Place and Non-Place Lecture 3. Landscape is a natural scene mediated by culture. It is both a...

Place and Non-Place

Lecture 3

Landscape is a natural scene mediated by culture.

It is both a represented and presented space, both a signifier and a signified.

WJT Mitchell

GENIUS LOCI

The unique spirit of place

To be human is to live in a world that is filled with significant places: to be human is to have and know your place

E Relph (Place and Placelessness)

Oliver Bomberg, Courtyard, 1997

Thomas Demand, Rolltreppe (escalator), 2000

Thomas Demand, Gate, 2004

People do not simply locate themselves, they define themselves through a sense of place.

Michael ChangCultural Geography

Nathan ColeyVilla Savoye 1997

MACDONALDLAND

In its brightness and its suggestion of fantasy that is not realised, in its superficial gloss to disguise a very ordinary product, in its intimations of adventure and freedom that barely obscure a precise and rigid organisation, and especially in its obvious and seductive appeal for commercial ends.

E Relph

Brent Cross, London

Oklahoma City

‘Little Italy’, New York New York, Las Vegas

What is ‘non-place’?

Can ‘non-place’ be a place?

Willie Doherty 2000

Marc Augé,

Non-Places:

Introduction to an

Anthropology of

Supermodernity, 1995

Hong Kong Airport

Heathrow Airport

Stuttgart Airport Germany

Kansai Airport, Osaka Japan

I suspect that the airport will be the true city of the 21st century. The great airports of the planet are already suburbs of an invisible world capital … a centripetal city whose population forever circles its notional centre, and will never need to gain access to its dark heart

JG Ballard

Untitled (Tokyo)Peter Fischli / David Weiss, 1990/2003

Carol Rhodes

Service Station, 1998

Placelessness

Willie Doherty 2000Oliver Bomberg, Concrete Bridge, 1997

Oliver Bomberg, City Tunnel, 1998

Placelessness

Mass communication appears to result in a growing uniformity of landscape and a lessening diversity of places by encouraging and transmitting general and standardised tastes and fashions

E Relph

Elvira HufschmidHighway Poem, 2004

Jennie Pineus, Head Cocoons and Cocoonchair, 2000

Lucy OrtaRefuge Wear, 2001

Perhaps all this movement blurs our surroundings, like a view from a train window, separating ‘us’ from ‘them’.

…is place becoming increasingly dissolved by the developments of the modern world? Is the local vernacular being replaced by international conformity? Are we losing distinct places and places of distinction? Are our most powerful relationships with other places mediated by the screen?

Tacita Dean / Jeremy Millar - Place

Map RockSnake River, IdahoArtist and date unknown

The real voyage of discovery consists in not seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes

Marcel Proust

For the Seminar:

• Choose an image which you feel represents the concept of ‘placelessness’ or ‘non-place’

• How does this image challenge ideas of ‘place’ discussed earlier in the programme?

• Can ‘nowhere’ also be somewhere?

Bring your Critical Notebook and come prepared to discuss your ideas for your essay!