No prior memories of place

No prior memories can be a problem…

Photos can be presented of a location you know very little about. I was an infant at this above location, so am unable to accurately discern the memorable cultural information, gleaned through lived experience. When assessing an unknown location there may be particular qualities needed by an artist-as-geographer. Immediacy, the ability to reinterpret collective memory, intrepid curiosity may be vital. Many must take this journey alone.

There may be a need to check your viewing position and any assumptions you may be bringing with you. Sensitivity and insight may be useful, but so is just sitting and listening and quietly looking, with a ‘blank’ gentleness and a sort of useful ‘lack of knowing’ that allows you to slowly understand the surroundings.

Long vigils or return visits may be useful. Note all the changes and the complexities; do not rely solely on your memory to record these. Local people may help you if you do not understand, fully, what is happening, or what you are feeling in that place. Write, sketch, photograph, compose, cook and walk in that location.

Library research may be needed for complex calculations. Indebtedness may be directed to others, and dwellers of the past. Allow all sides to be heard, rather than pursuing selective stories that may omit some.

Remind yourself that you may only initially be perceiving edges of place. Allow your sketches, writing or photographs to develop intuitively. Are you an armchair traveller or do you slide into the mud and water of a riverbank, just as one did as a child? Some people take a team with them, while others, the bare minimum of equipment with a candle to complete their field notes , alone, at the end of the day.

There can be shocks; you have to be open to what the place wishes you to see. Did the birds deliver messages? Draw on previous working / artistic skills you have developed. For instance, careful, hand-sewing skills bring precision to any observations of place…nothing will be left loose and metaphorically ‘flapping’. The senses can be refreshed, sharpened and used with varying degrees of sensitivity. Perhaps there are local ways of perceiving the local place? Perhaps sitting on the verandah in the afternoon will potentiate the same degree of knowledge concerning the place’s daily movements? You may have to dare to venture where you will not return to the same sense of self. Australia easily does this to you.

Do you bring safeguards to balance yourself from your own accompanying emotions so they may not override any analytical observations? Consider that the enduring value of an archive may not be a record of your emotions! Have you considered ethics considerations. Perhaps you are at a meeting place where the other party does not wish to meet you?

What can you represent that others may not know of?

HAVE YOU INCLDUED THE INFLUENCE, THE ATMOSPHERE, OR THE PRESENCE OF THE NATURAL WORLD? We are only here for such a short time.

Further reading:

Huw Lewis-Jones, The Explorers’ Sketchbooks: The Art of Discovery and Adventure, Thames and Hudson, 2016