is eliciting the reality of the truth in the lie, that is, that the truth of kitsch is its falseness [...]” (2002: 362). But, while Guilty Pleasures could be described as authentic kitsch, like painted chalk seaside ornaments, this just hides another type of lie. It is important to analyse what this falseness means in relation to Guilty Pleasures and what it is hiding from the individual, because in an ideological sense the songs are speaking to the individual and represent, at least on a subjective level, their own past.

Hermann Broch, in his essay 'Notes on the Problem of Kitsch' (which appears in the oft-cited edition by Gillo Dorfles Kitsch: An Anthology of Bad Taste), addresses this falseness thus:
[...] if kitsch represents falsehood (it is often so defined, and rightly so), this falsehood falls back on the person in need of it, on the person who uses this highly considerate mirror so as to be able to recognize himself in the counterfeit image it throws back of him [...] (1973: 49).
These kitsch objects, whilst they are really only generic objects, are imbued with a power that appears to speak to you. We see a reflection of ourselves in that old song. But that reflection is not a true one. The nostalgic song presented to us as a guilty pleasure “appears itself as reality, which is supposed to stand in for the reality out there” (Adorno 2001: 65). And, as Adorno explains of kitsch, it helps maintain a memory of the past which is deformed, illusory and of another time (2002: 501). The past of the guilty pleasure cannot really be reconstituted, but the image that has been set up for me is particularly compelling in its personalised nature. I believe that song is for me. It is directed at me and I engage with it instantly. As Broch emphasised, the individual actually connects with this distorted element within the object because it shows something of themselves. This personalised hook then becomes the whole of the object in its transportation of the individual to a past time. The 'real' history tied up in the song is obfuscated by the nostalgic, but ideologically engineered, past that I impose on it with the help of the Guilty Pleasures machine; whether that 'real' history is mine or socio-historic, neither are readily made available to me. I do not recognise the praxis occurring here and instead think the song is calling to me. This is the myth of Guilty Pleasures.

In his own discussion on myth in 'Myth Today' Barthes sets out his model of the myth in its semiological format whereby the sign (the meaning) at the first level of semiology becomes the signifier of the second and as such becomes its “form” (2000: 115). This “form” becomes attached to a “concept” (the second level signified) and produces another sign (ibid.). Barthes calls this “a second-order semiological system” (2000: 114). He explains that this is how myth uses “raw materials” (signs in the form of existing language and images), takes them into its own system and creates what he calls “metalanguage” (2000, pp.114-115). Barthes pays particular attention to some examples that he provides the reader with in order to demonstrate how this process works. But, rather than getting caught up with using one of his own examples to further explain how myth works for Barthes, I should like to go straight to what he says about memory in relation to the “concept” in order to remain focused on the theme of my thesis on Guilty Pleasures: how the myth speaks to the individual through a misrepresentation of the past. Where necessary, I shall work backwards through Barthes text.

Barthes states that the concept's “mode of presence is memorial” (2000: 122). His use of the word “memorial” is important on two levels in relation to Guilty Pleasures: one, the meaning of the first sign is drained of its history by the concept on the second semiological level (ibid.); and, two, the word 'memorial' signifies death. It is death that Adorno is referring to when he alludes to the danger of kitsch. It is what he demonstrates when he gives the example of the Titanic in his discussion on musical kitsch in 'Motifs'. He explains how the music played out in the background is being merrily danced to by the voyagers and underneath them, in the boiler-room, their future destiny is already being played out in a whole other and horrific way - and they have no knowledge of this impending tragic event (1998: 16).

