LT909-2: Thin and Other Places
Memory maps, 2014-15
Chris McCully
cmccully@essex.ac.uk
Geographical and meteorological
features and place
• Some (though not all) cave paintings (e.g.
those of the Cresswell crags) were
constructed so that they were viewable in
the light of the sun – the paintings on the
Cresswell crags are in south-facing caves
• How have humans made use of
geographical features in developing and
maintaining their cultures? That is, how
does culture makes places from spaces?
What if spaces aren’t (or are in the
process of becoming) places?
(synoptic epic 3, draft; lineation not original)
Stood on the shore of the great salt rivers. A mammoth carcase sang in
the wind. The problem was floods and what to do with the corpses.
Villages no-one had heard of floated past towards Doggerland.
Discovered fire when fen became coal, and flint was useful, also for
building. Opened the anthology and it was empty. Blamed the others
and tried to plug in the lights but there was no electricity. Earth
talked and it wasn’t reassuring. Wives farrowed. That passed the
time. There were no messages and the sky was lonely. By then it
was an issue: how to converse with tundra that had become tideline.
Tried to trade it away for a piece of amber but settled for a bone.
Pierced it with the tongue of a buckle. That night the ambient gods
spoke through a hollowed pipe while the weather hurled from the
north-west. Death was a flute in a femur. Children danced. A lake
appeared, and giraffes. Music became settlements.
How do spaces become places?
(synoptic epic 22, draft; lineation not original)
Almost Famous Interviewer: My guest today is Adam Knott, poet,
philanthropist and...
Knott: ....Take a ford. Ford becomes a trading spot, then a city. Then
the place is overrun by foreigners. ‘Send them home’ is the cry,
followed by ‘Send them home, unless they make real money and
learn our language’. Enter some no-hoper in an apron, translates
the Vulgate into Flemish – puzzlement all round. ‘Either burn the
bugger, or let him stay if it looks to be permanent and he’s opened a
bank account’. Money from an accident of stone, that happened in a
river. Strange, if you think about it. Not that anyone does. They’re
usually too busy eating hamburgers or moaning about how unfair life
is. Or their feet, naturally. Feet are often culprits, you know.
Shoddy footwear – at the root of global terrorism. Man can’t think of
anything sensible if his feet hurt. He just wants other people’s feet
to hurt. Never mind, eh?
Extending ‘psychogeography’ (1)
• Definition of psychogeography in e.g.
Coverley is as something primarily urban.
He lists features such as ‘urban
wandering, the imaginative reworking of
the city, the otherworldly sense of spirit of
place, the unexpected insights and
juxtapositions created by aimless drifting,
the new ways of experiencing familiar
surroundings’ (p.31)
Extending psychogeography (2)
• But why should psychogeography be
essentially urban? True, urban
environments (London, Paris) provide the
clearest examples of how spaces have
become places, but there are several – in
fact, almost infinitely many - other
environments whose ‘spirit(s) of place’
(genius loci) can be and has been
described.
Extending psychogeography (3)
• Some of these environments are rural. That is,
psychogeography includes ‘a loose allegiance of
overlapping themes…through which landscape,
whether urban or rural, can be imbued with a
sense of the histories of previous inhabitants
and the events that have been played out
against them’ (Coverley, p.33). Coverley
mentions that Peter Woodcock ‘identifies the
hallmark of genius loci in the Neo-Romantic
movement of Paul Nash and other artists who
flourished in the inter-war period’ (p.33)
Neo-Romanticism and Paul Nash (1)
• [Death and burial customs] became significant themes for Nash
when in July 1933 he went to Marlborough on holiday and visited
Silbury Hill and Avebury for the first time. This ancient landscape
with its neolithic monuments and standing stones "excited and
fascinated" Nash and stirred "his sensitiveness to magic and the
sinister beauty of monsters" according to Ruth Clarke who had
accompanied him to Marlborough.[9] Nash went on to paint the
landscape at Avebury several times in different styles, most notably
in his two 1934 paintings, Druid Landscape and Landscape of the
Megaliths.[9] The 1935 painting Equivalents for the Megaliths
stresses the mystery of the site by portraying it in an abstract
manner rather than a more literal depiction
(from wikipedia entry, see esp. the paragraphs on Avebury and
Swanage and see References below for access to an important Paul
Nash painting of a wood on the Downs (1930)).
