New Digital Editions of Speak of the Devil, Utopia/Dystopia and Vectis

I am hard at work on a new small book, which I hope to finish up some time in the next few weeks. My general lack of activity over the past month or so has been due to the pursuing of a couple of commercial projects, which I may speak more about in the future. In the mean-time, I have gone over and prepared new digital editions of my three last major books, including numerous small tweaks and corrections. These new editions shall be available on lulu in the next couple of days. Here they are in PDF form:

Speak of the Devil

Utopia/Dystopia

Vectis

Please remember that all my books were designed with the physical format in mind and are best read on screen using a PDF reader that offers a 'two-up' reading format with the cover page separate. In Foxit Reader this is the Seperate Cover Page option under the View tab, in Adobe Acrobat it's Two Page View with the Show Cover Page in Two Page View option ticked on the View>Page Display submenu.

Flânerie and Rambling

In my psychogeographical researches, which I am now beginning to re-engage with, I have used two particular key-words from the literature to describe the individual engaged in psychogeographical practice; the flâneur and the robinsonneur, along with associated terms such as flânerie and robinsonnage. Since I completed Vectis I have had time to critically assess my use of these terms, and I have come to see some faults, particularly in the use of the word flâneur.

The flâneur, which translates literally as something like 'stroller' or 'lounger' (implying simultaneously in the original both movement and idleness) comes to the modern psychogeographer from the writings of Charles Baudelaire, via Walter Benjamin. Baudelaire's flâneur was a man (always a man) of leisure, who observed the dramas of the city (always the city) whilst not participating in them directly. In Benjamin's Marxist critique, the alienation of the flâneur was dealt with, and Baudelaire's essentially romantic figure was seen as symbolic of an urban condition that had been destroyed by consumer capitalism. Since then, the flâneur has come to take on a broader meaning in terms of psychogeography, reborn as a post-modern observer and urban wanderer.

The Vectis Psychogeographical Research Archive

Over the course of my MA, one of my most successful pieces of work, and the piece of work I most enjoyed working on, was the Artist's Book Vectis, the creation of which is documented online here. Vectis is a work that I have very much come to view not so much as a finished body of work, but rather as the opening of a more prolonged investigation. Vectis was constrained by the fact that, as an MA project, there was a very definite deadline for the production of the book, and also the end form of the work had to be decided fairly early on. Although I think Vectis was a strong piece of work, there were a lot of areas that were left unexplored for these reasons.

Thus, with a view towards developing the groundwork I have already laid down, I am beginning a new project, the Vectis Psychogeographical Research Archive. This will involve the creation of a body of primary and secondary research into the history, geography, sociology and so forth of the Isle of Wight, with no particular end-goal in mind. It will also involve the creation of a diverse body of work reacting to and building off this research; again, there will be no particular end-goal in mind. Further books, exhibitions or other works will emerge in a more organic way. This methodology will allow me to be a lot more experimental with the work I produce, and I am expecting to return to neglected areas of my practice such as sound art, physical print-making and handmade books, as well as continuing to develop my skills in digital painting, book design and so on.
 

Click on the image below for the link to this new project.