Whilst Adorno's metaphor is for a particular type of death (the death of a history), and not the death of the individuals he is referring to in his example, this death is nevertheless real because of the partiality of ideology. Barthes demonstrates that in its historical selectivity the concept works on the meaning of the first sign such that it becomes “half-amputated” and “deprived of memory” (2000: 122). In Guilty Pleasures I would like to suggest that how the myth operates is by amputating social - and to a large extent personal - history. In its supplanting of a (partial) subjective history that pertains to the individual listener, the guilty pleasure - in its representation of a cultural past that has little relevance to the interpellated listener - distances (abstracts) history. Barthes describes how this works, thus: “Through the concept, it is a whole new history which is implanted in the myth.” (2000: 119). And for Guilty Pleasures this is 'my' history, because, as Barthes states, it is “made of yielding, shapeless associations” (ibid.), and can be subjectively appropriated because of this.

Barthes, when providing the example of the Basque architecture which is taken out of its context and placed in a street in Paris, says that “it is I whom it has come to seek.” (2000: 124). This is the power of the Guilty Pleasures myth. It is communicating to me, it forms a union with me. And its secret is that it can disguise itself such that I do not see that actually I am seeking it, I am “the person in need of it”, as Broch said. Adorno also acknowledges this function of kitsch when he says kitsch “lurks in art, awaiting ever recurring opportunities to spring forth.” (1997: 239). Guilty Pleasures appears to call the individual dancer/listener, but this is its falsity: it is pretending to call them – although in a sense it is calling them, but in a very generalised and interpellant way - by disguising their own need to be transported back to the past. It lifts that need from their psyche, repackages it and places it 'out there'.

In order to see what effect the myth has on the Guilty Pleasures participant, and how it might attach itself to them via the mythological sign, I will re-visit Independent Women vs. Dreadlock Holiday, which I introduced in part 1 of the blog, in the next part of the blog. This particular song demonstrates how generality works in relation to the myth and how this makes it appropriable. It is this that Barthes describes as its “intentional force”, how it is directed at 'me': “[...] it summons me to receive its expansive ambiguity.” (2000: 124). It is also what Witkin refers to when discussing Adorno and reification: the song becomes “the 'property' of the listener.” (2003: 59).

Please click here for part 3.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Books and Articles
Adorno, Theodor W. 1997. Aesthetic Theory, trans. by Gretel Adorno and Tiedmann (London: The Athlone Press).
----- 1998. 'Motifs', Quasi una Fantasia: Essays on Modern Music, trans. by Rodney Livingstone (London and New York: Verso) pp. 9-36.
----- 2000. ‘Extracts from Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life’, The Continental Aesthetics Reader, ed. by Clive Cazeaux (London and New York: Routledge) pp. 234-256.
----- 2001. 'The Schema of Mass Culture', The Culture Industry, ed. by J. M. Bernstein (London and New York: Routledge) pp. 61-97.
----- 2002a. 'On the Fetish-Character in Music and the Regression of Listening', Essays on Music, trans. by Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press) pp. 288-317.
----- 2002b. 'Kitsch', Essays on Music, trans. by Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press) pp. 501-505.
Barthes, Roland. 2000. 'Myth Today', Mythologies, trans. by Annette Lavers (London: Vintage) pp. 109-159.
Broch, Hermann. 1973. ‘Notes on the Problem of Kitsch’, Kitsch: An Anthology of Bad Taste, ed. by Gillo Dorfles (London: Studio Vista) pp. 49-76.
Jenkins, Jennifer, ‘The Kitsch Collections and “The Spirit in the Furniture”: Cultural Reform and National Culture in Germany’, Social History, 21, 2 (1996), 123-141.
Leppert, Richard. 2002. ‘Commentary’, Essays on Music, trans. by Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press) pp. 327-372.
Witkin, Robert W. 2003. Adorno on Popular Culture (London and New York: Routledge).

Music
10cc, The Very Best of 10cc (Mercury Records Ltd, 534 612-2, 1997).
2 many djs, as heard on radio soulwax pt.2 (PIAS Recordings, plasb 065 cd, 2002).
Brian Protheroe, Pinball and Other Stories (EMI Records Ltd, 0946 3 60718 2 4, 2006).

Online Resources
Sean Rowley, ‘The Gospel According to Guilty Pleasures’, Guilty Pleasures, (2007),  (para. 2 of 6).