Landscape

The Chorography of Place: Mapping new ecologies of landscape, memory, history and visual culture

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Peter Heylyn’s Cosmography in Four Books: Containing the Chorography & History of the whole World, and all the Principal Kingdoms, Provinces, Seas, and Isles Thereof. London: Philip Chetwind, 1670.

School of Design – Art and Design (practice-based) PhD 2023, Place-based and site responsive practice research

Aims and Objectives:

This PhD by practice aims to explore chorography’s relevance as an organising principle in contemporary artistic practice and critically address the historic yet neglected role of chorography in the documentation of place. Pertinent to research across diverse academic disciplines this proposal is timely, relevant, and contemporaneous. Chorography, or place writing, is the artistic representation of a regional map which originated in Classical Geography (c.149AD). This field-based approach and detailed descriptor of place takes region as its lens and qualitatively maps characteristics of the locale by examining the constituent parts of that place. If a sensory physical mapping of place occurs prior to representation where is the body in the process of chorography?. A particular focus of this research is to distinguish the performance of chorography from its documentation and re-presentation. Although a historic understanding is necessary this research recognises the body is itself a site of historical crossing that both transcends and incorporates these boundaries made possible by the very nature of its mobility, which has implications for who, what and how people and places are re-membered and re-presented. A critical reflection and practical exploration must recognise these relations do not occur in isolation but ‘in situ’ and within a context that affects how they are critically, ideologically, philosophically and historically situated.

Currently there is a renewed methodological interest and broadly conceived place relations in chorography within Cultural Studies, Archaeology and Performance. These forms of chorography, whilst practically and theoretically rooted in various strands of its developmental history, reflect its methodological richness and interdisciplinary nature although they do not have a locus as yet aligned. Therefore there is a need to analyse and synthesise these discrete bodies of knowledge that reflect current cultural pre-occupations with chorography to provide a clearer understanding of the relevance, meaning and impact of chorography today. I therefore propose the following outcomes:

  • Critically evaluate and determine chorography’s relevance and its application as a methodological tool in contemporary artistic practice and research.
  • Create new criteria to examine practices of place making by restoring, developing and communicating a connection between chorography past and present.
  • Assess and synthesise discrete bodies of knowledge from diverse spheres of theory and practice that reflect current cultural pre-occupations and a renewed interest in chorography’s application and theorisation.
  • Theorise chorography beyond its original conception, draw conclusions and propose future orientations, applications and developments

Relevance to Professional or Academic Field/Literature Review:

Selected practitioners and researchers of relevance to this study include Michael Shanks, Archaeologist, Stanford, Mike Pearson, formerly Performance Studies, Aberystwyth and visual theorist Clifford McLucas. Their work Theatre/Archaeology (2001) creates a porous space whereby archaeological and performance theory combine to provide an architecture for the event whose underlying questions was the representation of place and event and the role of landscape within it.Their concept of Deep Mapping (after William Heat Least-Moon) is derived from chorography.

This concept of the Deep Map echoes the concept of ‘thick description’ employed in ethnographic research (Geertz pace Ryle 1973). They are using the genre as a means to create techniques and re-think approaches to communities, locales and events. Their work incorporates chorography into performance and archaeology to activate, re-activate, question, examine and perform the histories of place utilising a range of methodological, archaeological, performance and narrative techniques including biography, memoir, folklore, topography to juxtapose and interpenetrate the historical and the contemporary.

Pearson’s exercise in deep mapping (2007) is a complex intertextual topography and biographical derivé incorporating region, locale, chorography, landscape, memory, archaeology and performance where historical, social, cultural and environmental temporalities are foregrounded. The scholarly work of Darrell J. Rohl, Archaeologist, Durham University, whose research is organised around past, present, people and place, identifies chorographic methods in archaeological fieldwork and interpretation (2012). Nicoletta Isar, Cultural Studies, Copenhagen University (2009) explores chorography and the performative relation between space and movement. This has largely been conceived under Dr A. Lidov’s neologism Hierotopy (2002), the organisation and mediation of sacred spaces, a transdisciplinary approach combining art history, archaeology and cultural anthropology. Poetic and philosophical connections can be traced in Kristeva (1984) and Derrida (1995).Prior research on this topic has been informed by geographer Inger Birkeland’s theory of chorography as an act of journeying, a socially narrated identity and material embodiment of place (2005).

