Mythogeography: A Guide to Walking Sideways
Triarchypress (Devon, UK), January, 2010, ISBN: 9780956263131
Paperbound, 256 pages including appendices & illustrations. US$41.23 (Less if you order directly from website)

Have you ever walked sideways? Remember Alice in Wonderland where the sidewalk suddenly pops up and goes a different direction? Well, Mythology: A Guide to Walking Sideways, gives a whole new dimension to sideways walking and sidewalks that pop up and go in different directions. Mythogeography is from the guy who popularized, at least in the U.K., crab walking, although, admittedly, for him crab walking is not quite the same as the crab walking that you and I did as kids. (Sorry, you will need to read the book to see what I mean.)

So who is this guy, the author of this rather strange, rambling (and that’s not a negative comment) compilation of diary entries, manifestos, notes, prospectuses, and records of the everyday utopias of the Pedestrian Resistance? A good question, but you are going to have to wait to find out. The author writes, "(H)e who claims authorship, whether or not it be of an idea or a book, does himself, her world and the memetic dimension a deep disservice. Possibly it is for that reason the author is not named in or in the book." So, we will just leave behind the "Who" for a while and move on to the work itself.

Mythogeography (the book) defies description. I am not sure even where to begin trying to explain the book. It is a book – at least it has a front and back cover, a table of contents, introduction, chapters, and even an appendix, and is colorfully and uniquely illustrated – yet, it is something "other-than" (besides?) a book. First of all, the book itself is a rambling drift, a mythogeographic exploration of mythogeography. Is such a thing possible? Sure, anything is possible where sidewalks pop up and change directions.

There is a close relationship to psychogeography and mythogeography. One might say that mythogeography expands psychogeography into other realms of the imagination. Psychogeography may be defined as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals (Guy Debord, 1955)." In the sixties, the Situationists expanded upon the definition to create scientific, not random, derives, or drifts; for instance "chasing ones nose" to follow smells throughout the city or using a map of say, Paris, to move through New York City. The Situationists were not driven by curiosity as much as by politics and urban theory. In time, psychogeography came to denote "a whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities...just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape (Joseph Hart, 'A New Way of Walking,' Utne Reader July/August 2004)."

Most often these days, we think of psychogeography as the (1) exploration of places generally not explored in foot, such as subway tunnels, vacant buildings, alleys, and (2) a playful drift through the urban milieu, seeking to observe that which is unobserved.

Mythogeography (the book and the praxis), according to the cover, mixes "entrepreneurial drive, rambling discourses and post-dramatic performances with architecture and post-politics-politics." It does so, playfully and provocatively. If you are a practitioner of psychogeography this might make sense, if not, well.... You really do need to read the book to get the full sense of what mythogeography is all about (especially if you think you already know).

"Mythogeography," as described in Mythogeography: The Guide to Walking Sideways is the practice of philosophical and perceptual walking, or exploring, that is "practiced contrary" to traditional, and therefore "official," modes of doing the same. It is characterized by theatricality and multiplicity. There is the sense of the dérive in it, as well as the sense of "the dandy" as practiced by the Flâneur of the later 18th, early 19th centuries, yet it embodies so much more. It might help to point out some common viewpoint of these hereto, mostly unnoticed walkers:

There is a sense of ...

• the disruption of the everyday
  
• the seeing of things anew
  
• the stimulation of the senses
  
• a resistance to the bounding and policing of space
  
• a vague sense of common history
  
• the taking of pleasure in the luxury of the walk for itself, without it having to serve any purpose.
  

Perhaps the defining difference between psychogeography and mythogeography, if I understand correctly, is the multiplistic and experimental nature ("aspect" is too weak of a word) of mythogeography. In "The Guide" we romp, often sideways, through landscapes real and imagined (although not unreal) in the most delightful ways. As I romped through the words I laughed while having my thinking simultaneously, and provocatively, challenged. As I read I explored utopian dreams and unrealized fantasies, both those of the author and of those my own making. From the back cover of the book:

Mythogeography is a handbook for tripping up the quotidian. Drawing on a history of Dadaist dreambulation, situationist dérive, dematerialized land art, mad-dog marketing and activist intervention. Mythogeography weaves between totalizing utopias and defeatism, sulking in holy places, trading under fake colours and planning its next false flag operations. Deceitful and hopeful, this is the first manifesto of a new kind of everyday. Walking 4.0.

A great description of the book, and of mythogeography itself. The astute reader of this review will note that I have avoided for the most part drawing for the actual content of the book. It is on purpose. You need to read the book! In Mythogeography: The Guide there is no single theoretical methodology to be found, no maps to be literally applied, yet as we ramble along the “map of the book” we have the opportunity, if we choose to take it, to create a map of our own making to guide us along our own mythogeographical wanderings and musings. Of Mythogeography: The Guide to Walking Sideways, the author states:

There is no intention here to provide a single modus-vivendi, but rather a map for where things now stand and where they might explode outwards to ... Mythogeography (the book and the praxis) is a playful conspiracy. But like all games it is best played for keeps. Its narrative of emerging and collapsing cells is not one of hopelessness, but of evolution and emergence; a strategy for the reconstruction of the everyday life of the walking citizen by almost-invisible means.

Mythogeography is a wistful attempt to bring together and make philosophical (and perhaps theoretical) sense of a growing coherence in disparate walking. It is now time to expose the author. I don’t think he will mind. He is Phil Smith of Wrights & Sites. What Charles Baudelaire is to the flâneur, Phil Smith, and Wrights & Sites, is to mythogeography. It would not be inaccurate to say that Wrights & Sites, a group of artist-researchers with a special relationship to site, city/landscape, and walking, was the first to give definition to mythogeography. Phil, who has written several pieces on mythogeography, including An Exeter Mis-Guide (2003), A Mis-Guide To Anywhere (2006), and contributed to Walking, Writing & Performance (2009), recently reviewed in "The Empty Space." He is also a dramaturg for TNT (Munich), and author of over 100 texts and libretti for theater. To get the full extent of the book, you must check out the Mythogeography website. The copyright of the book is rather unusual with a Creative Commons, no derivative type of copyright.