place

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

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What follows is an abridged and long unfulfilled PhD proposal that was successfully submitted to the Critical Writing department at the Royal College of Art as well as Coventry University and remains unrealised due to personal and financial circumstances. I am now in a position to conduct this research independently and plan to embark on it over the coming weeks.

Darrell J.Rohl Chorography tag cloud

1.0 Abstract

To my knowledge this is the first PhD by practice in the UK to explore Chorography’s relevance as a methodological tool 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. Historically chorography, or place writing, is the artistic representation of a regional map which originated in Classical Geography (Ptolemy c.149AD). This field-based approach and detailed descriptor of place qualitatively maps characteristics of the locale by examining the constituent parts of that place. Currently there is a renewed methodological interest 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.

This research aims to provide a rigorous examination of chorography as a methodological tool which takes region as its lens and address it as a mode of mediating specific forms of cultural memory, narrative and belonging. This also includes asking how chorography can figuratively, metaphorically or symbolically excavate the hidden, the forgotten or the overlooked to reveal and re-present micro-histories, landscape narratives, texts, images, archives and collections either discarded or forgotten. Although a historic understanding is necessary this research recognises the chorographer’s body is also 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 remembered and re-presented.

As history, theory, artistic research and practice are increasingly complex and intertwined with bodies of knowledge from diverse spheres of scholarship and disciplinary boundaries become increasingly diffuse this ultimately raises the question of location. Combining tradition with innovation to position artistic research skills within the historically grounded yet expanded field of chorography I aim to actively engage this question in order to devise a new form and application of critical enquiry. Utilising chorography as a methodological framework in artistic practice 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 contextually, historically and physically.

2.0 Research Context: Chorography

Chorography designates “a regional map in Renaissance geographic texts and the artistic description of regions” viewed and experienced from within linking “regional events at the time of occurrence in pictorial representations.” (Olwig 2001 and Curry 2005 cited in Päivi Kymäläinen and Ari A. Lehtinen 2010: 252). Chorography, defined by the polymath Ptolemy in the Geographike Hyphegesis (c.149AD) takes region as its lens. This field-based approach and detailed descriptor of place qualititively maps characteristics of the locale by examining the constituent parts of that place “to describe the smallest details of places.” Morra J, Smith M (2006: 17-18).

Chorography was re-discovered in Renaissance Geography and British Antiquarianism 16th -17th centuries. Historically William Camden’s Brittania (1586) or a Chorographicall Description of the most flourishing Kingdomes, England, Scotland, and Ireland is an encyclopaedic approach to a geographic, historical topographical survey of the British Isles which has been identified as a classic exemplar of the renaissance of a chorographic work “connecting past and present through the medium of space, land, region or country.” (Rohl 2012 2011). Cormack states “Chorography was the most wide ranging of the geographical sub disciplines since it included an interest in genealogy, chronology and antiquities, as well as local history and topography…uniting an anecdotal interest in local families and […] genealogical and chronological research.” (Cormack 1991 cited in Rohl 2012:22). British Antiquarianism therefore retrieved chorography and recreated it in an expanded field, re-interpreting its legacy, ensuring its survival, restoration and continuing communication. Susan Stewart discusses the antiquarian as being “moved by a nostalgia of origin and presence” whose “function is to validate the culture of ground.” (1984:153)

Currently there is a renewed methodological interest in chorography and broadly conceived place relations within Cultural Studies, Archaeology and Performance. There is therefore a need to assess, address and synthesise these discrete bodies of knowledge from diverse spheres of scholarship, theory and practice. Currently conducted independently of each other they nevertheless reflect current cultural pre-occupations with the concept, its application and theorisation. Selected practitioners and researchers of relevance to this study include Michael Shanks, Archaeologist, Stanford and Mike Pearson, Performance Studies, Aberystwyth. 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 (Shanks). Their concept of Deep Mapping is derived from chorography. They borrow the term from William Least Heat-Moon’s PrairyErth, an intensive look at a particular place that included discussion of geography, history, and ecology, that place being Chase County, Kansas. Pearson and Shanks were 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.

3.0 Original Contribution to knowledge

Recent 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 as original contribution to knowledge 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. This authoritarian disembodied cartographic vision and static pictorial symbol or ‘image’ of place elides the textures of place and its complex network of relations i.e. the embodied, symbolic, socio-political, cultural, familial, contextual, discursive & historical which contribute to and profoundly affect how autobiographical identity is constructed, mediated, narrated, re-membered and situated. This research recognises that chorographic method is the trace of an embodied agent already implicated into the textures of place and that the physical act of mapped place is not synonymous with the map as object. 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. Historically chorography does not account for the body in the field yet a sensory physical mapping of place occurs prior to the act of representation.

