Continuing a strand of sessions formatted as creative workshops, our most recent meeting focused on writing, and inscription more generally, as methodology for thought, for probing depths. The session was convened by the ‘Think Deep’ project team (Eva Barbarossa, Wayne Chambliss, Harriet Hawkins, Una Helle, William Jamieson, Flora Parrott), with Will and Flora as the key facilitators.
Courtesy of Flora ParrottCourtesy of Will Jamieson
In part the session was a chance for the wider group to hear about some of the forms of inscription being deployed within the practice-based research of the Think Deep project: Will’s fictional monologues; Flora’s ‘dumping space’ journals, less a record more an operational manual for her sculptural practice; Eva’s wall-filling chalk boards, developed over days, then captured as photographs; Wayne’s aphoristic and diagrammatic journaling, mixing over materials into new forms; Una’s drawing and doodling, associative rather than transcriptive. This post features illustrations of those practices.
Courtesy Eva BarbarossaCourtesy Una Helle
However, the session was primarily based around a practical exercise, a guided inscription of a research-related object each of us had been asked to bring along. The various objects included: field drawings; a piece of tarmac; a collection of postcards based on RGS maps; Arabic poetry books; sand, put in a bottle in Singapore, quite possibly from Cambodia; a shamanic ritual bowl; leaves from London city trees; an ethically problematic sign, designed to direct tourists to a native American burial site; a flyer protesting 5G masts; a wood carving knife. Together, we inscribed different engagements with these objects: through words; through marks, lines and drawings; through sentences; through narratives; through patterns; through material forms fashioned from the paper on which we wrote.
Courtesy Wayne Chambliss
These inscriptions asked us to attend, in depth, to our subject matters: to look and touch; to see anew; to frame, reframe, associate. The workshop thus centred on writing beyond its roles in communication and transcription, but as an attentive, imaginative and speculative practice.
On November 15th, Landscape Surgery was delighted to welcome Kirsten Greer, Canada Research Chair in Global Environmental Histories and Geographies at Nipissing University, Ontario, to discuss her monograph Red Coats and Wild Birds. How Military Ornithologists and Migrant Birds Shaped Empire (The University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill; 2020). Chaired by Innes Keighren, the session adopted an ‘author meets surgeons’ format, with general discussion energised by Kirsten talking through her intellectual trajectories prior and subsequent to the book, and responsive readings from Caroline Cornish (Honorary Research Associate and Humanities Research Coordinator, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew) and PhD students Christina Hourigan and Michelle Payne.
Red Coats and Wild Birds Front Cover. Cover Illustration: Cornelius Krieghoff, An Officer’s Room in Montreal (oil on canvas), 1846. Used with permission of the Royal Ontario Museum.
Red Coats and Wild Birds reflects on the ornithological practices of British army officers in the nineteenth-century, outlining their wider importance to cultures of nature, the accumulation of geographic knowledge, and empire building. More specifically, it focuses on the ‘British Mediterranean’ as an imperial space of connection where the mobile lives of military men and migratory birds intersected. The four substantive chapters of the book focus on specific life geographies, ‘avian vignettes’ and places: Thomas Wright Blakiston, the Great Bustard, and the Crimea; Andrew Leith Adams, the Hoopoe and Malta; Leonard Howard Lloyd Irby, the Golden Oriole and Gibraltar; and Philip Savile Grey Reid, the Osprey, and the English army home-base of Aldershot, Hampshire. The book’s Introduction and Afterword foreground questions of colonial afterlives and amnesias through reflections on twenty-first century conflicts over the hunting and conserving of migratory birds in the post-colonial context of Malta.
Author-Meets-Surgeons: from left to right, Caroline Cornish, Michelle Payne, Kirsten Greer, Christina Hourigan and Innes Keighren (photo — and arrangement of abandoned diary, notebook, book, pen and woollen hat — courtesy of Philip Crang)
The discussion reflected the thoughtful, suggestive texture of the book. The combining of human and bird ‘life geographies’ was one main area of reflection; for example, Michelle noted how the visual presence of bird portraits and human migratory diagrammatic tracings inverted expected representational tropes. Shaped by our group’s, and the panel’s, investments in the plant humanities, another talking point, as raised by Christina, was how ornithological knowledge and collection might differ from the botanical. Caroline opened up discussion of the masculinities that Kirsten argues were performed through this nineteenth-century ornithology, the ‘British Military Scientific Hero’, ‘Temperate Martial Masculinity’, and ‘Muscular Adventurism’ included. We debated how the migratory geographies of birds both chimed and chafed with imperial, national and local framings. And the role of critical historical geography in countering colonial amnesia was a particularly strong conversational thread, enhanced by Kirsten’s comments on her on-going assistance to First Nation Communities in Northern Ontario.
As a PhD researcher initiating this project, Kirsten had spent six months as a ‘visiting surgeon’ at RHUL under the supervision of David Lambert, so it was a particular pleasure to welcome her back to reflect on the fascinating book that work became, and the wider commitment to critical historical geography she has developed. Fortuitously, and mirroring the session’s theme of connective mobilities, the session’s participants included Joan Schwarz, Kirsten’s erstwhile PhD co-supervisor at Queens, with us as Leverhulme Visiting Professor in 2022-23.
Landscape Surgery was delighted to host a creative workshop led by Dr Sage Brice (British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Geography, University of Durham). Focusing on past and on-going experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic, we explored her participatory drawing method for engaging with vulnerabilities and their potentials.
Sage convened a two-part session, both involving us in a version of the creative research process she has developed to explore pandemic experiences, and staging critical discussion about that methodology.
