Psychogeography

writers such as Defoe, de Quincey, Robert Louis Stevenson and Arthur Machen, paints a uniformly dark picture of the city as the site of crime, poverty and death.

dramatise the city as a place of dark imaginings.

represented by the motif of the imaginary voyage, a journey that reworks and re-imagines the layout of the urban labyrinth and which records observations of the city streets as it passes through them.

Hawksmoor

Psychogeography: a beginner’s guide. Unfold a street map of London, place a glass, rim down, anywhere on the map, and draw round its edge. Pick up the map, go out into the city, and walk the circle, keeping as close as you can to the curve. Record the experience as you go, in whatever medium you favour: film, photograph, manuscript, tape. Catch the

Hegelian terminology

‘The study of the specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.’2

wealth and respectability conceal the existence of poverty and depravity.

The successful navigation of such a city is dependent upon the composition of a mental map, which can be transposed upon its physical layout,