When talking to Tom Pope he mentioned the word ‘Psychogeography’, as he used it in one of his shoots. He used it as a way of travelling around the Tate Modern. He made a paper aeroplane and flew it through the gallery, and where ever the paper aeroplane landed would be what piece of art he would look at. As well as experimenting with psychogeography, he was also doing this experiment to see what people’s reactions would be- as he was going against the social norms of how to travel round an art exhibition.

Psychogeography was created in 1955 by Guy Debord as “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.” Psychogeography is an approach to geography that emphasises playfulness and “drifting” around urban environments. It has links to the Situationist International.

One way of achieving psychogeorgraphy is using the wrong map to navigate your way around an area. I think the idea behind this method of geography, is to lead yourselves to places you may have never of been before, which may be someplace wonderful. It also gives the person an element of freedom and leaving the route to chance. I really like this idea of travelling around an area.

After listening to Tom Pope talk about his work at the Jersey Societe, I went and researched the ‘Space HI-Jackers’ which is a group of protesters that Tom talked about during his talk. The Space Hijackers is a group originating in the United Kingdom that defines itself as;

“an international band of anarchitects who battle to save our streets, towns and cities from the evils of urban planners, architects,multinationals and other hoodlums”

This group has done several projects which is testing authority. For example the government made a law against drinking on the subway so the Space Hijackers gathered together, wearing coats and carrying suitcases (in disguise)  and all got onto the subway. When the train had started moving all of the space hijackers took their coats off to reveal their party clothes underneath and had alcohol and speakers in their suitcases- creating a party on the train. When they arrived at the next platform they all redressed and picked up all the litter and left the subway, like nothing had happened.

After researching about the Space Hijackers, it got me thinking about people who do things against social norms, such as Jack Jones.  These people do things to gain a negative or positive reaction from the public for their own pleasure. This the type of things that we needed to do in our day trip to St Malo therefor we brain stormed idea’s within out group and came up with some idea’s to experiment with.

Tom Pope is the performance photographer that visited us at the Jersey Societe. A performance photographer means that he makes films from social content, for example whilst working with Andrew Lacon (a famous sculptor) they created a man made stage in which the public needed to walk over to get into an art museum. This was held in the Hockney Gallery in London in 2010 and was called ‘Enter Right Exit Left’. Pope and Lacon did this to examine audience participation within the space installed.

Tom studied photography in the arts in 2008 at Swanswa’s Metropolitan University then went on to do his masters at the Royal College of Art in 2011. During doing his masters he started to experiment with the idea of time through the use of film. His first project a video camera was set up on a tripod whilst Tom aimed an arrow from a bow and arrow towards the camera. The clip is 1.17 seconds long and ends with the arrow flying into the camera lens. This collection of work is called ‘Blinded By Amor’.

Another project of Tom Pope’s called ‘Kinsington Chalk’ whilst he was studying at the Royal Collage of Art was set up in the streets of Kensington and the video camera and tripod was set up on one side of the road facing this large black box which Tom was trying to write the numbers 1-60 in 60 seconds.
During the video, members of the public come up to Tom and question what he is doing and try to tell him what he is doing is unacceptable. Tom replied nothing to these people however when he was explaining his theory behind his project he explained that he was testing the social acceptance boundaries which run in a community, without breaking the Law. Tom said this project was inspired by ‘Eddris Khan’ who also tests Authority.

I really like Tom Pope’s work, as I believe that he injects creativity into it along side context. For example I really like the idea of going against social norms and pushing authority to gain a reaction from the public. There is an example of this in his project ‘Kensington Chalk’.

Whilst in St Malo I experienced gaining a reaction from the public whilst we gave out flowers to ‘randomers’ as a token of kindness. Most people’s reaction was hesitant yet very thankful- however some people refused the gesture. I thought this was very interesting to see a persons reaction, and concluded that most people reacted to the gesture in a similar way to how they saw a previous ‘flower receiver’ act. We captured images and video’s from this shoot.