How will your proposed research fit into the existing body of academic knowledge and practice in the professional field?

Shanks and Witmore (2010) identify common components of Antiquarianism in chorography including local and national history, geography, the regional, examination of archaeological remains and the act of collecting. Although chorography is pre-disciplinary they claim a genetic link forms the basis of contemporary disciplinary approaches across heritage management, tourism, archaeology, historical geography and contemporary arts practice. Although these claims are not substantiated they argue for a genealogical understanding of inter or trans-disciplinary practices concerned with relations of land, place, memory and locational identity to provide an enhanced understanding of present disciplinary, practical and academic positions. It is this link that I am trying to pick up and establish in contemporary artistic practice and research.

What are the expected outcomes for artistic practice and how does this contribute to the research?

Utilising chorography as an organising principle in artistic practice I aim to realise a historically grounded exploration of place by performing and documenting embodied, visual, textual and symbolic mappings through strategies such as image and text, narrative, the intimate and fact and fiction. These mappings will form the basis of artworks, critical and performance writing, book works, performance and installation which will translate chorographic methods and the physical act of mapping into artistic practice. As direct address to the questions posed theoretical concerns would be embedded in concrete action signifying an intention to fold the critical into the personal, the political into the poetic, the sensual into the discursive and the performative into the rhetorical. This research will create new criteria with which to examine and re-interpret contemporary practices of place making by retrieving, restoring, developing and recreating a connection between chorography past and present. Combining historic method with contemporaneous form will enable a renewed understanding of the chorography of place not just artistically but physically, contextually and historically.

How will your research enhance knowledge or contribute to new understandings of the subject?

Prior studies framed within visual arts do not adequately recuperate the concept, and its pertinence to the theorisation, contextualisation and politicisation of performative embodied tactics and spatial practices ‘space is a practised place’ (De Certeau 1984), O’Sullivan, Jill (2011) The chorographic vision: an investigation into the historical and contemporary visual literacy of chorography, PhD thesis, James Cook University (AU). This study traces the history and symbolism of chorography as a visual literacy of place through cartography and the graphic medium of print, privileging the map as the primary visual signifier of chorography. Although the study does acknowledge other forms of chorographic practice its principle aim is to map the development of historical chorography and the philosophical discourse on place whereby the practice based iterations reproduce historic practice without providing new applications or forms.  It is these other forms of chorographic practice that depart from its historical nature that provide what I perceive to be chorography’s as yet unexplored methodological richness in artistic research and the layering of these historical crossings that connect the cultural and socio-political to the personal.

I argue that if the relations posited within chorography are firstly empirical, experiential and emplaced it cannot be fully articulated by focussing on the cartographic. Put simply the medium is not the method. There is a need to distinguish this act from its documentation and re-presentation to provide new theories, forms and applications by addressing the political implications of the embodied in the act of representation. To provide a contemporaneous account the performative relations between the body, mapping and place; the mobile, embodied and situated are therefore central to a contemporary interpretation of chorography (Butler 2011).

I therefore propose the following research questions:

  • How can we perform the relations between public memory and personal narratives of cultural identity and belonging through the medium of place?
  • What is the significance of visual, textual, artefactual and embodied experiences of place in constructing and mediating personal narratives of cultural identity and belonging and how can we perform their retrieval, survival, communication and recreation?
  • If a sensory physical mapping of place occurs prior to representation where is the body in the process of chorography and how do we address the political implications of the embodied in the act of representation?
  • How is the subject situated rhetorically amongst the cultural, factual, historical details and how might the subject be figured as a marginal detail of another narrative?
  • Can the concept of physical liminality be transposed into the field of aesthetics and if so how?

