Representing everyday urban experience through subjective psychogeography Lynn Kim 28 March 2012 MA Graphic Design Camberwell College of Art University of the Arts London
Representing everyday urban experience through subjective psychogeography Lynn Kim MA Graphic Design, Camberwell College of Art Abstract The city is a sum of stories. The city is not simply hardware. It is more about stories made by its inhabitants, especially urban wanderers. In Seoul, even without taking into consideration stories of space, rapid uniform redevelopment has caused loss of identity of the city. This research uses psychogeographical method to record urban experience to visualize the invisible stories of the city. By analysing three experiments, I tried to find the appropriate approach to examining Seoul s urban environment. The first and second experiments examined a quantitative measuring system for a subjective urban journey in order to persuade decision makers. In these experiments, I found that a journey cannot be measured objectively, and the power of the playful approach to wandering which psychogeography contains failed, as did the Situationist International. In the light of empowering playful process of wandering itself, the literary tradition of psychogeography of London was the third experiment. By photographing and using fictional narrative stories, I found relationships between the walking process and specific space. In the absence of real urban literature in Seoul, I want to use narrative storytelling as a graphic communicator in further studies. A story created by artists relates historically and locally to a specific place and resonates with the public. This can be overlaid and reworked into the city. The sum of the stories is a real city. Keywords: psychogeography, Seoul, urban experience, walking 2
Introduction The urban environment within Seoul has been changing rapidly over the last fifty years due to high- speed economic growth. Citizens demands have shifted from function- oriented efficiency to more aesthetic aspects of the everyday urban experience and, as a result, in the last five years, the government has undertaken massive urban redevelopment. Unfortunately, certain approaches, which ignored the real life of the people in the city and only considered short- term political gain, turned lacked historical and local consistency. For instance, one historical, traditional road, named Pimat- gol (see fig.1), and dating back to the Chosun dynasty, was completely demolished and redeveloped into a commercial arcade. As a consequence of this, Pimat- gol lost its identity and changed into a featureless, straight, modernized road with no regard for its original story (see fig.2). The word Pimat means to escape from horses, so this road - gol - was used as a shortcut to avoid the traffic jams created by the Royal family s horseback parade. The hidden urban labyrinth in this area included historical restaurants and bars, which are still recalled today by older generations. Figure 1. 3
Figure 2. Using the example of Pimat- gol, I see a city as the sum of many parts, forming an invisible urban experience, and, thereby, creating the heart and unique atmosphere of a city. When this, more subtle, quality of city life is ignored in favour of the mechanics of the infrastructure, then there is a potential for problems to arise. As a visual communicator, I want to find a way to communicate this subtle invisible aspect of city to urban design decision makers and citizens through visualised media. To achieve this, a psychogeographical approach is discussed in the context of my methods, plus the origin and theoretical underpinnings of this term. The term psychogeography has been defined in various ways. Debord (1955) defined the idea of psychogeography in relation to Paris. However, this visionary tradition had long before been evident in London. In this research, I focus on analysing the differences in the definitions of psychogeography in these two cities, and then examine my own visual journey undertaken in London. By examining the effect of both psychogeographical methods, I aim to find the best approach for the urban environmental issues in Seoul. 4
Two opposing perspectives on the city There have been two ways of viewing the city. De Certeau described it by contrasting New York and old European cities. Unlike London and Paris, New York identifies itself by constant renewal and two opposing perspectives on the city illustrate these contrasts: the city of voyeur and walker. (De Certeau, 1984:91) When we look at the city with God s eye view, the urban flux is objective and we are outside its influence. This is described as a voyeur s perspective where the physical city is not connected to the real experience of oneself. In contrast, when we walk in the city, the street level view of the walker provides vivid impressions. Building on De Certeau s dual perspective, Coverley (2010) goes on to say that the totalising gaze of the voyeur sees the city as a homogenous whole, and anonymous urban space that sees no place for individual or separate identities and which erases or suppresses the personal and the local (Coverley, 2010:105). It is closely related to the way we see the cities, not simply a criticism of loose regulations and