Psychogeography – ‘The point at which psychology and geography collide, a means of exploring the behavioural impact of urban place’ (Coverley, 2010, 1).
We have now started to explore the city of Lincoln as an urban space and have been documenting our experience through the placing of the lost, broken and abandonned objects that we find into a gallery setting. Certain traits have started to exist amongst the city as we collect items from the city and document our encounters on maps. Interestingly, certain items are only found in differing parts of Lincoln. For instance, parts of the city remain untouched by what the public would see as ‘litter’ whereas other areas saw such high volumes of cheap cigarette packets, broken bottles and other abandoned domestic items.
Our performance will investigate the city through the items of which we source from the streets. Essentially, we are aiming to create art out of broken objects to make a statement on art culture and Lincoln through the medium of psychogeography. Thus far, the process of collecting items has proven to be a challenging one as we navigate our way through the city due to certain areas having limited amount of lost objects.
Ultimately, our performance aims to make people pause, look and contemplate these unwanted objects that we encounter on a daily basis within the city. In placing these objects, of which we encounter on a regular basis, in our site of the Usher and Collection.
Talking of performance artists Townley and Bradby Simone Hancox states that their walking-based practices aimed ‘to challenge the hegemonic uses of urban space and diminish the hierarchy that is associated with the artist as producer and the audience as consumer’ (REF). In many ways our performance, which is heavily reliant on audience participation, allows the audience to take on the role of performer as they navigate the Usher gardens. Therefore, we are yet again challenging the norms that define artistic practice.
Furthermore, as we furthered our ideas we met many obstacles when clarifying our concept. Essentially we aim to create a gallery space outside of the Usher gallery – in many ways we are creating an ‘anti-gallery’. Mapping The Lost City creates an inversion of the gallery space as we do not present the perfect – instead we present imperfections through an array of lost, broken and abandoned objects. In doing so, we discussed that we should totally reverse the ‘laws’ of the gallery by allowing the audience to speak with the curators during the performance, by having the gallery staff clothed in found garments on the streets of Lincoln and by giving the audience the chance to take certain pieces of our art as long as they replace it with something that they possess.
Works Cited:
Coverley, M. (2010) Psychogeography. Harpended: Pocket Essentials.