Research Approaches: What methods do you intend to use to deliver your aims & objectives?

Case Studies:

Providing the scope and context to explore an independent chorographic research practice sites chosen for their cultural, historic, national, symbolic and mythological significance include Brontë Country which straddles West Yorkshire and the East Lancashire Pennines. Located to the west of the Bradford- Leeds conurbation, Kirklees and Calderdale. this landscape in Wuthering Heights is a continual and active shaping presence. Other sites include the Devil’s Bridge and St. Michael’s Mount, Cornwall. Interest in these sites has developed out of prior practice.

The former located in Aberystwyth, Wales consists of 3 bridges built on top of each other, the first bridge is dated circa. 11th century forming part of a pilgrimage route associated with the Monks at the nearby Strata Florida Abbey. The nearby Hafod Estate is managed by the National Trust. The symbolic site of pilgrimage St. Michaels Mount shares a deep verisimilitude with Mont St. Michel, Normandy, France. This island has a complex identity as spiritual centre, military stronghold, harbour and home which is related in mythology to 3 other locations in the UK connected by a singular narrative arc. This site is also managed by the National Trust. Conceivably one of these identified case studies, or an aspect of, could occupy the entire duration of the PhD.

Methods:

Chorography is a field based qualitative research method with a range of techniques to capture, map and re-present place as currently utilised in archaeological fieldwork and interpretation. Prior research has revealed how this approach might be applied in artistic practice however it does not account for the body in the field. To address this I propose a form of Ethnography classified as Composition Studies, Critical Ethnography is a “research practice, primarily related to education, whose purpose is to use a dialogue about a cultural context to develop critical action” whilst considering “the ethics and politics of representation in that practice and reporting of that dialogue and resulting actions.” (Brook and Hogg quoted in Gilbert Brown S and Dobrin, Sidney I, 2004:4). In this instance Chorography is that context. I would seek to combine this with Cultural Mapping as cultural enquiry, a mode of inquiry and a methodological tool that makes visible the ways local stories, practices, relationships, memories, and rituals constitute places as meaningful locations.

Image reproduced from https://www.oldworldauctions.com/catalog/lot/110/6 (accessed 26/04/23)

Current PhD Research

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“Bringing together contributions by artists, writers and theorists, ‘Fieldwork for Future Ecologies’ addresses the role that art practice and art-based research plays in expanding notions of fieldwork. At once a handbook for research and practice and a philosophical speculation, this book offers the unique opportunity to explore ways of working within vastly diverse climates and terrains using image, sound, movement and other sensing technologies. It also offers more creative and speculative interventions into the idea and location of the ‘field’ itself.

Focusing on a range of projects from across different geographic locations and situations, the book highlights the crucial contribution that art can make to environmental and climate studies offering a valuable intervention into current discussions of artistic practice and research. ‘Fieldwork for Future Ecologies’ presents a series of propositions and speculations … radical practices for radical times.

Contributing authors: Angus Carlyle, Alliance of the Southern Triangle/AST (D Bauer, F Grodin, P M Hernandez, E Kedan), Bianca Hester, Bridget Crone, David Burns, Henriette Gunkel and Eline McGeorge, Imani Jacqueline Brown, Julie Gough, Kate Pickering, Kreider + O’Leary, Kristen Sharp, Melody Jue, Nicholas Mangan, Philip Samartzis, Polly Stanton, Ruth Maclennan, Sam Nightingale, Saskia Beudel, Simon O’Sullivan, Susan Schuppli, Therese Keogh.“

Text reproduced from https://www.onomatopee.net/exhibition/fieldwork-for-future-ecologies/ (accessed 24/04/23)

Micro Critique Paper No.3

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Introduction: Analysis of the following articles have revealed problems in defining the field of chorography as well as methods, theories and insights which warrant further examination. These summaries identify, illuminate and reflect on these issues and their implications in theory and practice.

Paper 3: Rohl, Darrell J. (2012) Chorography: History, Theory and Potential for Archaeological Research. TRAC 2011: Proceedings of the Twenty-First Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference. pp. 19-32.

