The Situationists

(Footnotes on the way)

Portable City has many links to art history, one such link to a lineage of work can be derived from the work of the Situationist International and though the writings of Guy Debord. In his essay, Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography, Debord describes the word "psycho-geography". Like what Edward T. Halls description of the theory of proxemics, Debord states that Psycho-geography could set for itself the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.

The ecological analysis of the absolute or relative character of fissures in the urban network, of the role of microclimates, of distinct neighborhoods with no relation to administrative boundaries, and above all of the dominating action of centers of attraction, must be utilized and completed by psycho-geographical methods41. In his description of psychogeography, Debord ellaborates on a concept called derive.

He states that the derive is one of the basic situationist practice through which one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual daily activities, movement and relations in order to enter into a process of discovering the terrain, and all that could be experienced "there", it can be called a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiences.