I think it's mostly due to writing style (or maybe this subject has had more time to sit and stir in my head), but when I read McDonough's article last week I mostly just took away one singular message - to change space, defy cultural and social repression by rethinking man's actions. Sadler defined so much more to this theme of psychogeography and reconstructing cities. He emphasized a lot of contrasts - between nature and what is man-made, between open and closed spaces, light, soft and dark, hard elements on the street. He spoke of experiencing "the sublime" and illustrated how "picturesque" evolved into "situationalism". Last week when McDonough discussed wandering through the city, and the concept of the derive, I mostly just perceived chaos, disorder, and through that, assumed an unconventional creativity. Here in this article, when Sadler talks about the drift as "a combination of chance and planning that reached various stages of equilibirium" I saw more of a flow that was understandable yet still creative -"an organized spontaneity" as he puts it. He also acknowledges that Situationalism isn't about completely letting go, this is impossible in any context, and was what I was confused about last week in class.
Question1: Some things I think Sadler still left confusing... when he was describing the blank spaces and red arrows of The Naked City what did he mean when he said that the drifters would find the psychogeographical slopes meeting them naturally?
Question2: The struggle of social geography against academic geography has a purpose... but how is progress and change measured?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment