Stability and Place

I used to have the capacity to be crippled by space--by all manner of space, whether wide-ranging geographical locations, stores, neighborhoods, n'importe quoi. (For example, it took me almost three months to be capable of walking down Thayer St.) It used to be much worse, though, in that I would literally become so uncomfortable with a given location, that I'd have to switch, and then switch again and again, until I could find one that worked. One day, I had to go to four different gas stations, because the first three repelled me with some unseen vibe.

This repulsion was often a spatial one, though, so I can identify with the tenets of this article.

Much like John Cusack in Grosse Pointe Blanke, you never what to have your back to an open space, due to a sense of vulnerability.

TBC.

Philip David Leaman
(313) 618-1632
pleaman@g.risd.edu

      The public's use of ipods as a ubiquitous and prosthetic item is often isolating, as Biggs said at her lecture.  However, it is very interesting when wearing heaphones can be used in a community based manner to make connections and re-imagine the idea of place.  For the next few Tuesday nights at the Ladd Observatory, Brown MEME student Bevin Kelly will provide .mp3 players with  heaphones for a sound walk in this place (7-9pm).  While Biggs invites creative listening, sonic imagination, and improvisation with existing sounds, I don't connect her sound works to the socio-economically charged idea of place that Tuan discusses.  I do enjoy her ideas on verticality and the palimpsest, such as the permission of coexistence with disparate parts.  I think this implies a kind of democracy in her work.
       Concerning verticality, I recently read an interesting piece by Nick Paumgarten in the New Yorker on elevators (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/21/080421fa_fact_paumgarten).   For me, he raises an interesting question about verticality and space.  It made me wonder whether the poetry of vertical transportation will ever surpass that of the horizontal: open road, airplanes, and trains.  Also, 'directed spaces', such as a highways, have increasingly transformed more as places.. like Route 66 or Highway 61.  What is the relationship between the internet's directionality and place?

-Ben

 

While reading Yi-Fu Tuan’s paper on space, place, perspectives, spatial references and organizations of space, I was reminded of artworks used for an exhibition in 2008, specifically a suite of 20 engravings of the Xiyanglou, or European Pavilions.

“A scene may be of a place but the scene itself is not the place.”

The discourse of  the scene shifting with every change of perspective, reminded me of the translation and transformation of images of the Imperial Gardens in China through French engraving techniques by Yi Lantai, a Manchu who received his training in methods of linear perspective from Jesuit court artists, to depict the European Pavillions for the Qianlong emperor.

The European Pavillions came into existence through the Qianlong emperor's interest in Western art and architecture which led him to commission the European Pavilions at the Garden of Perfect Clarity. Designed principally by Jesuit architects and engineers and built in Beijing between 1747 and 1783, the complex was intended for the emperor's pleasure and as a place to display his collections of European objects. At the same time Chinese gardens and architectural follies were the fashion in Europe. The European Pavillions were part of the Old Summer Palace, known in China as the Gardens of Perfect Clarity (Pinyin: Yuánmíng Yuán, referred to in many books as Yuan Ming Yuan), and originally called the Imperial Gardens (Pinyin: Yù Yuán). It was a complex of palaces and gardens 8 km northwest of the walls of Beijing, built in the 18th and early 19th century, where the emperors of the Qing Dynasty resided and handled government affairs (the Forbidden City inside Beijing was used only for formal ceremonies). By the middle of the 19th century, the Imperial Gardens had undergone expansion in one form or another for over 150 years. The Old Summer Palace is often associated with the European-style palaces (built of stone. The Jesuits Giuseppe Castiglione and Michel Benoist, were employed by Emperor Qianlong to satisfy his taste for exotic buildings and objects.

In 1860 the Gardens were entirely destroyed by troops from Britain and France.

 

A suite of 20 engravings of the Xiyanglou, or European Pavilions, is the only contemporary source that documents the appearance of the architecture and landscape.

 

http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/china_paper/ss_01.html

 

What fascinated me about this suite was not only that it depicts a place that has since been destroyed and undergone transformation, but also the network of places and backgrounds responsible for building the structures visible in the prints, as well as the mixture of techniques depicting these pavilions of perfect clarity.

