Katia Synopsis

Guy Debord
Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography

According to Debord the excitement of a new life lies to observation through chance processes. He introduces the term psychogeography; the emotions and behaviors that the laws and effects of an environment can cause to an individual. He believes that historical conditions of urban arrangements lead people to atheism, oblivion and disorientation (urban renewal of Paris under the Second Empire) by blinding people with pathetic illusions of privilege which are linked to a general idea of happiness. Debord counterproposal is to turn the whole of life into an exciting game, combined with the constant depreciation of all current diversions. He suggests that the creation of a chosen emotional situation depends only on the thorough understanding and calculated application of a certain fact. The combinations of ambiences awakens various and complex feelings. The research on the arrangement of the elements of the urban setting, lead us to hypotheses that must be corrected by critique and self-critique. The production of psychogeographical maps can contribute to wanderings that express not submission to chance but total insubordination to usual influences. Meanwhile we can distinguish several stages of partial, less difficult projects, beginning with the mere displacement of elements of decoration from the locations where we are used to seeing them. In fact, nothing really new can be expected until the masses in action awaken to the conditions that are imposed on them in all domains of life, and to the practical means of changing them. A future urbanism may well apply itself to no less utilitarian projects, but in the rather different context of psychogeographical possibilities.