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. Historically there are no female chorographers and therefore no theoretical address on chorography that recognises the philosophical discourse on sexual difference and place from a feminine perspective in visual art. This research aims to address this lack.

The following research outcomes will provide a clearer understanding of the relevance, meaning and impact of chorography today.

  • Critically evaluate and determine chorography’s relevance and its application as a methodological tool that constructs and mediates specific forms of cultural memory, narrative and belonging and locate this in contemporary artistic research, theory and practice.
  • Create new criteria to examine practices of place making by retrieving, restoring, developing and communicating a connection between chorography past and present.
  • Assess and synthesise discrete bodies of knowledge from diverse spheres of scholarship, theory and practice. Conducted independently of each other they nevertheless reflect current cultural pre-occupations and a renewed interest in chorography.
  • Theorise chorography beyond its original conception, draw conclusions and propose future orientations, applications and developments.

4.0 Personal Statement & Objectives 

The desire to recuperate the historic yet neglected method of chorography in artistic research is philosophically rooted in my practice. Engaging with different conceptions of sites as markers of place via a curatorial approach is to actively ‘take care’ in the restoration, conservation and curation of micro-histories, narratives, texts, images, archives and collections either discarded or forgotten. During this process a historical figure, site, place, event or voice or voices are adopted to activate the work and produce a narrative arc. There is a desire to retrieve and recreate those figures in a present context and reopen a dialogue that is directed back toward its own context, boundaries and form.  This displays a sensitivity to the re-presentation of material employed and a continually recurring hinge is the problematic interface between the public and the private. This problematic in some respects undermines the desire to protect as this act re-stages, re-articulates, re-presents and re-mediates what I term the performance of the private, the entry of the private domain into the public arena where it is both commodified and incorporated into the rhetoric of display. The concepts operative in the work and research and are critically examined through diverse yet interconnected bodies of knowledge. I understand this to represent a chorographic approach and pre-disposition to the concept of chorography.

Art, whilst innovative, can use archaeological method or historiographic accounts to excavate and recontextualise our relations to the past. Legacy, whilst not always visible is present. Therefore a critical reflection 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. Applying existing artistic skills in a new field will enable the development of a more comprehensive understanding of place, not just artistically, but historically, physically and contextually.             

Intercorporeal, Intersubjective, Imaginary and Rational Spatialities: Between Existence and Abstraction

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Untitled © Denise Startin

“If a person feels inside a place, he or she is here rather than there, safe rather than threatened, enclosed rather than exposed, at ease rather than stressed. Relph suggests that the more profoundly inside a place a person feels, the stronger will be his or her identity with that place.”

‘Space is multiple. Such multiplicity is both the precondition for and the result of spatial practices. Spatiality and practicality ground one another. There are different ways of attempting to grasp this co-dependent multiplicity. For example,

“…Relph defines four sorts of space, or knowledge about space, produced by different relationships to places. At the first step ‘pragmatic’ spaces are organised by our bodily situation (left or right, up or down). Second is perceptual space, organised through our intentions and centred on us – what we focus upon, what we look at, thus tending to be centred on the observer. Existential space is informed by cultural structures as much as our perceptions – it is space full of social meaning. This space is defined in relationship to some human experience or task. Finally, cognitive space is how we abstractly model spatial relationships.” (Crang, 1998:110). While this is a valuable starting point, recent re-thinkings of the phenomenological heritage, within which Relph lies, may point to a slightly different classification, coordinating person-hood with place-hood. This schema is based on the intercorporeal (as embodied-situated interaction), the intersubjective (as symbolic, performative, narrative interaction), the imaginary (as fantasmal, intracorporeal, medial-virtual interaction) and rational (as geometric, logical, coded interaction), each with their different degrees of freedom. Each of these four dimensions may or may not be well integrated and may well be skewed in various different directions, such that, for example, one’s fantasmal imaginings may begin to dominate and render unsustainable one’s intercorporeal and intersubjective relations. Through integration of these dimensions, spatial practices coordinate, integrate and separate spatialities centred on the self, and its motivated engagement with the world, with the spatialities that derive from geometric and logical calculation and fabrication, the structures of the designed and manufactured world. This is to acknowledge, while re-articulating Heidegger’s focus on care:

“Heidegger does not talk about intentions so much as care. Since we are always engaged with the world, we must focus our attention on particular aspects at any given time. We thus have different types and levels of care for different things at different times. The world might then be seen as comprising different levels of care.” (Crang, 1998: 110). The conclusion that Crang draws from this passage above, in which Relph interprets Heidegger, is that (human) knowledge of the world is always em-placed. It starts from and continues to be based around places as centres of care about the world. Thus, notes Crang, employing this approach suggests that we make sense of the world through the materials at hand, not from abstract schemes.

