Mythogeography: an interview with Phil Smith

Following in the footsteps of the psychogeographers, then drifting in a completely different direction, the writer and performer Phil Smith explains in a new book the art of walking sideways, or how you can make a stroll into something far more subversive and entertaining. Here he tells me more about the book and the concept behind it.

‘Mythogeography: The art of walking sideways’ is a very curious document. Like an unknown city, at first it seems dense and impenetrable, but slowly patterns begin to emerge. Symbols like street signs help readers find their way, but visitors to this world are also encouraged to make their own routes. Unusually, the author is not named, and instead there is a series of more or less reliable narrators and guides. This is a “provocation” says Phil Smith, to encourage “others to adopt the book as a handbook rather than consume it as an autobiographical travel piece”.

Broadly speaking the book is divided into two halves. The first half describes a walk taken by Smith over a two-week period in 2007, recreating a similar journey undertaken by an engineer named Charles Hurst a hundred years previously. Hurst had walked across the North of England planting acorns, and Smith set out to find the Oak trees that he imagines must have grown from these seeds. Along the way, Smith reflects on landscape, property and people’s attitudes to their surroundings. The voyage became a classic mythogeographical experience, which Smith has subsequently reproduced as a stage play.

The second half of the book is closer in form to a handbook, describing the discipline of mythogeography, offering a manifesto and giving intruiging and often amusing suggestions of activities that you can undertake on foot. But just what is mythogeography?

“Mythogeography emphasises the multiple nature of places and ways of celebrating, expressing and weaving them” explains Smith. It emerged from his work with a group of artists known as Wrights and Sites "as a term to describe their approach and tactics to sites where multiple meaning had been forced into a single and restricted one, for example, heritage, touristic or leisure sites".

The tactic of the mythogeographer is walking and journeying. "By the particular focuses and the angles of trajectory we choose, we make an interpretation of our world, and from our impressions we begin to re-make its meanings" explains Smith. Ideas suggested in the book for achieving this include trying to talk your way into the tops and bottoms of a building, or choosing a book at random in a shop, picking a page and a word, then wandering until you find that word. The reason for doing this is to experience the familiar in multiple manners, and to learn not to look at things in the way that those with the power of exposure want you to.

In many ways it seems like classic Debordian psychogeography, particularly in the section on drifting, but to Smith there are important differences. For Guy Debord, explains Smith, "psychogeography was a study of how places effect the psychological states of those who pass through them. With a reciprocal meaning: that the places might be changed in order to change the experiences and mental states of the residents and visitors". The original idea of the drift was to find ways to transform cities into utopias, with a focus on play rather than work, but Mythogeography does not have the same overtly political focus. The last line of Smith's book is perhaps particularly revealing. "What (mythogeography) longs to be is not a political organisation, but a mental architecture".

The book is a fascinating read, particularly for someone who already tries to write about the invisible, but how could I use it in Paris? Smith proclaims not to know the city very well, but does describe a drift that he undertook here, which began at the Palais des Glaces theatre. When I tell him that it is situated in the street where I live, he is delighted. "That is fabulous" he says. Another reminder perhaps that everything is connected in some small way.

It could certainly be a point to begin from. "Start in the familiar and straightway head off into the unknown" says the manual on Smith's Mythogeography website. "Keep out of shops, museums, art galleries. Go to places you wouldn’t normally visit – courtrooms, waste tips, fairgrounds, industrial estates, morgues, stadia car parks, ornamental gardens, bad zoos. Slip down alleys, chase any intriguing detail, follow instincts not maps".

Anyone care to join me?

Notes:

• 'Mythogeography: A Guide to Walking Sideways' is published by Triarchy Press in the UK.
• For more information on Phil Smith and Mythogeography, see http://www.mythogeography.com/ and http://www.mis-guide.com/
• See Phil Smith in action here: http://www.rhizomes.net/issue13/smith/index.html

Click here for the full transcript of my chat with Phil Smith.

Something for the Weekend? (29th – 31st January)

Already the last days of January. Traditionally the last chance to eat some Galette (thank God...) and wish others a bonne année, but also a time to get outside and start exploring again!

If you have any events or activities you think should be promoted or which you would like to promote yourself, please add them in the comments. Let me know also if you have any events in the coming weekends you would like to promote.

