Plymouth University’s Phil Smith will be one of the keynotes at “Taking it to the Streets: Empowering Interactions with the Urban Environment”: a symposium about psychogeography at Edge Hill University on 23rd February 2016.
Looking back to the ideas and practices from which ‘psychogeography’ emerged, and examining them through the prism of very recent developments among radical walkers and psychogeographers – what Tina Richardson has called ‘the New Psychogeography – Smith will try to draw out what from the legacy of ‘psychogeography’ is most valuable and where it might take us now. He will look briefly at different phases of psychogeographical activity in the UK – from the literary and the occult, through the struggles of the neo-situationist groups of the 1990s, to the playfully serious ludibria of Fabian Thomsett and Stewart Home. He will celebrate the recent explosion of publishing around these ideas and practices, particularly the work of McKenzie Wark, and bring things up to date with a quick review of what the recent exponential growth in radical and aesthetic walking might mean. Smith will finish by suggesting some of the challenges and opportunities that are now there to be met not only by ‘the New Psychogeographers’, but by anyone who avails themselves of a unprecedentedly deep resource of ideas and tactics of far greater range of imagination and technique than ever before.
Find out more about Phil’s publications on the Triarchy Press website.