Peter Heylyn. Cosmography in Four Books. Containing the Chorography & History of the whole World

The aim of this paper is a ‘tentative’ attempt at a theoretical framework informed by a close reading of classical texts in relation to contemporary discourse. Rohl states prior translations of Ptolemy’s description of chorography have conflated it with ‘likeness’. Within chorography’s history the term did become synonymous with a regional map gathering “information in the form of pictorial representations” (Kymäläinen and Lehtinen 2010: 252). Although he does not acknowledge this alternate history Rohl states in the 19th–20th centuries chorography gave way to ‘empirical […] topographic and spatial analysis’ which we might understand as cartography in its present sense. According to Rohl this coincided with the sublimation of antiquarianism into the discipline of archaeology. He also notes the resurgence of chorography in historical, literary and archaeological discourse and the study of ‘early modern Britain’.

Rohl’s theoretical chorographic framework is built upon a variety of historic and contemporary sources which in practice would be difficult to quantify. Within this Rohl cites Bossing who places the existentially emplaced literature or geopoetics of Thoreau into the tradition (1999) whose emphasis on chorography as place-writing is a literal translation of the term. Bossing’s quote concerning chorography’s textual ‘advantage over cartography’ appears misplaced since the term cartography is not synonymous with chorography. Again there is an overt emphasis on representation creating a simple binary which appears unproductive. Subordinating the visual to the textual or vice versa indicates on ongoing argument between mimesis and diegesis. However, some antiquarian works and chorographic maps are iconotextual. Rohl’s way out of this aporia is to expand his use of the term representation into ‘multi-media’ (actually employed by McLucas, see below) noting the unproductive limitation of chorography to ‘writing.’ However, this is a rather limited interpretation of the suffix graphy which is a combinatory form denoting a process or form of drawing, writing, representing, recording, describing and therefore is not limited to writing.

In both practices it is worth noting the intersection of region or place, event and temporality. There is a significant corpus on the chorographic map however I maintain the archaeological trajectory for this research will enable an expanded application of chorographic methodology to artistic practice. Rohl discusses these investigations which have been driven by Michael Shanks and his collaborations with Mike Pearson and the late Clifford McLucas, visual theorist. Pearson and McLucas co-founded the Welsh site specific-theatre company Brith Gof (National Library of Wales 2013). “Brith Gof was part of a distinct and European tradition in the contemporary performing arts – visual, physical, amplified, poetic and highly designed. Rather than focusing on the dramatic script, its work is part of an ecology of ideas, aesthetics and practices which foregrounds the location of performance, the physical body of the performer, and relationships with audience and constituency. Brith Gof’s works thus deal with issues such as the nature of place and its relation with identity, and the presence of the past in strategies of cultural resistance and community construction.” [1] Their site specific multi media works dealt with memory, place and belonging.

Pearson and Shanks employed a metaphor for antiquarian approaches; the Deep Map, a term appropriated from Heat-Moon, PrairyErth (a deep map) (1991).  This work is a literary cartography of place, an epic tome and a 9 year sojourn across a single Kansas County recording all manner of incidences and is described by Calder as a form of “vertical travel writing” that interweaves “autobiography, archaeology, stories, memories, folklore, traces, reportage, weather, interviews, natural history, science, and intuition”. [2] According to Shanks the deep map ‘attempts to record and represent the grain and patina of place’ (Pearson and Shanks 2001:64). McLucas outlines a ten-point scale of the Deep Map: No.4 states ’they will be genuinely multi-media’ (Jones and Urbanski n.d). Rohl does not discuss McLucas further. This deep map echoes the ‘thick description’ of ethnographic fieldwork which aims to ‘draw large conclusions from small but very densely textured facts.’ (Geertz 1973: 28). Pearson’s own exercise in deep mapping is a complex intertextual topography and autobiographical derivé incorporating region, locale, chorography, landscape, memory, archaeology and performance where historical, social, cultural and environmental temporalities are foregrounded. Landscape is not used here literally in reference to the scene of the action; Lincolnshire but as a symbolic and metaphorical re-imagining, through landscapes past and present.