The Prix d’Amerique Trotting Race
If you have never been to a trotting event, this weekend is the perfect occasion. Trotting (harness racing) is a kind of horse-race in which the jockeys are not on the horses, but rather placed in a very uncomfortable looking chariot behind. The pace is slower than a standard horse-race as the speed can never get beyond a trot, with the horse and jockey being eliminated if they quicken the steps. The spectacle though is as much in the crowd as on the track for this event which is expected to attract 40,000 spectators including many celebrities. There is even a special limited edition Zadig et Voltaire t-shirt!
Sunday January 31st
Hippodrome de Vincennes.
2 route de la Ferme 75012 Paris
5 € for adults, free for those under 18
Closest Station : Joinville Le Pont (RER A) where a free bus service will take you to the racetrack

Become the Air Guitar Champion of Paris!
Have you ever found yourself guiltily plucking thin air whilst listening to the intro to Smoke on the Water? If this is the case, perhaps you should think about adding yourself to the list of competitors for this Sunday’s Air Guitar champion of Paris event! Even if you are not tempted into getting up on stage, it should still be an entertaining evening in a nice venue, and you may even be able to help select the champ!
Sunday January 31st, 6pm
La Fleche d’Or
102 bis Rue de Bagnolet, 75020 M° Alexandre Dumas
8 € which includes one drink

Mo’Fo 10 Music Festival
This 3-day event features 19 live groups as well as the Mo’Forum, an installation of independent artistic creation. Most of the groups are French, but the two standout acts are Aidan Moffat (ex Arab Strap) on Friday night, and above all, the cult band Television Personalities on Sunday night.
29th – 31st January
Mains d’Oeuvres
1, rue Charles Garnier 93 400 Saint-Ouen, M° Porte de Clignancourt or Garibaldi

A Contemporary Art Fair in an Interesting Venue
Contemporary art fairs are frequent events in Paris and generally something to be viewed with suspicion. I know little of the art that will be featured at this sale beyond the fact that it will focus on graffiti and street art, but it should be worth visiting for the architecture of the venue alone. The Halle Fressinet was built in 1927 and served for 80 years as a freight storage facility on the Paris – Orléans railway line, before being reinvented recently as an exhibition venue.
28th - 31st January, 11am to 7pm
Halle Fressinet
55 Boulevard Auriol, 75013, M° Chevaleret or Quai de la Gare
6€

Le Corbusier and the Salvation Army

Le Corbusier lived for most of his life in Paris until his death in 1965, but relatively few of his designs were ever constructed in the city itself. Here though is a quick look at two of his creations built in conjunction with the Armée du Salut (Salvation Army) in 1929.

1929 was an important year in the life of Le Corbusier as it marked the point where he began putting into places his theories of urban planning. The two commissions from the Salvation Army are good examples of this, with Le Corbusier himself saying that "these buildings played the role of a laboratory".

The first, alongside the Gare d'Austerlitz is the most unusual. It is not a building as such, but a converted barge called the Louise-Catherine. The barge was first built in 1915, and was initially used to transport American coal from Rouen to Paris. Less than 15 years later though it was acquired by the Salvation Army who wanted to turn it into a floating shelter. Le Corbusier was brought in to imagine a revolutionary usage of the space.

Le Corbusier himself wrote about the project;

"Le barge was 80 metres long. We built, from the bottom to the top...a vast space divided into three compartments. We added 160 beds, a dining room, kitchens, toilets, sinks, showers, private apartments and a hanging garden on the roof of the barge".

Le Corbusier wrote of its mission to house the 'clochards' (tramps) who had been chased out from under the bridges by the cold. However, it was also moved down the Seine when it got warmer and used as a summer camp for young boys. Today though it is difficult to imagine how luxurious it would have seemed at the time. The hulk is rusting, and the barge is closed off to visitors. It was nevertheless used for over 60 years until finally being closed down by the authorities in 1994. A project is now underway to restore the barge and to use it for artistic and educational purposes.

The second Salvation Army construction is situated around 1km away on the other side of the railway lines. The Cité de Refuge was designed by Le Corbusier with his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret, who were specifically chosen by the philanthropist, the Princesse de Polignac, who paid for the work. Le Corbusier and Jeanneret were given almost a free hand, which enabled them to come up with a radical design, but also one that would eventually be found to be ahead of its time.

The central feature of the design was a south facing sheer glass wall. The design was based around an ambitious and revolutionary system of double glazing and a type of air conditioning that unfortunately never worked. This glass wall had to be replaced in 1952 after a series of summers in which the residents had been almost baked in their rooms! A series of polychromic sun-screens were added at this point.

The idea behind this building, and one that still applies today, was not simply to house the homeless, but also to transform these outcasts into useful members of society. Despite his rather pious protestant upbringing, Le Corbusier was not a religious man, but he did share some of the principles of the Salvation Army movement, and clearly believed in this project. He created not only dormitories but also classrooms and relaxation zones, most of which are still operational. However, if it is seen as an important building today, it is more because of the role it played as an experiment for Le Corbusier's subsequent constructions.