Neo-Romanticism and Paul Nash (2)
Note that Nash often placed everyday objects into his
landscapes in order to give them a new kind of identity:
that is, the objects became symbols. Paul Nash was
also among the first British painters to experiment with
objets trouvés (‘found’ material):
For a collage of black and white photographs entitled
Swanage, Nash depicts objects found in, or connected
to, locations around Dorset within a surrealist landscape.
On Romany Marsh [sic] Nash found his first surrealist
object, or Objet trouvé. This piece of wood retrieved from
a stream was likened by Nash to a fine Henry Moore
sculpture and was shown at the first International
Surrealist Exhibition in 1936 under the title Marsh
Personage (from wikipedia entry)
Art, interpretation and the genius loci
Yet one could make a case for almost any
landscape artist imbuing their work ‘with a
sense of the histories of previous
inhabitants…’ Take Constable’s ‘Haywain’,
for example….or even better, Constable’s
‘Wivenhoe Park’ (1816). In what ways are
these works – better question, how did
these works come to be interpreted as –
‘iconic’?
Constable’s ‘Haywain’ (1821)
Constable’s ‘Wivenhoe Park’ (1816)
Iconicity and Constable (1)
•
What was depicted in the brush-strokes [of ‘The Haywain’] was something
iconic: an image whose significance was transcendent, more than the sum
of its technical parts. That significance centred on a particular kind of
Englishness: the cart crossing the river is on its way to pick up another load
of cut hay, emphasising the point that haymaking was not only an essential
rural occupation but also one vital to the national economy. To further
emphasise the point, Constable painted local haymakers working in the field
beyond the river (lower right of the painting). On the far bank of the river, a
flat-bottomed wooden boat is moored, and concealed in the bushes by the
boat’s prow there’s the figure of an angler: the river, like the land, is rich with
stock. The farm buildings dominating the left of the painting – Willy Lott’s
farm, all mossed brickwork among willows – point the fact that farming could
still be considered a congenial occupation, and here Constable made use of
a concurrent literary tradition, expressed in Aikin’s Calendar of Nature
(1799), a work Constable knew well. Aikin wrote that haymaking was ‘one of
the busiest and most agreeable of rural occupations. Both sexes and all
ages are engaged in it. The fragrance of the new-mown hay, the gaiety of all
surrounding objects, and the genial warmth of the weather, all conspire to
render it a season of pleasure and delight to the beholder’ (cited in
Rosenthal, p.120).
Aikin’s Calendar of Nature (1799)
Iconicity and Constable (2)
‘The Hay Wain’, then, is essentially a georgic representation of England, and it’s
worth remembering that the term ‘georgic’ has its origins in Virgil’s Latin poem of
c30BC: Virgil’s Georgics, in four books, are themed around agricultural topics,
but the works are impossible to read as examples of peaceful rural idylls. Book
IV, for instance, contains a harrowing account of Orpheus’ loss of Eurydice.
Nevertheless, the fact that such poetic works were circulating in Augustan Rome,
when Roman culture (and military and political extent) had reached its zenith
under a new Emperor, is distantly significant for Constable’s ‘Hay Wain’. That is,
the painting expresses both harmony and above all, confidence: national needs
could and would be provided for by happy rustics working in the fields or
exploiting the riches of rivers and meanwhile, one could be assured that all was
probably fairly well with the world, that English prosperity was assured and that
God was very probably an Englishman. This is, I think, why the painting has
come to be regarded as iconic: drawing on both literary and artistic precedent,
‘The Hay Wain’ depicted, and urged meditation on, how English society seemed
to be constructed.
