Nomadic Explorations V1: Essays in the Craft (original) (raw)
Related papers
Reconnecting with darkness: gloomy landscapes, lightless places
Social and Cultural Geograohy, 2013
This paper investigates the effects and affects of darkness, a condition that is progressively becoming less familiar for those of us in the over-illuminated West. In countering the prevailing cultural understanding that darkness is a negative condition, I draw attention to other historical and cultural ways of positively valuing darkness. Subsequently, in drawing on two sites, a gloomy landscape at a dark sky park in South Scotland, and a tourist attraction in which a simulation of New York is experienced in a completely dark environment, I explore the multivalent qualities of darkness. In foregrounding the becoming of sensory experience in gloomy space, I highlight the mobilisation of alternative modes of visual perception in as well as the emergence of non-visual apprehensions, and suggest that the potentialities of darkness might foster progressive forms of conviviality, communication and imagination.
Nordiques, 2024
Epic poem Aniara was published in 1956 by Harry Martinson. Its 2018 film adaptation by Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja contributed to a rediscovery of the original work and ignited further interpretations. Aniara depicts the long ill-fated trip of the eponymous spaceship, which supposedly should have carried thousands of people away from Earth during “a time of calm, repose and quarantine”. A malfunction knocks Aniara off course and leaves the spacecraft wander towards the limits of both nature’s empty space and humans’ experience. While the epic poem, written in the tension-stricken time of Cold War, pointed at “toxic radiation” as reason for the exile from Earth, the film version focuses on the consequences of climate change. Alone and directionless in a hostile un-nature, humans lack ground. Ghostly images of the environment return in the much alluring pictures broadcasted by Mima – the spaceship controlling machine which offers consolation and an ephemeral nostalgia of lost unity. The aim of this article is to further investigate the consequence of the broken bond between humans and nature in Aniara and provide an ecocritical and posthumanist reading of Martinson’s and Kågerman/Lilja’s works as a representation of mankind as a peculiar form of lone exobiology adrift in the mute (techno)sphere.
Nights and mountains. Preliminary explorations of a double frontier
Revue de géographie alpine , 2018
The night has long been a time-space marked by the low investment of human activity - a time of pausing, a « border », in the American sense of frontier, «a limit reached through the exploitation and advancement of colonizers looking to establish outposts in lands hitherto empty or sparsely populated” (Brunet, 1992). It has been a limit at which one encounters not one’s neighbours but the unknown -- the mark, in other words, of a territory to be explored. Times have changed, however. Over the last twenty years, we may point to a colonization of the night by human activities. These movements of extension beyond the limits of the day of society and diurnalization of the night are now well studied in relation to urban contexts, to the point at which one may now speak of the emergence of “Night Studies” in relation to urban contexts. The same changes are less examined outside of cities and, in particular, in relation to mountains, territories which are regularly subject to exploitation and reinvention. Beyond the clichés that surround them, both the mountain and the night are now observed and studied separately as territories of innovation.
Introduction to geographies of darkness
cultural geographies, 2015
Introduction to Geographies of Darkness Light pervades space and when it does not, darkness emerges and is usually vanquished with electric illumination. The perception of light and gloom is an existential dimension of experiencing space and time. Although rhythms of light and dark play out differently according to geography, all sighted people perceive, sense, act and construe meanings of space, place and landscape according to their diverse, changing qualities of luminosity and murkiness. Despite this shared, all-pervasive aspect of human experience, geographical investigation of daylight, darkness and illumination is meagre indeed. This dearth is startling when we consider how sunlight and shadow condition the appearance of landscape, the cultural values and meanings attributed to the luminous and shadowy qualities of place, and the alignment of diverse spatial practices with nightfall and dawn, for instance. It is as if place, space and landscape are by default, conceived as being washed in a neutral daylight, rather than being dynamically conditioned by vital light and dark. This special issue focuses specifically on darkness, on how particular practices, cultural values and conceptions circulate around gloom, and have been continuously articulated and contested over time. The papers here explore different dark spaces, and endeavour to address John Jakle's complaint that 'landscape has been conceptualised primarily in terms of daytime use' i. They also elucidate how in contemporary times, darkness is being revalued in multiple ways. These reappraisals are especially pertinent because darkness has been progressively banished through what Koslofsky ii calls 'nocturnalisation', the expansion of social and economic activity into the night and the subsequent spread of illumination, a process persistently informed by religious and modernist discourses, and lasting fears about darkness. This 'colonization' iii proceeds as nightclubs extend opening hours, entertainment districts expand, all-night retail outlets multiply, and urban districts service the needs of shift workers. Because we are habituated to ubiquitous illumination, it is difficult to imagine the pervasive darkness that formerly saturated most space after nightfall and the very real perils, discomforts and inconveniences that suffused everyday life. As Roger Ekirch iv details, numerous hazards proliferated after nightfall in medieval towns, with rubbish, ditches, excrement laden streets and overhanging timbers, not to mention the footpads, murderers and robbers who lurked in the dark. No wonder householders performed the daily ritual of 'shutting in', bolting doors and windows to guard against nocturnal intrusion or that many towns organized a night watch and locked the city gates to guard against malevolent interlopers. Inside houses, rudimentary candles provided 'small patches of light amid the blackness' v , requiring endless vigilance to keep them aflame. Yet despite these unpropitious conditions, pervasive darkness also solicited the development of practical competencies. These included navigation by star-filled skies and familiarity with the moon, its phases and the ways in which it transformed landscape, with the 'changing colours and
Ecopsychology, 2023
Modern Western society currently privileges aspects of light over dark, which is apparent in issues such as light pollution and human's declining relationship with the darkness of night. This article begins the inquiry into possible healing aspects of individual's lived experiences of Natural Darkness (ND) in overnight recollective practices. Recollective practices aim to heal the dualism of the nature/psyche divide through processes that reintegrate the human psyche with the natural world. Semistructured interviews were conducted with eight participants who described their memories with ND during overnight recollective practices. Participants reported that ND contributed to conditions for rest and reprieve, interconnection with something greater, and processing of psychological material. The variety of experiences of ND reveal that this phenomenon cannot be considered essentially good or bad; healthy or unhealthy. For some, ND provided conditions for psychological healing. For others it induced fear; fear that was potentially overwhelming, as well as fear that contributed to interconnection.