urban environmental policies. The ubiquitous problems in Seoul caused by urban design seem to be rooted in this totalising, mechanical perspective of city. In those approaches, urban planners have used Kevin Lynch s urban engineering theory, which suggests five factors - path, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks - to view and organize cities. This method focuses on physical shape of city, and it is, therefore, easy to ignore the historical, sociological, cultural. Consequently, what is needed is the street- level perspective, achieved by walking the city and reconnecting with people s life. It is the view of the voyeur that psychogeography tries to overturn, restoring the primacy of the street (Coverley, 2010:105). As a visual communicator I have chosen the psychogeographical method in this research to examine possible ways of communicating the hidden stories of the city. London has a long history of tradition of psychogeography in literature. This makes it the best place to investigate ways in which stories made through rework the city. 5
Experiment 1 The concept of urban wanderer, whatever name it goes under: the stroller, the flâneur, the stalker is seen as contrary to the spirit of the modern city (Coverley, 2010:12). It allows one to challenge the authoritative representation of the city by escaping the dull routes and exploring those forgotten areas often unnoticed by the city s inhabitants. With the aim of visualizing the hidden structure of urban everyday life that affects the relationship between a city and its inhabitants, I undertook series of experimental wandering journeys to places I had never been in London to discover the factors which influence the emotions of the urban wanderer who visits certain places. Throughout the journeys, I established four subjective factors which certain places offer emotional stability to a wanderer. The first factor is the experience which happens while we navigate to the place: how difficult it was to find; how long it took to get there; whether the place really existed; what the public transport was like. These are the influences on the first factor. Although they do not have an overwhelming effect on the stability of the whole journey, if you waste too much energy in this stage, it is hard to recover. The second factor is local atmosphere, what impresses the wanderer who arrives in the area after getting off public transport and sees the village or district from a distance: what the weather like; how many people were around; whether it was a residential or commercial area; what kinds of trees there are. These are the elements that will determine the impression. With these first impressions, we intuitively feel whether the place welcomes us or makes us feel like strangers. 6
The third factor is what the place itself offers inside. It may be unexpectedly interesting or the service they provide may be worse than expected. The way it communicate its contents i.e. interior design, ambience, written instructions, location of shelves and the entrance door determines the experience, which may be reflected in the contents itself, or the reverse may be true. The real story starts here. The fourth factor is the people you meet there. The final judgement of subjective emotional stability of the place is made through the fourth factor, which may dominate the other factors. Very often, this last factor totally transforms the impression of the entire journey. Conversations with the staff, eye contact with others, insight into different attitudes to life from observing other people further colour the place by engagement with these small subtle considerations. Figure 3. I drew a diagram (see fig.3) with four axis to illustrate the four factors. Each factor has scores from zero to five. Zero is located in the center of the square and point five is on the end of each corner. For instance, as you see above, the route is quite easy; therefore, it is awarded point four. The local atmosphere is point two because of the industrialized area. On the other hand, the contents inside the store were fascinating so that is awarded point five. The staff was polite and friendly, so they are awarded five as well. 7
When we connect those four corners, the figure becomes an asymmetrical trapezoid. The higher the score for each factor the place, the larger the figure that is created becomes. If the average score of each factor is low then the entire figure is smaller, and the greater the imbalance between each band score, the more asymmetrical the final shape is. This figure illustrates the intuitive visualization of the stability of a place. For instance, this journey (see fig.4) is remembered as unstable as a whole. From the beginning, getting there was quite easy because a local suggested the route; therefore, I gave score five to the first factor. The local atmosphere was unfamiliar because of the container boxes and industrial area. However, the local says the place has been refurbished by a number of artists, so I gave it score three, in the middle. However, on meeting the person inside the place, the score rapidly decreases. The sudden visit without an appointment embarrassed both visitor and the person inside, so I gave negative one point to the third factor. Because I could not enter the place because of the tension between two strangers, I gave the contents inside, factor four, one point. Overall, the figure created looks almost like a triangle, which represents the acute angled unstable emotion. Figure 4. 8
