Montrealrevolt is dedicated to the psychogeographical exploration of Quebec’s biggest city. It is a collection of stories, videos, and photos that attempt to find the city’s essence, and its revolutionary spirit. It is loosely based on the notions of psychogeography. But what, you are surely asking, is psychogeography?
Back in the 1950’s, a group of French intellectuals, led by Guy Debord, would conduct what they called “derives” – drifts – throughout Paris. “They looked for images of refusal, or for images that society had itself refused, hidden suppressed.” (“The Long Walk of the Situationist International,” Greil Marcus.)
Sometimes, these drifts led these earliest psychogeographers into the catacombs, where the skulls and bones of Paris residents have been interred for several centuries.
Debord later formalized the definition of psychogeography as “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.”
Central to psychogeography is the underpinning situationist movement – again, led by Debord – which took Marxist philosophy into the post-war era. Situationists believed that in the newly emerging consumer age, everyday life had been reduced to a series of “spectacles” – events created and composed by capitalists for the distraction of the public. The primary purpose of the spectacle was and continues to be the inducement of passivity in people, which forces them to think of themselves as nothing more than buyers and sellers of consumer goods.
Montrealrevolt, then, seeks to keep alive the revolutionary spirit of situationism and psychogeography. You won’t find here a list of the coolest places to shop on Ste Catherine or an invitation to spend money at Atwater Market. You’ll find here a group of people (currently students) trying to find the real Montreal and how Montreal affects them. We hope to open this site up to other interested psychogeographers soon.
Come here, linger, and love this city with us. Because Montreal is revolting!
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