The Intelligence of Place: Topographies and Poetics

298 Pages·2015·7.808 MB·English

by  Jeff Malpas

Th e Intelligence of Place
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Th e Intelligence of Place
Topographies and Poetics
Edited by
Jeff Malpas
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published 2015
Paperback edition fi rst published 2017
© Jeff Malpas and Contributors, 2015
Jeff Malpas has asserted his right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identifi ed as the Editor of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
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No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting
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can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-4725-8867-8
PB: 978-1-3500-3633-8
ePDF: 978-1-4725-8869-2
ePub: 978-1-4725-8868-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The intelligence of place : topographies and poetics /
edited by Jeff Malpas. – 1 [edition].
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4725-8867-8 (hb) – ISBN 978-1-4725-8868-5 (epub) –
ISBN 978-1-4725-8869-2 (epdf) 1. Place (Philosophy) I. Malpas, Jeff, editor.
B105.P53I58 2015
114–dc23
2015019489
Typeset by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India
Contents
List of Figures v i
Contributors viii
Acknowledgements x i
Introduction – Th e Intelligence of Place Jeff Malpas 1
1 Place and a Kind of Sentience – Th ese Trees in Particular
Susan Stewart 11
2 Place and Limit M assimo Cacciari 1 3
3 Place and Edge Edward S. Casey 23
4 Place and Loss J essica Dubow 3 9
5 Place and Histories – Writing Other People’s Memories
Lucy R. Lippard 5 1
6 Place and Singularity Jeff Malpas 65
7 Place and Its Mediated Re-Placements Joshua Meyrowitz 9 3
8 Place and Atmosphere Juhani Pallasmaa 129
9 Place and Architectural Space A lberto Pérez-Gómez 1 57
10 Place and Connection E dward Relph 1 77
11 Place and Sensory Composition Kathleen Stewart 2 05
12 Place and Formulation Kenneth White 2 21
Bibliography 253
Index 2 69
List of Figures
5.1 Procession celebrating the 125th anniversary of La Iglesia de
Nuestra Senora de los Remedios, in Galisteo, New Mexico, 2009,
photo: Tom Martinelli. 5 2
5.2 Tom Ward, cutting turf on Kilsallagh bog, July 2013,
photo: Deirdre O’Mahony. 54
5.3 L ewis deSoto, four works from the Tahualtapa Project 1983–8. 5 7
5.4 Lewis deSoto, from the Tahualtapa Project 1983–8,
‘Slover Codex’, black-and-white photograph, mylar,
ink and silver spray paint. Collection of the Seattle Art Museum. 58
5.5 L ewis deSoto, ‘Tahualtapa, Hill of the Ravens’, 32’ × 32’,
black-and-white photograph, silver spray paint, wood,
Plexiglas and black feathers. Collection of the Seattle Art Museum. 5 9
5.6 N eighbour Freddy Lujan directs the negotiation of his mobile
home to its site in the village of Chacon, NM. 60
5.7 Artists Used to Live Here , Williamsburg, Brooklyn,
from Su Friedrich’s 2012 fi lm Gut Renovation. 6 1
6.1 Singularity in desolation: Queenstown in Western Tasmania;
photo by Ilona Schneider, by permission of the photographer. 6 6
6.2 Singularity as touristic destination: Wineglass Bay on
Tasmania’s East Coast; photo by Stephen Laird,
by permission of the photographer. 6 7
6.3 McDonalds restaurant in Chandni Chowk in Old Delhi;
photo by Simon de Trey-White, by permission of the photographer. 7 0
10.1 Special Place, carved into a drift wood log on the beach at
Spanish Banks in Vancouver. 1 80
10.2 Th e site in Salt Lake City where in 1847, at the end of
the Mormon trek from Illinois, Brigham Young declared:
‘Th is is the right place.’ 1 84
10.3 Place beginnings in Flemingdon Park in Toronto. 1 85
10.4 Th e diverse particularities of a place expressed in a poem
carved into a stone slab set in the ground of Island Park in
Fargo, North Dakota. 1 89
List of Figures vii
10.5 A plaque on the wall of a row of social housing on New Street
South in Dublin in 2014 (a few streets north of Malpas Place)
that needs no explanation. 194
10.6 Place branding as placemaking at the University of
British Columbia. 1 95
10.7 An open sense of place acknowledged at Swan Lake
Christmas Hill Nature Sanctuary in Victoria, British Columbia. 199
Contributors
Massimo Cacciari is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Vita-Salute San Raff aele in Milan, Italy. He has been a member of the Italian
and European parliaments, and three times mayor of the city of Venice. He is
the author of many books and essays, including, in English, Th e Unpolitical: On
the Radical Critique of Political Reason (New York: Fordham University Press,
2009), and P osthumous People: Vienna at the Turning Point (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1996).
Edward S. Casey is distinguished professor of Philosophy at SUNY, Stony
Brook, New York, USA. He is the author of G etting Back into Place (2nd
ed., Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), Th e Fate of Place (2nd
ed., Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), and two other books on
place. He is also the author of Th e World at a Glance (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2007) and Th e World on Edge (forthcoming, Bloomington:
Indiana University Press) as well as numerous articles on diverse topics.
Jessica Dubow is senior lecturer in Cultural Geography at the University of
Sheffi eld, England. She is the author of S ettling the Self: Colonial Space, Colonial
Identity and the South African Landscape (Saarbrücken: VDM, 2009), and is
presently working on a manuscript on the relationship of geography to philosophy
in context of the twentieth-century Jewish European intellectual tradition. She
has published widely across a range of journals including: C ritical Inquiry ,
New German Critique , Art History , Th e Journal of Visual Culture , Comparative
Literature and P arallax .
Lucy R. Lippard is the author of twenty-three books on contemporary art,
cultural criticism and place, including Th e Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in
a Multicentered Society ; On the Beaten Track : Tourism, Art and Place ; Down
Country: Th e Tano of the Galisteo Basin, 1250–1782 ; and, most recently,
Undermining: A Wild Ride though Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing
West . She lives in Galisteo, New Mexico.
Jeff Malpas is distinguished professor at the University of Tasmania, Hobart,
Tasmania, and visiting distinguished professor at Latrobe University, in