Experiment 2 Through the first experimentation, I found that impression data on subjective factors can be gathered and used to represent the intuitive shape. In the extension of the first experimentation, I wanted to discover the more subtle factors that influence the impression a wanderer can encounter. The dictionary definition of the word discover gives its Latin origins. The original Latin literally means dis- cover: to remove the cover. To translate this definition into visually imaginable language: dig deeply below the surface inside and dig something out; open the lid and look inside; find out what is unrevealed; come across the unknown fact. The word discover contains implicitly within it the concept of layers. If you discover something once, that means there exists another layer underneath your perception. The plane of flat land, once perceived as whole, suddenly turns out to be only a surface. That finding leads us to a new world beyond the cover which holds unlimited imaginative scope. A map is a flat land before we start our journey. The first map, common in appearance, which is given to everyone and the second map that is personalized with experience and the story of an individual are not on the same layer. As we discussed before, this map of the God s eye view perspective is official as is the sum of stories which makes up the walker s map. They are displayed in different layers. However, they overlap each other. Like geological strata, various experiences can be stacked on one place. One who has many discovered layers possesses a richer map. The city he possesses is filled with abundant stories. These strata of experiences sometimes melt into our memory like caramel. Sometimes they remain as a vivid recollection and create a white marbling. Sometimes they are never discovered and stay on the cover surface like clichéd souvenir postcards. What makes these differences? 9
Ruskin (1903 cited in De Botton, 2002) suggests drawing and word- painting to make our memory of place firmer. The drawing he recommends is not professional, well- done drawing. It is part of the intentional effort that tries to figure out factors and understand the structure of objects. Observing the object thoroughly, we can understand the reason why we are attracted to certain landscapes or buildings and get the explanation of our taste. Ruskin also suggests writing to confirm our impression of beauty. We all can write word- paintings even if we are not poets. De Botton (2002) confirms his belief in the effectiveness of Ruskin s word- painting method: It derived from his method of not only describing what places looked like ( the grass was green, the earth grey- brown ), but also of analyzing their effect on us in psychological language ( the grass seemed expansive, the earth timid ) (De Botton, 2002:234). If we ask ourselves about the impression a certain space gives us and carefully analyze what we see and feel, the term word- paint that Ruskin uses is a subjective description of a place and is, therefore an appropriate method for psychogeographers to use to grasp the subtle impression of urban experiences. In many cases, places are remembered through impressions, not for aesthetic reasons but for psychological reasons. Word- painting is especially powerful because it is a psychological way of analyzing the influence of places on our lives. In the second visualising experiment, I have tried to communicate the subtle and emotional aspects of the urban experience in an objective way. I use the word- paint descriptions of the journey in combination with the measuring system I used in the first experiment. My target audience is urban planning decision makers in Seoul, whose frame for viewing the city is rather mechanical. The communication method is from their point of view. Accordingly, I have used the format of a bank account statement (see fig.5) because it is the most accurate and objective form of communication media. 10
However, audiences find bank statements dry and boring making them an inappropriate container for the personal stories of urban wanderers. The objective way of visualising makes the creative process and the urban wandering behaviour itself mundane and dull. This is the same contradiction the Situationist International recognized after their programmatic and objective method of recording failed signifying the loss of the playful journey itself. As Coverley (2010) points out, the objectivity of the method can never exactly capture the lives of individuals and in the process and individuality is inevitably flattened out and reduced to points on a chart. Figure 5. 11
