Radical Mediation, Psychogeography and the Hodologies of Urban Forestness

Abstract

This paper is an exploration of the notion of forestness – the quality of being forest – in the extended sense that it can be applied to forestness in an urban environment. Conceiving of the forest as a complex set of interacting ecologies, or perhaps networks, traversing different media and forms of mediation, it seeks to make connections between Richard Grusin’s concept of radical mediation and Gilles Deleuze’s very brief theorization of hodology deriving from his take on minimalist art – quite literally that the meaning of individual sculptures are the patterns of movement they require to be experienced. The paper poses the question of what hodologies of forestness exist in an urban environment. This includes human-centred path systems as well as the paths created by multiple other species and the different forms of interconnected hodologies that form the ecosystems of particular senses of forestness across media. Taking its inspiration from psychogeographical approaches, the paper will also consider ways in which we can artistically engage with these hodologies, simultaneously mapping out and rendering existing relations and hodologies intelligible and perceptible across registers and media, and creatively and critically envisioning – and designing – new ones.