Psychogeography and Walking at the North Norfolk Coast

'The study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographic environment consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.' Guy Debord (Bauder & Di Mauro, 2008; 23)

Will Self walked across Los Angeles to Hollywood writing a book about his experience and the impact of the environment on the human psyche. He chose a route taking him through the grittiest suburbs, 'un-places' and 'interzones' in search of a new kind of urban beauty. Throughout the walk he chose to muse on the power of walking to connect us to place, time and memory evoking the spirit of other walkers. Via the process of walking Self sought to explore not only the outer journey of place but also an inner journey of the spirit and imagination. 

Will Self, during his walk across Los Angeles.

In part Self was inspired by the french situationists and their charismatic leader Guy Debord. The situationists utilised a revolutionary technique derive- 'a drift' on foot without a route, the purpose or destination was supposed to challenge the goal-orientated walks of city commuters. The situationists sought to absorb the urban ambience, using the information they gathered in order to produce pedestrian derived maps of the city. They were pioneers of notions relating to psychogeography, that is to say the study of the effects of geographical settings consciously managed or not, acting directly on the mood and behaviour of the individual.

The concept of psychogeography has a strong relationship with my own research in relation to walking and memory. In the process of creating images of familiar places which have somehow been manipulated, warped and distorted I aim to question how this may relate to the concept of memory and the fashion in which memories fade, change, alter and blur as a result of the passing of time leading to a blurring of the boundary between the familiar and unfamiliar and the past and the present.

'.... When you give yourself to places, they give you yourself back, the more one comes to know them, the more one seeds them with the invisible crop of memories and associations that will be waiting for you when you come back, while new places offer up new thoughts, new possibilities. Exploring the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind and walking travels both terrains.' (Solnit, 2001; 13)

As part of my ongoing research I took a trip to the North Norfolk Coast with a view to taking a walk at Burnham Overy Staithe in order to gather visual information that would be useful to inform further artwork. Burnham Overy Staithe has particular significance for me on account of the fact that it is a place that I have regularly visited and walked throughout my childhood and as an adult.

The walk to Burnham Overy Staithe beach from the car park encompasses and encapsulates the feeling of being in a state of flux, transition and unrest. The salt marshes running alongside the sea wall ebb and flow in accordance with the tide, the racing streams of wet water cutting passages through the mud of the marshes, constantly eroding and altering the morphology of the landscape.

 

Photographic panoramas taken during my walk at Burnham Overy of the Salt Marshes.

After traversing the one mile walk along the undulating path towards the beach, which rises above the surrounding marshland the walker is greeted by the site of a sprawling expanse of dunes which form a solid seemingly impenetrable barrier between the sea and the inland. The rising and falling dunes form a series of ridges, crests and gorges carved out of the surrounding sandy landscape. The entire walk along the sea wall, over the dunes and along the beach contains within it an atmosphere of flux and change as if constantly evolving, via the process of being de-constructed and re-formed.

Photographic panoramas taken during my walk at Burnham Overy of the Sand Dunes.

  

 In my mind this landscape, seemed like a perfect starting point in order to create a new body of work. Not only did it contain within it personal memories, on account of the fact that this was a place that I had repeatedly returned to throughout my life, from an early age. The morphology of the landscape formed via the interaction with the elements and in a constant state of movement tied in with ideas surrounding the transient and ellusive nature of memory, constantly changing, reforming and shifting. 

Bauder H. & Di Mauro, S. E. (2008) 'Critical Geographies: A Collection of Readings.' Kelowna: Praxis (e) Press. (Essay entitled: Introduction to a critique of Urban Geography, 1955, Guy Debord)

Solnit, R (2001) 'Wanderlust.' London: Verso