Experiment 3 Throughout the second experimentation, I wanted to focus more on the playful journey itself. The story, necessarily, begins with footsteps. Both the everyday journeys I take routinely and those taken to somewhere I have never been were to be included in this experiment and it was crucial to let myself feel the joy of wandering constantly. Stories are becoming private and sink into the secluded places in neighborhoods, families, or individuals, while the rumors propagated by the media cover everything and, gathered under the figure of the City, the masterwork of an anonymous law, the substitute for all proper names, they wipe out or combat any superstitions guilty of still resisting the figure. (De Certeau, 1988:108) According to Coverley (2002), today, the contemporary roles of psychogeography turn to writers, poets and filmmakers in London who have kept alive the memory of the neglected aspects of the city (Coverley, 2002). Currently, in Seoul, there are several new literary works and also new films set in Seoul The novel Seoul, one day became a novel and the film The Romantic Movement, Seoul are good examples. Of these recent accounts, the literary critic Oh makes the criticism that the cities represented in those recent literatures after millennium remain still similar with the previous approaches that the city is just the background and not the main hero or heroin of the story itself. (Oh to Lee, 2010) The city is a container of contemporary human psychological issues. Urban literatures should be steeped in the local historical characteristics of a specific area and resonate with its inhabitants. 12
With the aim of awaking the necessity of storytelling, I set up the third experiment to be a narrative photograph book. The series of photographs starts from private space and moves to a public street seen from an urban wanderer s point of view. The book rediscovers the wonder of the streets we see everyday by observing the walking process itself. While taking an aimless journey, I let myself encounter unexpected combinations of original images through the windows of private spaces window picture looking inside from the outside. (see fig.6) Figure 6. When viewing the neighbour s window looking from the outside to the inside, I could read the different expressions of each alley, doorstep and garden fence. Capturing the overlooked pleasures of urban life was the original intention of the Surrealist s approach to psychogeography. By focusing on walking the city itself, I wanted to examine how the stories I gain from experiences rework the space. 13
Throughout the experiment, I could see the contradiction between focusing too intensely on persuading readers politically and falling into the trap of banalisation that psychogeography tried to overcome as Coverley points out: Psychogeography seeks to overcome the processes of banalisation by which the everyday experience of our surroundings becomes one of drab monotony. The psychogeographers all share a perception of the city as a site of mystery and seek to reveal the true nature that lies beneath the flux of the everyday. (Coverley, 2010:13) Within the visionary tradition of London literature, Sinclair, in his work, avoids the political and theoretical engagement of the Situationists. Still, Sinclair s works are coloured by an impassioned critique of Thatcherite redevelopment of the city: His walks in and around the city providing both documentary evidence of political mismanagement and revealing those paranoid conspiracies which have since become the hallmark of modern psychogeography (Coverley, 2010:26). To be successful in the approaches Coverley mentions, the narrative experiment I have devised still needs further development. What is required is an examination of how to engage with the contents as evidence of current urban design as well as revealing the political message. 14
Conclusion This research paper discusses the problems of the urban environment of Seoul in relation to the way of viewing the city as a physical mechanism. To change the perspectives of urban design decision makers and inhabitants, the way of the walker recording and collecting the impression of everyday routes in streets should be introduced. To reveal the hidden stories beneath the physical space, I applied psychogeography to three visual experimentations. London has a long historical background of the visionary tradition of psychogeography in literature even before Debord (1955) pinned down the definition of the term in 1955. Therefore, London is the perfect place to conduct an experiment in how the stories made using psychogeography work in the city. Moreover, in the absence of real contemporary urban literature in Seoul, for me producing works in narrative storytelling as a graphic communicator is crucial. The stories created by artists relate historically and locally to a specific place. Stories that resonate with the public can be overlaid and reworked in the city. Until now, as very few psychogeographical studies have been undertaken in Korea. Learning from the London tradition with regard to experimenting in the space of Seoul is truly required. What still needs to be studied and developed are ways to create stories via visual language with in depth research into the historical and cultural context of a specific area of the city. 15
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List of Figures Figure 1 and 2. Before and after of Pimat- gol redevelopment (Sung, 2008) Figure 3. Subjective measuring diagram Figure 4. Visualising the journey near Manor house station Figure 5. Urban experience account statement Figure 6. Photographic narrative journey near Flodden Rd. 17