"So many roads - only one road to lead me home"
The Grateful Dead
UPIA – Urban Psychoanalysis Association International – is a poetic approach to city planning with deep historical roots. City planning in our post-post-modern world is first and foremost a task for the state, the region, the local governments. A process primarily led – of course – by architects and politicians. Symmetry plays a crucial role in this division and organization of public space. Not so often these planners are occupied with the processes that brings identity to space ; i.g. dreams, powerty, youth culture, emptiness, prostitution, urban artforms, angels, Christmas and the feeling or sense of home. Tyger, Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night : What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry ? William Blake The work of Laurent Petit coincidides with studies by the English artist William Blake and Swedish mystician Emanuel Swedenborg. The director of UPIA, Laurent Petit, is actually trained as an enginer and has worked on mobile phone programmes in Norway. But in spite of his roots in national science, he saw himself unable to pursue important poetic questions. In 2000 he decided to become a clown. Following the footsteps of many artists intersts and studies of the idiot and the fool, but also threading new paths, he developed the Urban Psychoanalysis. As mentioned before a predecessor to this adventure is Emmanuel Swedenborg. In his “Book of Dreams” Swedenborg wandered through Europe thoroughly noting every little distance between the cities he passed. But without notice Swedenborg interrupts the system followed by weeks of silence. When Swedenborg takes up noting again he now is concerned about what is considered to be a supernatural world. He now writes about his struggle with angels and devils. Both Swedenborg and Blake describes a world that is not so unfamiliar to Laurent Petit. Angels and devils might in our times seem far away, though Laurent Petits investigations tells a different story. In a very quiet and silent small Danish town - the town of Fredensborg - the main concern of the inhabitants was the fear of terrorism and how to organize the christmas lights in the street. The forces in Man’s soul are the same, but the manifestations of the forces changes through the times.
One of the very rare places you can expierience this is exactly in the urban psychoanalysis of Laurent Petit. Med venlig hilsen,
Jens Frimann Hansen
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