Art and Geographical Thought/Institutions in the Histories of Geography: 2 CFPs of the Commission History of Geography for the 35th International Geographical Congress, Dublin 24-30 August 2024 (original) (raw)
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Purpose: This symposium celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Terra Foundation’s Summer Residency program in Giverny. As a tribute to the Foundation’s mission to foster exploration of American art across national boundaries, “Geographies of Art: Sur le Terrain” examines the state of the field of American Art in a global context. For three days, participants will explore the cultural and conceptual implications of such a context through papers and dialogue that provide international perspectives and encourage lively exchange—the two foundational premises of the Terra Summer Residency. The event will include artists and art historians who are alumni of the program, as well as other prominent scholars in the discipline. By including both artists and art historians, this symposium will reflect the vital and unique opportunity offered by the Residency: a site where practitioners and historians of art can interact and collaborate. In honour of this interdisciplinary and international model, the conference seeks to “put on the table”—as the French phrase suggests—the concept of a “geography” of American art. Themes: The conference will aim to address a number of broad questions, with each day shaped to more specifically reflect on issues of “geography” and art. What is the relationship between American art and physical place? How has the “terrain” of American art shifted in the last ten years, and in what directions are artists and art historians moving in today? How have international perspectives changed the questions that scholars ask and the methods that they use? The conference will begin with an evening keynote address given by Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby of the University of California, Berkeley, and then continue on the second day with two panels on the theme of “Terra Firma/Terra Incognita.” Art history has traditionally employed formal geographic descriptions from its own field, such as “horizon” or “landscape,” to explore conceptions of nation and territory derived from the social sciences. These spatial metaphors often result in accounts of artistic exchange between Europe and America based on conflict and competition. “Terra Firma/Terra Incognita” aims to offer a more nuanced account of transatlantic dialogue, covering not simply a geographical space but also a mental topography. This reconsideration of space proposes a related discussion of time, and anachronism’s role in an artwork. The two panels on this day will address geography’s disciplinary affinity with art history and how artistic practice can play a crucial role in making otherwise unknown spaces of “America” visible. Panelists in the morning will address different centuries, media, and concepts of time and space in American art. Panelists in the afternoon will be invited to reflect on the role of gender in constructing, or challenging, a geographical narrative of American art. The third day will feature one panel and a roundtable discussion. The panel will be on the topic of “Translatitudes.” For many artists, working in a new location, taking up residence in another country, separating themselves from a familiar community and landscape—a literal shift in latitude—becomes the foundation of artistic production. Physical distance can facilitate a rupture with tradition, provoke memory, and reveal unexpected connections between different cultures. This day’s panel explores geographical movement as a conceptual catalyst for creativity, not only across oceans but also across borders and languages. We will embody our own small latitudinal shift when we travel from Giverny to Paris in the morning to conclude the conference in the new Terra facilities there. The roundtable at the end of the day will further consider the themes and questions proposed by the conference and the speakers, while allowing further chance for all participants to engage in discussion and debate.
Critical Cartography of Art and Visuality in the Global Age II (Book)
Critical Cartography of Art and Visuality in the Global Age II, 2018
This volume addresses questions that are crucial to approaching art, visuality, and cultural policies from the perspective of global transformations and the rise of new social, political and cultural paradigms. The concept of territory is the theoretical underpinning off three sections of the volume: “The Geoasthetic Hypothesis: Constructing and Deconstructing Territories”; “Creativity and Dissent: The Future as a Contested Territory”; and “Value, Labour and Gender: Spaces of (Un)Recognition”. Obviously, in this case, territory is not viewed as a two-dimensional space that can be abstracted into a map; it rather emerges as a multidimensional place of proximity and difference, of consensus and conflict, of hegemonies and dissent. It expands from the private space of domestic labour to the public field of politics; rather than treating them as separate fields, they are viewed as a complex continuum, where the narratives of displacement, dissent and utopia are being interwoven. In order to understand its multiple dimensions and problematics (cultural, political, social), the volume adopts an approach that extends beyond art theory and aesthetics, into the realm of economics, geography and political theory.
ARTL@S est un projet d'histoire spatiale et transnationale des arts et des lettres, fondée sur la pratique conjointe de l'approche quantitative et de la visualisation cartographique. Ces deux stratégies s'insèrent dans une perspective nourrie de théorie critique et sociologique, intéressée par la mise en évidence de l'articulation entre une création et son espace, et des enjeux politiques, sociaux, esthétiques, économiques, sous-jacents à cette création. Nous avons choisi de tirer au mieux parti des possibilités offertes par l'outil informatique : bases de données, analyse quantitative, représentation graphique et géographique, web. Cette introduction, après avoir présenté ARTL@S, se propose de démontrer les apports de la cartographie pour l'histoire des arts et des lettres et de situer notre projet dans un contexte historiographique plus large.