Rohl more explicitly states the link between Landscape Archaeology and chorography owing to their focus on multi-temporal place relations. He expands on the list of the ten chorographic methods, explaining how they operate in relation to fieldwork, suggesting they are selectively practised according to the object of study. These include 1] “Regional Field Survey: This involves both the experience and the research of the choros and originates from chorography’s theoretical emphases on place and experiece. 2] Inquiry using a variety of sources i.e documents, maps, interviews, digital databases and GIS. 3] Collection of facts, stories and objects. 4] Detailed description and/or measurement – of specific sites, structures, people and objects encountered. 5] Listing of notable features, specific sites, artefacts and historical events. 6] Analysis examination of place names, sites, objects that is broadly representative. 7] Visualisation in the form of vivid textual description, drawings, phots, reconstructions, maps, performance and new media. 8] Historiography – examination and tracing of previous accounts, perspectives and interpretations. 9] Critical Thinking on all evidence collected and personal experiences. 10] Presentation and/or Publication – communication of results to experts or the broader public within and without the bounds of the choros.” pp.28-29 He maintains the importance of chorography in the development of archaeology in Britain. Rohl concludes with his PhD research, a chorographic account of the Antonine Wall in Scotland. He also urges those concerned with the histories and memories of place, landscape, monument and regions to devise and develop chorographic sensibilities.

Image & text reproduced from https://historical.ha.com/itm/books/non-fiction/peter-heylyn-cosmography-in-four-books-containing-the-chorography-and-history-of-the-whole-world-and-all-the/a/6043-36218.s (accessed 03/11/22)

[1] https://web.stanford.edu/~mshanks/MichaelShanks/26.html (accessed 23/08/23)

[2] Calder. A, “The Wilderness Plot, the Deep Map, and Sharon Butala’s Changing Prairie.” Essays on Canadian Writing 77 (2002)pp. 164–70)

Micro Critique Paper No.1

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Introduction: Analysis of the following articles have revealed problems in defining the field of chorography as well as methods, theories and insights which warrant further examination. These summaries identify, illuminate and reflect on these issues and their implications in theory and practice.

Paper 1: Rohl, Darell J (2011) The Chorographic Tradition and Seventeenth-and-Eighteenth Century Scottish Antiquaries, Journal of Art Historiography 5: 1-18.

Chorographic practice and theory according to Darrel J.Rohl

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the relations between British Antiquarianism and chorography. Rohl’s primary objective is the role of chorography in the lesser known Scottish Antiquarian’s. He also situates chorography in a wider field of contemporary discourse, including archaeology, which he fails to introduce or identify in the paper. This complicates his paper and disorients the reader, undermining an article which is aimed at clarifying the field whilst simultaneously criticizing competing definitions in contemporary usage. Ironically this adds to his own observation of imprecise language within various historical, practical and theoretical discourses and a lack of clarity for a precise chorographic definition.

Rohl translates chorography unproblematically stating his definition is located within the terms etymology, employing the chorographic corpus to support his arguments. Chorography is commonly interpreted by way of its Greek origins in Classical Geography, which Rohl discusses, yet translations exist across various theoretical discourses resulting in a plethora of interpretations which he does not address i.e. Ancient Philosophy. He posits a broad yet ‘reluctant’ definition of chorography as the ‘representation of place or space’ providing an accessible entry point. Whilst this may ultimately be productive the conflation of these terms is problematic due to their complex philosophical and theoretical histories where they are often employed interchangeably. This undermines or problematizes his definition; what does Rohl mean by space, to what type of space is he referring and how does one represent space?

