Guy Debord and the Situationist International

Guy Debord led the Situationist International group which led the Paris uprising of 1968.

The Situationist International, a political/artistic movement organized by Debord and his colleagues and represented by a journal of the same name, attempted to create a series of strategies for engaging in class struggle by reclaiming individual autonomy from the spectacle. These strategies, including "dérive" and "détournement", drew on the traditions of Dada and Surrealism.

Here is the wikipedia article on Guy Debord: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Debord

More from wikipedia:

In the situationist thought, a Dérive is a concept meaning an aimless walk, probably through city streets, that follows the whim of the moment. It is usually translated as a drift.

French writer and Situationist Guy Debord used this idea to try and convince readers to revisit the way they looked at urban spaces. Rather than being prisoners to their daily route and routine, living in a complex city but treading the same path every day, he urged people to follow their emotions and to look at urban situations in a radical new way. This led to the notion that most of our cities were so thoroughly unpleasant because they were designed in a way that either ignored their emotional impact on people, or indeed tried to control people through their very design. The basic premise of the idea is for people to explore their environment ("psychogeography") without preconceptions, to understand their location, and therefore their existence.
Like the earlier flâneur, the Situationist dérive was a general reaction, manifested in the shadow of the Parisian landscape, as the casual stroller of flânerie moved towards the more directed urban pedestrian.

Derive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dérive