The sense of this place completely depends on the perspective of the visitor at the time the pavilions were still in existence, and the sense of place in the suite depends on the viewer’s imagination of this place.

How many public symbols can endure time? How long? We can suppose the reply of the questions by researching the examples of architectures. As few winners exist in the high building competition, few digital media as public symbols could maintain their own status in a high technique competition. To remain their status, architects choose the certain materials that one can’t assume the age such as glass or stainless steel. Similarly, digital media as public symbols can use high technologies that one can’t see the essence. However, to not know the age don’t contribute to enduring aging. Even though it is possible, they are inclined to be a weird transformer. For these reasons, only few buildings could stay as landmarks. I think digital media as public symbols will do so.

 

I think that digital media have two different qualities. The first one is an ostentatious visual thing that I’d mentioned above. It’s absolutely related to capitalism and politics. The second one is things that use the other senses. As the origination of the term “digit” is related to fingers, some digital media try to recover the feeling of hapticity. Other digital media focus on sound, scent and taste. They can be a good example of digital media as fields of care. It usually doesn’t emphasize visual images, instead reveals the atmosphere of a place. I think Betsey Biggs’ sound works are one of example of digital media as fields of care. They give us a chance to feel a place with intended sounds but also can contribute to rethink of a place by repeating the walk.

“Repetition is of the essence”, digital media as public symbols often repeat images themselves artificially and the images enforce just remember themselves without individual opinions, on the other hand, digital media as fields of care can encourage people to obtain the feeling of place by repeating experience.

There is one diagram in article caught my eye: "we-they" syndrome in the definition of space. Which reminds how interesting to constantly shift from "we" to "they" during the conversation. In my hometown, there are lots of farmers come into city to do the labor work such as construction, build road and buildings. They are called "Nong Minggong" by locals. I always think about them, as a matter of fact, the city can't be function very well without them, yet still, they are considered out comer. The same thing happen to me when I go to Shanghai or Beijing.

Place is “a unique ensemble of traits that merits study in its own right”.

It accounts for great emotional charge not functional node

It is formless and profane.

 

The camp for my military service was in right in the center of a city in Kangwon province, which is North East part of South Korea.

A long concrete wall surrounded the camp, and there is one big metal gate connecting to the city. The gate was guarded for 24 hours in order to check people’s entrance and exit. Beside the gate, there was a special “place” called “myun-heoi-so”, which is translated into a place for face meeting. This place was so special because it is the only place in the camp where the soldiers like me were able to see ordinary people, the one who is not in the army. Usually, parents and friends come to the place to visit the soldiers, and this was the only place the soldiers were able to eat food from outside of the camp. Since the guard duty was routine, everybody was standing next to the “myun-heoi-so” for 2 hours a day, 2 or 3 times a week. Interestingly, during weekdays the special place was a part of military camp, which we desperately wanted to escape and had to clean up and guard since no one is allowed to visit during weekdays. On the contrary, on weekends, the place becomes a real “place” since one can actually expect someone might visit him. Indeed, every morning when we cleaned up the “meeting place”, it was just a shabby gray concrete room that nobody wants to stay in. On weekends, however, it suddenly transformed into the most desirable place in the camp. It was quite amazing to see everybody in the camp paying attention to the intercom sound waiting to hear his names. In my memories of the army-time, the meeting place was a special “place”.

Tuan’s explanation of “fields of care” gets at the essence of what we personally consider place. While we are all aware of the “public symbols” around that we consider places or landmarks, they are not nearly as interesting or loaded as the places in which we impart meaning onto, even without realizing it. I grew up in the same city and lived in the same house until I was 18. As a result, I had a very strong sense of place and home, but I was not conscious of this attachment nor knew why this attachment existed. Even when I moved out for undergrad, I always felt the transplant was temporary and still visited home enough to not be conscious of the attachment. It was not until a few years ago when I started hearing people brag about Portland as a great city did I start to question my attachment to it. Like Tuan explains, although we “may have a strong sense of place, this sense is not necessarily self-conscious.” Everything people loved about Portland, I had taken for granted. Now that I am so far removed, I’ve started to notice those differences and appreciate them. This was actually one of the reasons for choosing a school so far away; I wanted a better understanding of my own home.