Through a close reading of classical texts Rohl provides a summary of chorography’s history, terminology and methodology demonstrating the significance and influence of chorographic practice ‘synonymous’ with the antiquarian approach. Based on his own definition he identifies twelve basic observations which constitute a chorographical way of thinking, developing a more thorough exposition drawn from and supported by a variety of historic and contemporary sources including Polybius, Strabo and Ptolemy. Presented as an explanatory list they include “representation of place/space, multi-media presentation, it is spatio-hisorical, connection of past and present, it highlights the interdependence of human and environment, chorography de-centres and re-centres perspective, uses authorial voice, contains a degree of native knowledge, is about experience, memory and meaning, chorography is also generative of place, calling them into being, it is transdisciplinary and is both qualititvely and quantitively empirical and critical (p.6). Rohl eventually states these principles are representative of the chorographic corpus. These valuable insights warrant further investigation for the application of chorographic thinking to artistic practice.

Archaeology is then introduced in relation to chorographic methods as if self-evident; Rohl is an archaeologist. He locates chorographic methods in archaeological practice from his reading of British Antiquarianism, although he does not explain their historical relation, the latter being archaeology’s historical precursor. Rohl then outlines ten chorographic principles of archaeological practice including “regional field survey, inquiry, collection of facts, stories and objects, detailed description/measurement, listing of historic events, analysis, visualisation, historiographic method, critical thinking and presentation” (p.7). To the uninitiated he is explicitly referring to Landscape Archaeology in contradistinction to the better known practice of excavation. This distinct and separate strand involves fieldwork and interpretation, which I have experienced directly, however it is necessary to state Landscape Archaeologists are not performing chorography. These methods provide a clear, though not uncontested route, to conducting primary site research.

Finally, he performs a comparative analysis of works by the privileged Sir Robert Sibbald and the marginalised Alexander Gordon, contrasting their chorographic methods and the presence of differing attitudes in practice. The former via the distance of the questionnaire, survey, list and inventory, the latter performing a personal, yet critical, peripatetic engagement. Their outputs combine multiple layers of textual and visual material providing a rich topography of detail. Both, according to Rohl, are united in material engagements and documenting relations between past and present, geography, historiography, archaeological remains and positioning the local in relation to the regional or national construction of identity. He concludes that the legacy of antiquarianism in relation to chorography is being developed within the contemporary practices of heritage and archaeology.

Walk On, MAC Arts Centre, Sat 8th Feb-Sun 30th Mar 2014

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Published by J. Pitts, no. 14 Great St. Andrew Street Seven Dials, July 1, 1813). Copperplate map, with added color, 34 × 45 cm, on sheet 41 × 51 cm. Unknown Author

“The Pilgrims Progress, or, Christians Journey from the City of Destruction in This Evil World to the Celestial City in the World That Is to Come”. Published by J. Pitts, no. 14 Great St. Andrew Street Seven Dials, July 1, 1813. Copperplate map, with added color, 34 × 45 cm, on sheet 41 × 51 cm. Unknown Author.

  “The geography of our consciousness of reality is one of complicated coastlines, lakes and rugged mountains.”

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, Serpents Tail: London 1991, pp.147

In perfect peripatetic timing with the exhibition at the Mead Gallery, Uncommon Ground, Warwick Arts Centre,  Sat 18 Jan – Sat 8 Mar 2014 Walk On at the MAC celebrates 40 years of Art and Walking. The exhibition seeks to examine the myriad ways that artists “since the 1960’s have undertaken a seemingly universal act – taking a walk – as their means to create new types of art. The exhibition proposes that, across all four of the last decades, artists have worked as all kinds of explorers, whether making their marks on rural wildernesses or acting as urban expeditionaries. The exhibition brings together nearly 40 artists who all make work by undertaking a journey on foot. In doing so, they all stake out new artistic territories. Featured Artists include Francis Alÿs, Richard Long, Hamish Fulton, Julian Opie, Bruce Nauman, Marina Abramovic, Sophie Calle, Janet Cardiff, Melanie Manchot, Tim Robinson, Carey Young, Tim Brennan, Mike Collier, Brian Thompson, Alec Finlay, Chris Drury, Dan Holdsworth and Richard Wentworth to name a few.” Continue reading →