User:Westhay/Sandbox

The term mythogeography is used to describe the meeting of myth and geography. It is applied by a small number of site-specific artists not so much as a definition of practice but as a lever to unbalance conventional interpretations of familiar (often urban) spaces. Such conventional interpretations are very much the currency of the burgeoning Heritage Industry. That makes mythogeography a kind of subversion or repurposing of the conventional urban or city guide, as well as a solitary or social performance of walking without intention.

Development
Mythogeography emerged from psychogeography and has been frequently used with drifting - [the Situationist notion of dérive]. Mythogeography is a mode of perceiving that can turn the walker/spectator/drifter into animator/archaeologist/muse/psychologist/loiterer around hitherto unrecognised aspects of a city or other site.

In an urban context, mythogeography is further seen as a geography of a city that gives equal value to its legends, to its municipal and tourist histories, to mistakes made about it, to lies and rumours spread about it, to its shoppers’ maps, to its shadow side, to its uses in fiction, and so on. Rather than seeking to collapse all these versions into a resolved, unitary 'truth' about the city, mythogeography delays or defers this synthesis, keeping the different elements in motion about each other - this is the creation of a playground for change, what the critic [Homi Bhabha] calls the 'Third Space'.

Mythogeography as developed by UK performance artists and academics
For UK-based artist performers Wrights & Sites, mythogeography is the theorisation of an experimental approach to the site of performance as a space of multiple layers.

“This approach might include numerous influences and strategies, perhaps including the atmospheres and effects of psychogeography, and the deployment (both analogical and direct) of geological, archaeological and historiographical ideas and methods. It is self-reflexive in the sense that it would regard the performer as a similarly multiplicitous site.

Mythogeography is not a finished model, neither in its theoretical nor practical forms. It is a general approach which emphasises hybridity, but does not attempt to determine what combination of elements might be in that hybrid.”

Its principal exposition is in Mythogeography: A Guide to Walking Sideways by Phil Smith and published in 2009.

Mythogeography as developed by Russian and Eastern European thinkers
For Ivan Mitin and other writers, mythogeography belongs to the broad multi-disciplinary scientific field on the border of humanitarian geography that includes semiotics, communication theory, ethnography and local history. It is frequently applied to rural communities and rural history and includes a more conventional application and understanding of the notions of myth and legend in community development and synthesis.

Articles
Mythogeography: Region as a palimpsest of identities

Hidden City Conference Papers

A la Ronde: Phil Smith

External links:
http://en.wordpress.com/tag/mythogeography/

http://www.mythogeography.com

Noted mythogeographers:
Ivan Mitin

Phil Smith