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Place Making > Placing Self

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Heidegger’s Hutte, Todtnauberg, Black Forest, Germany

“…place is that open, cleared yet unbounded region in which we find ourselves gathered together with other persons and things, and which we are opened to the world and the world to us. It is out of this place that space and time both emerge, and yet the place at issue here also has a dynamic character of its own – it is not merely the static appearance of a viewed locale or landscape, but it is rather a unifying, gathering, regioning – place is, in this sense, always a “taking place, a “happening” of place.”

Malpas, Jeff, Heidegger’s Topology, Being, Place, World, Massachussets Institute of Technology, 2008, Chapter 5 Place and Event pp.221. Image reproduced from http://faslanyc.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/landscape-delicatessen.html

Wish you Were Here: Micro Residency, Artist Researcher (Interpretation) Erddig House & Gardens

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The Bridge in the Park, Erddig House & Gardens, Nr. Wrexham, Wales

The Bridge in the Park, Erddig House & Gardens, Nr. Wrexham, Wales

Micro Residency, Artist Researcher, National Trust, Archaeology Team, Erddig House & Gardens, Nr Wrexham, Wales 15th – 31st October.

In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson’s Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Erddig like this:

“ERTHIG, or Erddig, a township in Gresford parish, Denbigh; on Offa’s Dyke, 2 miles SW of Wrexham. Pop., 117. Houses, 31. Erthig Hall is the seat of the Yorkes, -of whom was Philip -Yorke, author of “The Royal Tribes of Wales;” has, on the walls and ceilings of one of its rooms, the heraldic bearings of the tribes; and occupies a charming situation.” [1]

I have recently spent the week at the Yale Hostel about a mile from Erddig (pronounced Erthig) House & Gardens as Artist Researcher (Interpretation) assisting the monitoring of the Archaeological Monuments in the grounds of Erddig which has a formal walled garden and covers 485 hectares equalling 1,200 acres. The collection at Erddig is the 2nd largest in the UK, bequeathed to the Trust under the provision that no item be discarded. Supporting the Field Archaeology Team my remit is to contribute artistically to the undertaking of the Archaeological and Historic Landscape Survey at Erddig. My contribution includes A] Deep Mapping: Stories in the Landscape, B] The Map & The Territory: Utilising items in the collection to interpret the Landscape C] Documenting the Process: in a format that can be understood by the public D] Visualising and Representing the Data: making recommendations regarding the concrete representation of the Historic Buildings, Sites and Monuments Record which is essentially a digital database of the archaeological monuments in the historic parkland.

As a visual artist my artistic practice is site specific whether this site be actual, physical, textual, fictional or virtual. Both contextually and historically sensitive the role of place and place making is central to my work. Within this there is a tacit acknowledgement that the concept of place is constructed from a complex network of relations i.e symbolic, social, political, familial, local, national and historical. Place is central to the sensitive concept of belonging and home which contribute to a person’s autobiographical identity. This profoundly affects how that identity is situated and has significant impact on emotional wellbeing. Within my work I take a methodical, detailed, and extensively researched approach to the curation of material in order to construct comprehensive documents of place in the form of installed environments. In many respects I am a custodian or caretaker who respectfully recuperates, conserves and restores micro histories, narratives, objects and images that have been orphaned, discarded or forgotten. Legacy, whilst it may not always be visible, is a constant presence whether this relates to National Trust custodianship, archaeological practice, the historic parkland at Erddig, personal history or artistic practice. The rich tapestry that is art history, an artists’ conceptual trajectory, their historical timeline, the time of their work, the time of its making, the context in which one is making and their contemporaries all add up to what the literary critic Harold Bloom called, in the book of the same name, the anxiety of influence. Art does not occur in isolation, it is always made in ‘situ’. As a printmaker there is no such thing as a blank piece of paper, one always approaches it knowing that contextually, historically, artistically and technologically that it is already replete; it is a dialogue not a monologue.

Similarly the National Trust’s investment in significant cultural, historical and natural places, the people who populate them and the communities that surround them ensure our heritage is preserved as well as shared by enabling people to contribute and collaborate in its preservation. Personally speaking the research aims to investigate the intersection between art and archaeology, whereby art can also be a form of historiography that re-contextualises our relations to the past as a form of memorial or restoration. For that reason I will also be mining the art historical legacy relating to the site specific and the correlation between an aspect of historical archaeological practice and conceptual art, the concept of the grid. This concrete and in depth engagement with Erddig, generously facilitated by Kathy Laws: Archaeologist at the National Trust, will develop a more comprehensive understanding of what it means to be site specific, not just artistically & imaginatively, but historically, physically, technologically and contextually. This can only improve the depth of my work as an artist engaged with concepts of place, contexts, histories and heritage both private and public.

[1] http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/3124