/Dérive|psychogeography

Tasked with creating a psychogeography, I took the opportunity to take to the skies to drift and reflect on this assignment. The above text inscribed within the zine, is a complete volume of fragments I came across when I surrendered myself to the flow of jet travel, public transportation. 

I saw a correlation in the type of “mindlessness” one needs when traveling and wandering. Where they differ is in their technique - to drift is to be aimless, to clear the mind and follow a natural experience within an environment. When traveling, you surrender to the structures that guide you to your destination.  

“We have not only entrenched pathways between destinations, but have also reduced these arterial gestures to nothing more than a blur.” 

I felt that liminal spaces and the very name used to describe these transitional features of architecture, have not only become coercive, but have also been stripped of any beauty that makes a journey remarkable. It’s almost like we’ve forfeited the enjoyment of our constructed spaces by reducing them to mere formalities. 

I felt compelled to process my experience through words. Much of my ideation begins with writing rather than a sketch. Excerpts. Ideas. Concepts. Field notes. My mind tends to wander. I suppose I choose craft as a means to anesthetize my mind and centralize my thoughts. 

I create environments and feelings - intangible things best described with language that I then translate into my medium of choice which is often metal due to its very tangible, very material qualities. I used the format of the zine to map my thoughts into a book. A logical, chronological refined, linear form, contained between the covers. 

My mini dérive treatise focuses specifically on how air travel has evolved the way in which we interact with our surroundings. It’s neither a critique nor ode. Only a compilation of my experience and feelings that balance the romanticism and realism of the aéroplane. 

Photography by Christopher Liu

Shot on Lomography Lomo'Instant - FujiFilm Instax Mini Film - native 28mm with 2x telephoto + 35mm attachments