“A place where everyday is multiplied by the days before it” (Stark, 1948).

As I learn about the various places around town and explore my own places, I am starting to establish new “fields of care.” It is interesting to ask directions in unfamiliar places because you get directions based on the places, which hold much more significance to the teller than yourself. I’ve heard directions like, “turn right after the tree that used to be there,” or “continue past Joes old store that went out of business.” These are obviously “fields of care,” which hold significance to the locals, but outsiders are oblivious to. Although it has only been two and a half months, I have been able to establish a sense of place here, in Providence, in the studio and at my apartment, but I am still a tourist here and it still feels temporary.

"Personhood is incarnate in a piece of sculpture; and by virtue of this fact it seems to be the centre of its own world. Though a (sculpture) is an object in our perceptual space, we see it as the centre of a space all its own... a sculpture is personal feeling made visible..." - Yi-Fu Tuan

 

            I'd like to briefly discuss this concept of "incarnate personhood" or "human emotion"  embodied within sculpture and how this addresses spatial concerns within art. I'm going to start with a relatively well-known example: Piero Manzoni's 1961 piece entitled "Base of the World," in which a large metal plinth, inscribed with the words "The Base of the World, Homage to Galileo" was placed upside down in a field in Denmark. This conceptual art plays with the notions of space/place and challenges the viewer with the absurdity of it's meaning; the words are inscribed upside down to represent that this is "actually" the plinth upon which the rest of the world "stands." Clearly, this piece is a result of Manzoni's conceptual playful with his art. Nevertheless, this work is interesting in light of Yi-Fu Tuan's article in that the sculpture itself is an impacted space/place/multi-space activator; the piece itself turns the rest of the world (all our space) into its subject, and therefore, becomes the place instead of a place. With this peice, the embedded "human emotion" or "personhood made incarnate" refers directly back to Manzoni's love of irony and contradiction as well as his desire to "present the world" of limited physicality.

 

            I'd like to refer back to Krzysztof Wodiczko's homeless vehicle project. With this work, Wodiczko tests the boundaries of how sculpture might be considered place and influence space(s). By equipping homeless citizens with these "vehicles," Wodiczko turns them into heroic activators of a spatial art; the vehicles and owners being places within spaces - and, therefore the essential "sculpture" is necessarily nullified. However, the core "human emotion" of the intensional construction/deployment of these "sculptures" is recursively activated, and the "artist's emotion/intention" remains intact for the during of the project; this wasn't a sculpture for no one, it was sculptures for everyone. And space only becomes relevant when the message of Wodiczko's peice becomes the presence of these people affecting and activating the place in which they might call "home" - essentially all the places in which they travel with the vehicles, utilizing their new utility as shelter.

 

            Lastly, I'd like to refer to a recent installation called "Pour Out Your Body" by Pipilotti Rist (2008). This work is a multichannel video projection that was installed in the main atrium of the Museum of Modern Art. I actually had the chance to see this exhibition, and was thoroughly amazed at its ability to activate the space of the atrium to create a place that people appropriated/utilized in astoundingly different ways. Firstly, this was one of the largest video multichannel video projects to have ever been installed in New York (in doors), and was hailed as an amazing achievement for installation engineering dynamics (they had to create "bubbles" that came out of the top of three of the four walls of the atrium in order to place the massive projectors at the correct angle to create a multi-wall video "environment." Interestingly, I think this piece was successful because of its size and ability to activate the space in which it was installed. The video was relatively interesting, but not much more than performance-based eye candy for the most part, and actually quite aesthetically & conceptually similar to Rist's previous work. Nevertheless, the projections were so large that the videos became ultimately sublime, and because of Rist's use of slow motion imagery and bright colors, people felt quite calm and soothed by the place that the space had created. Indeed, people began lying down and watching the projections (quite rare for the MOMA's atrium zone, and I remember seeing people reading and writing in the place - as if it offered them an artistic "environment" in which to feel inspired and surrounded by others equally enthralled by its holistic presence. The place felt almost sacred in a way - being that this place had been artistically evolved into a place of contemplation and aesthetic appreciation; the significance of Rist's personal emotion made incarnate by the concerned placement of her art.