•
(from Chris McCully, Stour Diaries, unpublished typescript 2015)
Interpretation, psychogeography and
creative utility
• In the last few slides I’ve really said nothing
more than ‘artists interpret’ and that doesn’t get
us far in terms of psychogeography or anything
else. However…
• It’s useful to think of how different are the
‘interpretations’ of Constable and of Albert
Sloman (who founded this university in the early
1960s). For Constable, the landscape of and
around Wivenhoe Park could be interpreted
aesthetically; for Sloman, the same landscape
could be interpreted for use
Creative utility and determined space:
Wivenhoe House and park
• Colchester campus and Wivenhoe House
Wivenhoe House was owned by the Gooch family until the 1960s. It had been used in
WW2 and was then requisitioned by the SAS. The SAS whitewashed much of the
original interior.
Essex CC acquired the house and site in the 1950s and original plans for building on the
land included plans for a hospital. Eventually, however, a new university was built: it
opened in 1964. The first intake was of c.130 students: they were taught in
portakabins as well as in the house.
The key visionary of the new University of Essex was Albert Sloman (who gave his
name to the university library). Sloman was determined to construct a university that
was democratic by design:
– The campus has no ‘front’ or ‘back’: it’s constructed around central squares
– The buildings interlock: such interlocking captured Sloman’s view of possible
dialogues between different subject areas
– Social spaces and parkland were inherent parts of the design: it was important to
live as well as to learn
– One of Sloman’s objectives was to help develop citizens who would use their
vote intelligently, as a result of careful critical thinking
– Partnership and dialogue were seen as more important than hierarchy (there was
e.g. no ‘senior common room’ and ‘junior common room’ in the new University of
Essex)
Using landscape and meteorology
…and so what Sloman and his team of
architects and designers were doing in the
early 1960s is no different in principle from
what the humans who painted the walls of
Cresswell crags were doing so many
millennia before: they were alike making
use of geographical and meteorological
features to illuminate a space so that it
became a particular kind of place
Case study in utility and psychogeography:
‘Thin places’ – Iona (1)
Case study: Iona (2)
• Iron Age hill fort on Iona (c200AD)
• Iona chosen as Christian site by St. Columba in 563AD
(earlier name of the island was Icolmcille, Gaelic name
today I Chaluim Chille, ‘Calum’s/Columba’s island’)
• Columba exiled from Ireland, travelled to Iona with 12
companions
• Site chosen for its apart-ness from the world – Iona is a
tiny island off the SW top of Mull. Apart-ness = lack of
distraction and disengagement from the noise of the
world.
• Monastery and scriptorium (writing-house) established.
Cast study: Iona and Lindisfarne
Lindisfarne founded by Aidan, c.632
•
•
•
•
The monastery of Lindisfarne was founded by Irish monk Saint Aidan, who had been
sent from Iona off the west coast of Scotland to Northumbria at the request of King
Oswald. The priory was founded before the end of 634 and Aidan remained there
until his death in 651 (from wikipedia)
Oswald (and his brother, Oswy) had been political refugees on Iona in their youth;
they were trained in Irish forms of Christianity. Oswald’s first act on becoming King of
Northumbria was to send back to Iona for a preacher who would help him convert his
people. Oswald granted Aidan land for a religious site…and unsurprisingly, Aidan
chose a ‘thin place’ on which to establish his religious house. Notably, a tradition of
literacy (historical writing, hagiography, book illustration) was early established.
Celtic Christian preachers preached in the vernacular. This was very different from
the simultaneous mission of Augustine from Rome to the Kentish court: Augustine
and his followers spoke no English. The Celtic Christian mission to Northumbria was
in fact spectacularly successful – there are records of hundreds of people a day being
baptised in the local River Glen.
In Civilisation (1969), Kenneth Clark makes the point that Celtic forms of Christianity
were essential in ensuring the survival of civilisation in these north-westerly parts of
Europe
Iona and Lindisfarne: a common
(psycho)geography
Both houses are founded on isthmuses, ‘thin places’. Not every isthmus was so tenanted,
but there are surprisingly many such sites around the shores of the UK.
