Psychogeography, drifting... your emotional responses to the environment around you. Personally, that's what I felt the word meant.
To be honest, I’ve always wanted to approach this idea. When I drift around places, familiar and the unfamiliar, there comes to a point in my journey where I see a place(usually in an urban setting), and feel an infinite sadness for it. It’s hard to explain, I don’t even know why, how, what is causing that lament… it is the lament of the unknown. I did, however, try and put it into words in this piece of writing I noted down in the recent past:
Why do I feel so sad when I look at certain buildings? It’s a certain kind of sadness- not the kind where tears build up to meet it. It’s a lament, it’s a feeling of awe. It’s feeling a sense of history that you’ve never been a part of, yet you feel for the people who have. A past life that you’ve forgotten about, those sparkling memories floating away on the last cloud. A bitter-sweet nostalgia. Blue Neighbourhood.
For some reason, it’s usually one of those high-rise, glassy-looking buildings, towering high above you. I look up, pointing my chin towards it. The wind drifts past my cheeks, past the crevices, the imperfections of the skin. I can feel my eyes sparkling back at the building, the one so full of a certain something that I cannot possibly look away from it. What memories did you hold? What memories do you hold now? Do they match with mine? Do mine match with yours? If the answer is no, then why do I feel this way? I grieve without knowing why. The building does not answer. So I stopped questioning.
That lament that looms like a desperate shadow follows me. And the words ‘a heart’s a heavy burden’ weighs upon it.
I’ve always liked to take pictures as I float around a city, to capture those strange crevices and angles the city’s architecture and decay have to offer. Having been in London for a year or so for Foundation, I know London a little. It is not a stranger but it certainly is strange. Areas that are so close to each other emit different atmospheres, but I guess that’s how it is in every city. I’ve never felt…completely safe here. I will always feel like a lost tourist, no matter how long I stay in this place. I’ve moved around a lot so this unsettling feeling is not new. Even though I was born and raised partly in New Zealand, that wasn’t my home. Taiwan is the only real place I can feel completely at ease. I also lived in Japan for a short while, and the only way I can describe being there is like drifting in a dream.
People around me have always exclaimed, ‘oh, I want to visit this place! I want to travel there!’ but I have never felt that urge to travel, to get to know a foreign area. I barely know the places I’ve lived in. I guess what I want to convey in this project is, apart from that ‘Lament of the Unknown,’ similar to what Munch has described in ‘The Scream’, are those questions of the sense of belonging. Where is my home, where do I belong? Is it the people I’m with, or the environment around me? Why do I feel sad in urban settings? Does my heart call out to the mountains? Have I lived a past life I don’t know about? Something lost but not forgotten? Will I ever find a place I can call home? Will I ever stop drifting? Is there even a destination? It is a certain uncertainty I am always feeling as I drift.