From Darkness into Light? Reflections on Wandering in Darkness
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 2012
eleonore Stump's Wandering in Darkness is a magnificent achievement. It combines the acuity and rigor of analytic philosophy with a deeply and richly imaginative approach to the interpretation of literary (and especially biblical) texts, and to our understanding of human nature. There is much here with which I agree and such criticisms as I offer mainly take the form of friendly amendments. Given the length and complexity of the book I have had to ignore many issues altogether, and also to omit many subtleties in her discussion of those issues with which I do engage. In particular, I much regret not having space to discuss her illuminating remarks about the role of stories in what she dubs 'Franciscan' knowledge, and her penetrating and stimulating application of these ideas to biblical exegesis. I begin with some questions about the general nature of her project. DeFeNCe AND THeoDICY 1 All otherwise unidentified page references are to eleonore Stump, Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (oxford: oxford university Press, 2010).
Creative Encounters with the Dark Forest
Ecopedagogies Symposium: Critical and Creative Approaches. Conference at the Firs Botanical Research Centre and Manchester Museum, 3 July, 2024
I propose a paper and a ‘sonified photograph’ sound installation, sharing my practice-based photography PhD research explored in partnership with Kielder Observatory, in Northumberland International Dark Sky Park. Through conversational and/or sensory engagements with human and more-than-human communities, I explored the dark-sky experience in Northern England through photography practice, distinct from conventional starry-sky ‘astrophotography.’ Creative co-learning was key, where photographic outputs catalysed conversations on the dark-sky experience with Observatory stakeholders, drawing attention to imaginative nocturnal experience. Kielder Observatory is an off-grid facility in Kielder Forest, in England’s largest human-made woodland. Through arts-based research, narrative inquiry and reflective practice, I encountered dark-sky communities, photographed at night and slept under the stars. Whilst a ‘built’ forest, Kielder’s vibrant species of birds, mosses and insects contributed to creative outputs in unexpected ways, marking outdoor exhibited images and enhancing a ‘sonified photograph’ sound trail. When disseminating work through public events and ‘art’ walking tours, I learned how creativity in the dark forest connects human and more-than-human communities through “knowing as you go” (Ingold, 2000, pp. 228-231), where wandering and dwelling enabled learning under dark skies. Ingold, T. (2000) The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London: Routledge. https://ecopedagogies.cargo.site/
1993
This creative dissertation in poetry explores the physical, psychic, and emotional wildernesses that people may blunder into, be forced into, or choose to inhabit. Section One, The Logic of The Lost, explores differences in perceptions, those of memory and immediate experience. These differences may be harmless, amusing, or costly, and they may persist or evolve. These poems move toward feelings that are not fully resolved, either for the narrator or the character involved. Section Two, The Mirror of Deceit, explores the ironies inherent in teaching and writing poetry. Each can be approached with passion or dread, each is a form of artistry, each produces distractions, deceptions, and failures. Section Three, Out of Darkness, begins with poems that echo the "lost" and "deceived" voices of the earlier sections by exploring the public and private darknesses people may endure. But it turns, mid-section, toward poems that find points of equilibrium or moments of reco...
2023
We tend to focus our lives, individually and collectively, on the daytime, and often extend the daytime artificially as far as we can into the nighttime. And we tend to prefer the summertime, with the light and warmth of the sun, above the wintertime, with its colder and darker periods. But to live a balanced life, as the ancient Taoist Yin/Yang symbol has depicted so well, it is important to appreciate the night- and wintertime as well, to even be aware of the fact that our life – which is perpetually going through cyclical changes – has always been and will always remain rooted in the dark: in the night and in the wintertime. We must even realize that life in general is always rooted in death, and cannot exist without it – a truth that is shown by any plant or tree rooted in fertile earth.