Geographical Aesthetics: Imagining Space, Staging Encounters

320 Pages·2015·3.53 MB·English

by  Elizabeth Straughan

GeoGraphical aesthetics
For Deborah and Sallie,
thank you.
Geographical aesthetics
imagining space, staging encounters
edited by
harriet hawkins
Royal Holloway, University of London, UK
elizabeth strauGhan
University of Glasgow, UK
© harriet hawkins and elizabeth straughan, and the contributors 2015
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
harriet hawkins and elizabeth straughan have asserted their right under the copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
published by
ashgate publishing limited ashgate publishing company
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
a catalogue record for this book is available from the british library
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Geographical aesthetics : imagining space, staging encounters / by harriet hawkins and
elizabeth straughan.
pages cm
includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-1-4094-4801-3 (hardback) -- isbn 978-1-4094-4802-0 (ebook) -- isbn 978-
1-4094-7380-0 (epub) 1. Geographical perception. 2. aesthetics. i. hawkins, harriet,
1980- editor of compilation, author. ii. straughan, elizabeth, editor of compilation, author.
G71.5.G44 2015
910.01--dc23
2014037307
isbn: 9781409448013 (hbk)
isbn: 9781409448020 (ebk – pDF)
isbn: 9781409473800 (ebk – epub)
printed in the united kingdom by henry ling limited,
at the Dorset press, Dorchester, Dt1 1hD
Contents
List of Figures vii
Notes on Contributors ix
Preface xiii
Introduction: For Geographical Aesthetics 1
Section one towardS a LiveLy aeStheticS 19
1 On Aisthêsis, ‘Inner Touch’ and the Aesthetics of the Moving Body 35
Mark Paterson
2 Anime Cosplay as Love-Sublimation 53
Paul Kingsbury
3 Activist Pedagogies Through Rancière’s Aesthetic Lens 71
Naomi Millner
4 Relational Urban Interventions 91
Ashley Dawkins and Alex Loftus
Section two aeSthetic encounterS 105
5 Comforting Others: Sociality and the Ethical Aesthetics
of Being-Together 121
Danny McNally
6 The Artifice of Landscape: Photomontage in the Work
of Beate Gütschow 137
Alex Vasudevan
7 Biostratigraphy and Disability Art: An Introduction
to the Work of Jon Adams 165
Hannah Macpherson (with Jon Adams)
vi Geographical Aesthetics
8 Death Drive: Final Tracings 181
James Riding
9 Aesthetic Regard for Nature in Environmental and Land Art 197
Emily Brady
Section three tiSSueS and textureS:
reimagining the SurficiaL 211
10 The Mantle of the Earth: Surfaces, Landscape and Aesthetics 225
Veronica della Dora
11 Thinking With/As a Frog: Art, Science and the Performative Image 251
Deborah Dixon
12 The Contested Aesthetics of Farmed Animals: Visual and Genetic
Views of the Body 267
Lewis Holloway and Carol Morris
Conclusion: Reimagining Geoaesthetics 283
Index 299
List of Figures
2.1 Cosplaying with costumes and props 58
2.2 Playing dead? 61
2.3 The ‘Uma uma dance’ 64
2.4 The glomp circle 65
5.1 Vyner Street (1), Hackney, during the First Thursdays event 122
5.2 Vyner Street (2), Hackney, during the First Thursdays event 123
5.3 Crowd outside a gallery on Redchurch Street 124
6.1 Beate Gütschow, RS#1 (2006) 5 minutes, HD video transferred to
PAL video 138
6.2 Beate Gütschow, RS#2 (2006) 5 minutes, HD video transferred to
PAL video 138
6.3 Beate Gütschow, LS#17 (2003) C-print, 116cm × 169cm 149
6.4 Beate Gütschow, LS#7 (1999) C-print, 164cm × 116cm 151
6.5 Beate Gütschow, LS#11 (2001) C-print, 146cm × 116cm 152
6.6 Beate Gütschow, S#16 (2006) LightJet Print, 142cm × 122cm 159
7.1 Jon Adams, Love, Hate, Desire: ‘Goose on the Hill’ exhibition (2009) 166
7.2 Jon Adams, The note making process for final biostratigraphy – an
example from the London Olympic 2012 opening ceremony 167
7.3 Jon Adams, My mapping day – A ‘Look About’ Biostratigraphy 168
7.4 Jon Adams, A ‘Look About’ Fossil Collection 169
8.1 Photograph of a poem and flowers left at the memorial stone 190
8.2 Photograph of poem left at graveside 192
10.1 Scene of the Annunciation on the curtain of the iconostasis of the
main church in Filotheou Monastery, Mount Athos 230
10.2 Reproduction of the Ebstorfer mappa mundi (1234) 234
10.3 Martin Waldseemuller, Universalis cosmographia (1507) 235
10.4 Johannes Stradanus, Frontispiece of Americae retectio (1592) 236
10.5 Domenico Ghirlandaio, Madonna della misericordia protecting
members of the Vespucci family, Florence (1472) 237
10.6 Frontispiece of Strabo’s Geography (1707) 238
10.7 Vincenzo Coronelli, Regno di Negroponte, in Isolario dell’atlante
veneto (1696) 239
viii Geographical Aesthetics
11.1 Twelve stages in the sequence from the head of a frog to the head
of a primitive man. Coloured etchings by Christian von Mechel
after Lavater (1797) 256
11.2 Untitled, appended plate to the 1884 edition of Du Bois-
Reymond’s Untersuchungen uber thierische Elektricitat 260
Notes on Contributors
Jon Adams is Research Fellow at the University of Portsmouth and Associate
artist with the New Theatre Royal. He was awarded a RSA Fellowship in 2012
and serves on the Arts Council South West Area Council. He graduated from
Kings College, University of London with a degree in geology. After working
as a scientific and archaeological book illustrator his work became more
conceptual, weaving together science and art, digital and analogue, his synaesthesia
and autobiographical experiences.
Emily Brady is Professor of Environment and Philosophy at the School of
Geosciences, University of Edinburgh. Her research interests move between
contemporary and historical approaches in aesthetics and environmental
philosophy, and include environmental aesthetics; environmental ethics and
aesthetic experience and value. She has served as President of the International
Society for Environmental Ethics for three years and is author of Aesthetics of
the Natural Environment (Edinburgh University Press 2003) and The Sublime in
Modern Philosophy (Cambridge University Press 2013).
Ashley Dawkins is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Geography
at Royal Holloway, University of London and Kings College London. He is
conducting research on the politics of urban art interventions in Chicago, New
York and London. He has published his work in Transactions of the Institute of
British Geographers.
Veronica della Dora is Professor of Human Geography at Royal Holloway,
University of London. Her main research interests include: cultural and historical
geography; landscape studies; history of cartography; sacred geographies; science
studies; Byzantine and post-Byzantine studies; Eastern Mediterranean studies.
She is author of Imagining Mt Athos (University of Virgina Press 2011) and co-
editor of High Places (IB Tauris 2008).
Deborah Dixon is a Professor of Human Geography at University of Glasgow. Her
research is driven by an interest in the ideas, concepts, ethics and politics of both
poststructuralist and feminist theories, but is very much grounded in case study
analysis of monstrous, media and marginal geographies, topics which overlap time
and again in often unexpected ways. In her work she explores the conceptual and
methodological possibilities afforded by these theoretical framings. She is the co-
editor of Feminist Geopolitics: At the Sharp Edge (Routledge 2013).