the derive experiment

“THE DERIVE EXPERIMENT”

Keri Rosebraugh, Paloma Demasi, Mayke Verhoeven, Samina Virani

At 1700 we will embark on a derive experiment, meeting under the bridge in Pont Marie, Paris. “the art of remembering” derive experiment:

Time: 11am:

Meeting place: From Pont Marie metro, take the stairs down to the river. There is a place called Péniche Marcounet. This will be our centre point. From there we will start the derive experiment.

Turning clockwise and then anticlockwise. Directionless. We will follow our feet. Just walk and see what your feet discover, what you remember. 

The exercise is 1 hour long.

After we will meet back in the looking glass at 2pm to talk about what happened in your derive. Did we have the same derive? Was it different?

Take a notebook, a camera / phone to take photos.

the derive is a way of wandering, following our feet, tapping into unconscious codes, mystical messages and ways to “remember.”

All we have to do is follow our feet. No thinking, no mind activity.

Sensing, breathing, wandering.

 and as depicted in Nacer Khemir’s short movie, “The Search for Muhi al-Din ibn Arabi,”

From November 2024 - June 2025, Samina lead a weekly experiment called the derive, as part of “the art of remembering” residency program she created for a group of international artists. In these sessions, the group gathered every Wednesday under the Pont Marie Bridge in Paris at 11am. Spinning around directionless with their eye’s closed, they then stopped and began to wander, in stillness or in movement for 1 hour. A silent and solo act, designed to explore inner callings by following their feets, smells, colours which unraveled parts of their subconscious and that were all linked very closely to their artistic practise. serendipity , magic. a different kind of listening that is central to the art of remembering.

In April 2025, the four artists invited several individuals to join in their experiment, after concluding in a salon in the looking glass. Coincidental

The dérive (French: [de.ʁiv], "drift") is an unplanned journey through a landscape, usually urban, in which participants stop focusing on their everyday relations to their social environment.[1] Developed by members of the Letterist International, it was first publicly theorized in Guy Debord's "Theory of the Dérive" (1956).[2][3]Debord defines the dérive as "a mode of experimental behaviour linked to the conditions of urban society: a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances."[4]

Though solo dérives are possible, Debord indicates that the most fruitful numerical arrangement consists of several small groups of two or three people who have reached the same level of awareness, since cross-checking these different groups' impressions makes it possible to arrive at more objective conclusions.[2]

The dérive's goals include studying the terrain of the city (psychogeography) and emotional disorientation, both of which lead to the potential creation of Situations.

The concept of the dérive has its origins in the Letterist International, an avant-garde and Marxist collective based in Paris. The dérive was a critical tool for understanding and developing the theory of psychogeography, defined as the "specific effects of the geographical environment (whether consciously organized or not) on the emotions and behavior of individuals."[4]

The dérive continued to be a critical concept in the theories of the Situationist International, a radical group of avant-garde artists and political theorists that was formed out of the Letterist International, CoBrA, and the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus in the 1950s.[3] For the Situationists, the dérive was a revolutionary technique to combat the malaise and boredom of the society of the spectacle.[5]

CONNECTED WORKS: