Map of mine and Hannah’s journey to Harrow:
The theory of the Dérive.
Debord suggested playful and inventive ways of navigating the urban environment in order to examine architecture and spaces.
The Letterist International (LI) was a Paris-based collective of radical artists and cultural theorists between 1952 and 1957. It was created by Guy Debord and went on to join others in forming the Situationist International, taking some key techniques and ideas with it.
In their blend of intellectualism, protest and hedonism—though differing in other ways, for instance in their total rejection of spirituality—they might be viewed as French counterparts of the American Beat Generation
The official base of the group was at 32, Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviéve, Paris. This was in fact the address of a bar, Tonneau d'Or, and indeed most of their time was spent either drinking in a number of bars in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, principally at Chez Moineau on the Rue du Four, or else simply walking the streets.
They developed the dérive, or drift, where they would wander like clouds through the urban environment for hours or sometimes even days on end. Among their most important texts on these matters were Debord's "Theory of the Dérive" and Ivan Chtcheglov's "Formulary for a New Urbanism.” In the latter, Chtcheglov advocated a new city where, as he wrote, "each person will live in his own personal 'cathedral'. There will be rooms that produce dreams better than drugs, and houses where it will be impossible to do anything but love."
Drifting for members of the Lettrist International did not mean only walking. The adventure began during a transportation strike in the summer of 1953 on the platform at the Gare de Lyon, where the group was trying agit-prop.
Failing to rally any of the stranded passengers to the strikers' cause, Guy Debord, Jean-Michel Mension, and their friends sauntered out of the station (or were they chased out?) and began flagging down cars.
Hitchhiking nonstop through Paris, they changed their destinations to fit that of the drivers. Their goal, as Debord noted facetiously, was to add to the confusion.
A drii could last as long as the driiers wanted it to-a whole day or, as Debord suggests, the ]me between two periods of sleep: "The maximum area of this spa]al field does not extend beyond the
en]rety of a large city and its suburbs. At its minimum it can be limited to a small self-contained ambiance: a single neighborhood or even a single block of houses if it's interesing enough (the extreme case being a static-drii of an entire day within the Saint-Lazare train station)."
en]rety of a large city and its suburbs. At its minimum it can be limited to a small self-contained ambiance: a single neighborhood or even a single block of houses if it's interesing enough (the extreme case being a static-drii of an entire day within the Saint-Lazare train station)."