Psychogeography//The Situationist International; A User's Guide

I am very interested in where people have lived in their lives, how these places have influenced their identity and where people call home. When discussing this and my ideas for a project based on these ideas with my tutor Andrew Sneddon a few weeks ago, he suggested looking into the concept 'psychogeography'. I had never heard of the term, but I took his advice and have done a lot of research on the idea, and have found that it does link very well with my ideas. He sent me a number of pieces of writing about psychogeography and nostalgia which I have read briefly, and lent me the film 'Patience: After Sebald' based on the book Rings of Saturn by Sebald. This material has been very useful to me as I have learnt a lot about psychogeography and how places influence people so strongly. I plan on reading the Rings of Saturn as well to fully understand Sebald's ideas and get a better picture of the journey he takes and places he visits.

I have also read the majority of 'The Situationist International; A User's Guide' by Simon Ford, which talks about the art movement put together by Debord, Jorn, Constant and Bernstein in Paris in the twentieth century. The movement describes psychogeography as 'the study of the specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.'

I am very keen on looking further into this idea and basing a project strongly around it. I have sent questions to family members and friends concerning their ideas about where home is and how places they have lived in have affected their emotions and identity, and I plan on using photography and video to present the answers and thoughts given about these questions. I have also started to film my journeys by foot around Sheffield on my iPhone, and I plan on putting all these clips together and speeding them up to make a short film piece about Sheffield.