RGS 2016 - The Nexus of Art and Geography: practice as research
Spatial practices are not unique to geography, historically artists have engaged with materialities as social practice (Courage, 2015; Kester, 2011; Lacy, 1998) physical environments (landscape painting, perspective) and exploring and shaping concepts of time and space (virtual worlds, telematics/telepresence). Both fields share experiences of spatial and social turns in theory (Soja, 2008; Bishop, 2006; Bourriaud, Massey, 2005), and practice (Mel Chin; In Certain Places; M12; France Whitehead) with theoretical, methodological and epistemological impacts. As the Century of the System (Gawande, 2014) progresses it is no longer possible for any single discipline to address potential future concerns and systemic approaches will be required to address current nexus challenges; water, food, energy, climate, economic growth and human security. As part of a growing inter- and transdisciplinary concern to research and practice, the dissolving of both academic and sector field-specific boundaries is emerging. Methodological promiscuity is common practice within arts' practice, matured through a half century of non-object, process-orientated practices, cross-pollinating and fertilising ideas across ‘disciplinary frontiers to address global challenges for humanity and the earth’s myriad of systems’ (McKeown, 2015). The artistic and spatial turn across arts and geographical disciplines is maturing and the conversation is not an exclusive, but mutual conversation. Artistic practices utilise geographical methods; Cartography, GIS, Spatial Inquiry, Participant Observation and share research interests with geography e.g. Information Modelling, a cultural and emotional engagement with place. Equally, geographers are utilising arts-based methods (Hawkins, 2012; Rose, 2011); visual and performative methods and methodologies e.g. Photography, Compositional Analysis, the Situationist’s dérive, to expand their understanding of the world and make connections to synthesise knowledge between disciplines. This panel, taking inspiration from the nexus theme of the RGS-IBG 2016 annual conference, aims to bring together ‘artist-geographers’ and ‘geographer-artists’ to present on the perspective of practice-based/practice as research, engaged in nexus discourse towards social-ecological resilience. We have sought a range of submissions from artists, geographers, researchers, curators commissioners, scientists or others working in this area, and have curated a three-part session that addresses an intellectual and artistic narrative through theory, practice and application through to plenary session. Subjects addressed will include but are not limited to: Systems thinking for knowledge production within the Arts / Geographic practices; Practices encouraging collaborative research and interdisciplinary problem-finding; Practice as research and the development of new methodologies through fieldwork; Discovering new questions through collaborative research; Exploring symbiotic relationships towards different ways of knowing and producing knowledge within Arts and Geography collaborations; Agile adaptive behaviour - The fluid state between specialist and non-specialist; itinerant academics and artists.
Though not yet readily apparent in articles and book chapters, there is a burgeoning series of 'in the field' collaborations between geomorphologists and artists focused around the mutual exploration of 'inspirational landscapes', and the harnessing of the emotive dimensions of such body/world encounters in the production and communication of geomorphological knowledge. Seemingly at odds with the discipline's emphasis upon the production of fieldwork data (as opposed to sensed phenomena), as well as its disavowal of the subjective, this work nevertheless resonates with a complex and fascinating aesthetic tradition within geomorphology. Here, we 'place' these contemporary collaborations via: reference to Humboldtian science, and the crucial link between sensibility and precision; a reading of the Kantian sublime in the work of G.K. Gilbert; a sketching out of the evisceration of both the aesthetic and art in the second half of the 20th century; and, finally, a review of the current scope of art/geomorphology collaborations, and possible futures.
Connections Between Geography and Aesthetics
2020
There are some interesting connections between epistemological issues concerning geography and the main interests of environmental aesthetics. Environmental aesthetics has already dealt with the issue whether certain kinds of scientific knowledge are relevant or not to aesthetic appreciation. What we hold here is that aesthetic appreciation of the environment plays a relevant role to the scientific knowledge of it. The argument unfolds in three steps. First, I will establish a phenomenological notion of geographical experience. This includes an overview of the debate in human geography between two epistemologies: a quantitative, nomothetic and an-aesthetic one and a more qualitative, idiographic and phenomenological one. Second, I will discuss some of the aesthetic metaphors that geographers and social scientists, who have adopted the second epistemology, have been using to build the geographical concept of place. Third, I will show that aesthetic appreciation serves as the basis fo...
Special Issue on Art & Cartography
The Cartographic Journal, 2009
Special Issue on Art & Cartography: An introduction "A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing." Oscar Wilde Maps are generator of ideas, gateways to old and new worlds, able to cope with both imaginary and hyperrealistic realms: This might be one reason among others why maps, mapping processes and mapping techniques became such a powerful paradigm in various artistic fieldsand on the other hand, why maps themselves often feature highly artful qualities. Whilst the aesthetic dimension of maps has dominated the artistic discourse in cartography over centuries, the relationships between cartography and art have been totally transformed during the last decade or two. The interface between art and cartography reaches a historically completely new dimension. A leap forward can be seen when both domains are combined to contribute to the ongoing debates about citizenship, nation, territories and, borders, transnational migration, capital and power asymmetries in a global perspective, territorial or public observation and measurement. This transformation is illustrated by several recent exhibitions, publications and conferences 1. These examples are impressive examples of how artists make use of mapping and mapping techniques to comment on our world in a critical, ironic, utopian or imaginative way. The media they use range from textile creations to drawings/paintings, from photography to media installations. In other words: By adopting the almost unlimited means that contemporary cartography supports, a mapping "palette" has been provided, allowing the design and output of dedicated, politically relevant artistic interpretations. This artistic interest for maps resonates with the increasing level of ubiquity of maps in our societies. Maps are now parts of life"s daily activities, and works of arts involving maps now appear in galleries, public spaces, newspapers, television programmes, web sites, blogs and on bookcovers.
Geography and art: encountering place across disciplines
This article summarises a project undertaken at the Newton Park campus of Bath Spa University over 1 week in October 2015. The project provided a space for interdisciplinary collaborations between geography and art students to explore the commonalities and differences in how they saw, interpreted and creatively represented the campus, using a variety of methods. This article outlines the project and reflects on the processes, outcomes, and challenges of collaboration. It highlights how this approach can enhance student learning experiences, by facilitating more interdisciplinary collaboration across the sciences, arts and humanities, and social sciences. In doing so, it explores the potential and pitfalls of collaborative cultural geography in practice across disciplines. Encountering place across disciplines Our conceptual beginning, and common interest, was in how the disciplines of art and geography understand, measure, and represent place. In particular, we were interested in how different subjects influence students' perspectives on place, and their point of focus on themes, including environmental processes, materials, change over time and space, or access and management. This article summarises a project designed to explore these interests at the Newton Park campus of Bath