And such thin places were also fairly
practical…
•
•
They offered some protection from attack from the mainland
They were abundantly provided with fish (image below is of a fish-trap on Strangford
Lough, N. Ireland)
But why should there by a tradition of spiritual
reclusiveness (> monasticism) at all?
• Monasticism derives from the life and career of St.
Anthony (C4th AD). He and his followers lived in caves in
cliffs in what is today’s Ethiopia. They lived in seclusion
partly because they distrusted how fashionable
Christianity was becoming but also so that they could
grapple in seclusion with the devil.
• And it was in Egypt that the first Christian monasteries
were founded, during the life of Anthony. (The monastery
near Hurghada – see next slide – was founded in 356AD
and is the world’s oldest Christian monastery.)
St. Anthony’s monastery, Hurghada
Monasticism, thin places and art
• And so when Celtic monks in Ireland and
England selected ‘thin places’ in which to live,
pray and work they were responding both to
spiritual precedent and practical need. Further
• Celtic Christianity is aligned with an interest in,
even a delight in, the natural world: this shows
up inter alia in artwork of the relevant period
(C7-8th, see especially the Book of Kells and the
great illustrations to the Lindisfarne Gospels)
Thin places and art
• Note the form and colouration of the initial
capital (folio 27r from the Lindisfarne
Gospels)
Cuthbert and the otters…
Cuthbert was a Lindisfarne monk and bishop (c.643-87). After his death he became one
of the most important saints of the early medieval church, particularly the church as
that existed in the North of England. His shrine in Durham Cathedral was a place of
pilgrimage throughout the medieval period.
Now one night, a brother of the monastery, seeing him go out alone followed him
privately to see what he should do. But he when he left the monastery, went down to
the sea, which flows beneath, and going into it, until the water reached his neck and
arms, spent the night in praising God. When the dawn of day approached, he came
out of the water, and, falling on his knees, began to pray again. Whilst he was doing
this, two quadrupeds, called otters, came up from the sea, and, lying down before
him on the sand, breathed upon his feet, and wiped them with their hair after which,
having received his blessing, they returned to their native element. Cuthbert himself
returned home in time to join in the accustomed hymns with the other brethren. The
brother, who waited for him on the heights, was so terrified that he could hardly reach
home; and early in the morning he came and fell at his feet, asking his pardon, for he
did not doubt that Cuthbert was fully acquainted with all that had taken place. To
whom Cuthbert replied, ” What is the matter, my brother ? What have you done? Did
you follow me to see what I was about to do? I forgive you for it on one condition,-that
you tell it to nobody before my death.” In this he followed the example of our Lord,
who, when He showed his glory to his disciples on the mountain, said, ” See that you
tell no man, until the Son of man be risen from the dead.” When the brother had
assented to this condition, he give him his blessing, and released him from all his
trouble. The man concealed this miracle during St. Cuthbert’s life; but, after his death,
took care to tell it to as many persons as he was able.
(https://exlaodicea.wordpress.com/2010/03/21/st-cuthbert-and-the-otters/, accessed 7
January 2015)
Thin places, Essex and Cedd
• The chapel of St. Peter’s, near Bradwell on Sea (Essex).
• Founded by Cedd in 654AD. Cedd was one of Aidan’s
followers and had been trained at Lindisfarne. I hadn’t
realised his ministry stretched so far south….but there
his chapel was, remotely sited on the Essex coast.
Conclusions
• Psychogeography isn’t necessarily urban
• Psychogeography isn’t merely an aesthetic
posture
• Psychogeography involves continued acts of
attentiveness to the forms and demands of
human and other histories
• Psychogeography is a set of activities
• Noticing, finding and using are essential parts of
these activities
Selected additional references
Gascoigne, Bamber (1977) The Christians. London: Jonathan Cape
Rosenthal, Michael (1987) Constable. London: Thames and Hudson.
Paul Nash, ‘Wood on the Downs’ (1930), see
http://jamesrussellontheweb.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/paul-nash-in-pictureswood-on-downs.html
(On Paul Nash see also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Nash_%28artist%29)