Psychogeography refers to the development of strategies for exploring an imaginary, emotional and symbolic reality interpenetrating the concrete environment that, allowing for freedom of interpretation, may be apprehensible to all.

I think the first time I would have heard the term was in a talk on the Situationist International by Ralph Rumney who attended the first ever conference of the SI as a representative of the London Psychogeographical Committee. (The conference was in his Aunt’s villa in Italy and he was “excluded” before any of the official exclusions) This was at Art School in Portsmouth in 78 or 79 and the conversations continued in the pub throughout that evening. I was able to drink with him several times after that as he was lodged in a  friend’s flat in Ealing for eighteen months or so and he was intelligent, humorous, drunken, ribald, passionate about ideas and art but I don’t think Psychogeography was ever discussed again.  He eventually fled Ealing owing several month’s rent.

I have never intentionally been a Psychogeographer (there was not much about Ralph that encouraged it, to be truthful) but my intuitive, accidental and occasionally inspired stumblings towards it began much earlier. I have never lost my childhood love of secrets and mysteries, for exploration and treasure hunting; I retain as an artist, a strong feeling for atmosphere; I have always had a fascination for maps. These, together with a spicy cocktail of  personal contrariness and social dissent, are the cornerstones of Pyschogeography. I shall continue with my near miraculous (or at least supremely synchronistic) finding of  the maps.