Note: If you are interested in seeing these constructions, both feature in the 'Contemporary Architecture' free downloadable walk I produced last year. Download it here.

Relax, don't do it...

Whatever happened to the simple city bench? Across Paris, above ground and underground, new furniture is appearing that radically changes our perspective on what constitutes a seat. The designs are attractive, amusing even in the Metro with their smiley faces, but the reasoning behind their shape is less glorious.

On the Avenue de France in the new Paris Rive Gauche development, the benches that line the road are just simple metal bars. The design makes sense as an ensemble, matched with the sculpted tree holders, but who would ever sit on this post and for how long? Most importantly of all for the city planners one imagines, nobody is ever likely to loiter here either, and it is sure that no-one will ever lay down here and sleep!

Similar concerns in the Paris Metro. A quick look through history shows how the ideal seat has evolved. In 1910, stations were equipped with wooden benches, but the latest model, the 'smiley', follows the more recent choice of providing a row of separated plastic chairs. 'More comfortable and easier to clean' boast the RATP, but once more the concept would seem to be rather to ensure that nobody relaxes for too long here. City dwellers today are also apparently more comfortable with a little extra space between themselves and their fellow travellers.

So where is it still possible for somebody to lay down and relax in the city today? Not the Parc de Belleville apparently! Here there is no suggestion that ball games or picnics would be problematic, but rather the dangerous individuals who want to lay on the grass. The best place to relax today would seem to be in your own home, but the city bench was also traditionally the home of those with no roof above their head. Where do they lay down today?

Something for the Weekend? (22nd – 24th January)

I imagine it must be the time of year, but I have struggled to find many interesting events this weekend. Nevertheless, even when very little is happening in Paris, there is always something to do!

If you have any events or activities you think should be promoted or which you would like to promote yourself, please add them in the comments. Let me know also if you have any events in the coming weekends you would like to see mentioned here.

Izis at the Hotel de Ville
In 1951, an exhibition called 'Five French Photographers' was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The photographers were Brassaï, Doisneau, Ronis, Cartier-Bresson and...Izis. The other four went on to become famous worldwide, but Lithuanian immigrant Izraëlis Bidermanas, otherwise known as Izis, remained relatively unknown. Why should this be so? This exhibition organised by the city of Paris offers an explanation, showing that it was not because he had less talent than the other four but rather because he was a full-time employee at Paris Match magazine. The photos he took were simply for the love of photography and he never looked to sell or promote his work. Visitors to this exhibition will see that he deserves to be judged historically as an equal to his more illustrious peers (see photo above).
Until 29th May
Hôtel de Ville de Paris, 5 rue Lobau, 75004
Every day except Sunday 10am -7pm
Free entrance

The Bellyfusions Festival
This festival, taking place on Saturday and Sunday, aims to demonstrate new fusions in oriental dance styles. The festival includes theatre performances, workshops with French and international teachers, and a closing party at the La Java night club. A variety of styles will be featured with exotic names such as Oriental Flamenco, Gypsy Fusion, Oriental Salsa, Bellywood and Gothic Fusion!
See http://www.bellyfusions.com/index_eng.php for more information on times and venues.

A Day Trip to Belleville
I'm proud to declare myself a citizen of Belleville! Despite having lived here for around 10 years, I still find it to be a fascinating corner of the city. Until 1860 when it was incorporated into Paris it was of course a town in its own right (indeed in 1856 with a population of 57 699, it was one of the biggest towns in the country!) and still has a very independant soul. What is it missing to attract more tourists? How about a shop selling the creations or local artists and t-shirts promoting Belleville designed by Jerome Mesnager?
Such a place recently opened, giving you one more reason to visit! Take the line 11 to Jourdain, where the shop is situated and which still looks like the heart of a village, then wander wherever your heart desires.
La Source - Hameau de Belleville,
9 rue lassus 75019, M° Jourdain
Every day except Sunday and Monday, 3pm - 7pm

Help for Haiti
After the terrible recent events in Haiti, the French (France is of course home to a large Haitian community) are organising a series of events to raise money. If you can, try to get tickets for one of the two shows at the Bataclan this Sunday (4.30pm and 7.30pm).

If the concert is sold out, make sure you buy some of the special stamps that the French post office have produced. The stamp costs 1 Euro with 44 cents going directly to the French Red Cross. Not in France? Try buying some directly via internet!