The novel Coronavirus (WHO)
Practically, working in smaller groups of five or six, we focused on cartooning the early stages of the pandemic (for example, through lockdowns), with a brief to do this from the virus’ point of view. Particularly notable was the care that Sage exercised in bringing us into the process, and the clear emphasis not on representational skill but on a generative contemplation enacted through acts of drawing. Iconic virus images (round, fluffy spikes / tufts; see above), bodies, bubbles, doors / windows, outside environments, emotional sensings (fear, loneliness, calm, love, care), disabling physical states and more were sketched out with widely varying graphic skills. I shouldn’t speak for the whole group, but personally I failed, I think, in the viral point of view: my hand more mobilised by remembrance of personal experience, and with viral relationality largely reduced to projections from my own imagination (a variously angry, pleading or mocking virus observing my precautionary behaviours). Particularly powerful imagery and testimony came from others drawing the problematic relations of infection; the ‘virus’ not separate from ‘us’, but part of new embodiments. In parallel, our picturings of lockdown behaviours evoked the sense of changed subjectivities in relation to COVID-19.
Drawing courtesy of Sage Brice
More broadly, we discussed the development of Sage’s creative research practice, both in relation to conceptual fields such as queer ecologies and her biography of work on ‘transindividual’ relationalities. Discussion picked up on the traditions of drawing research in Geography and their renewed role within the GeoHumanities today, including amongst ‘surgeons’ present and past (Helen Scalway’s long-standing contributions deserving of particular mention). There was also a thread of discussion about the role of technical skill in drawing research, even when participatory in ethos. Does limited drawing skill inhibit or prevent evocation, despite the open, safe environment produced by a skilled convenor?
Issues around creative research methods will return at various points in our programme; so, particularly warm thanks to Sage for her generosity and care in visiting us and running such a rich workshop. Her departmental profile is here; and her twitter handle is Sage_Brice.
After introductions from returning and newly joined ‘surgeons’, our first Landscape Surgery meeting of the term focused on Sasha Engelmann’s new AHRC-funded fellowship on Advancing Feminist and Creative Methods for Sensing Air and Atmosphere.
Running from September 2022 until September 2024, Sasha’s fellowship is focused on developing citizen-led sensing of both air quality and weather. It draws on, and aims to contribute to, wider work on citizen sensing by scholars including Nerea Calvillo, Jennifer Gabrys and Max Liboiron. One key topic for discussion was how feminist thinking emphasises the relationality of environmental data, and promotes an environmental sensing committed to care as well as precision. We also reflected on how creative methods can advance these agendas, in particular when they foreground the sociality of environmental knowledge making.
open-weather, 2020. Decoding weather satellite transmission during a DIY Satellite Ground Station workshop led by Sasha Engelmann and Sophie Dyer at the Wagenhallen Kunstverein Cultural Centre in Stuttgart, Germany. (Photo courtesy of Sasha Engelmann)
The fellowship focuses especially on two projects. First, open-weather, where Sasha is working with Sophie Dyer and other collaborators on developing citizen-led weather monitoring networks that form an international ‘open-weather’ community, decoding weather satellite transmissions to image and imagine Earth’s weather systems. Second, a project on air quality in Villa Inflamable (‘the flammable town’, situated next to the largest petro-chemical facility in Argentina). Here Sasha will be working with residents of the town, Buenos Aires-based anthropologist Dr. Débora Swistun, the artistic Aerocene Community and others, to develop forms of air quality sensing that are locally embedded and attuned to residents’ lived experiences.
Aerocene sculpture launch in Villa Inflamable, Argentina, 2018. (Photo courtesy of Sasha Engelmann)
The discussions rightly focused largely on the methodological ambitions and case study projects of the fellowship, but Sasha kindly pre-circulated a version of the proposal, which gave us all a chance to reflect on the crafting of not only a ‘case for support’ but data management plans, work plans and justifications of resources that can combine precision with ethoses of collaboration and co-production.
The group’s thanks are extended to Sasha for sharing her work with us. Learning more about what she has planned for the next two years provided a suitably energising start to the new academic year.
In May 2022 we welcomed the directors and producers of the film Machines in Flames, Thomas Dekeyser and Andrew Culp. For the first half of the session we each watched the film individually, which was then followed by a discussion with Thomas and Andrew.
Machines in Flames is an experimental documentary that details the journey Thomas and Andrew underwent in the search for the group CLODO (Committee for Liquidation and Subversion of Computers). CLODO were/are an elusive group who were invested in attacking and burning down computer centres in France in the early 1980s. After a series of attacks in Toulouse, they disappeared and were never discovered.
Thomas and Andrew are interested not only in CLODO’s actions, but their anonymity as a group – how they were present and then absent; and, how they disappeared without any arrests. Through the film, they try to make sense of CLODO and how they evaded ever being known. The film also addresses methodological questions of what it means to archive and what it means to conduct archival research. The evasive nature of CLODO can be seen in the difficulties Thomas and Andrew had in unearthing information on CLODO. They began their search by using investigatory computational tools, the exact tools that CLODO had fought against. Traces of the group can be found only in the remaining records – in the newspapers, legal documents, and photographs that have been archived since the 1980s. By combining footage of stakeouts, desktop choreography, and archival traces, Machines in Flames takes the audience on a journey to investigate cybernetics and fire (Machines in Flames, 2022).
Finding CLODO proved a challenge that required going beyond a computational search – CLODO had successfully evaded detection and concealed their actions. Therefore, to know CLODO, the filmmakers needed to become CLODO. Discussing the embodied approach to the film, by visiting the sites CLODO would have visited, Thomas and Andrew said they could gain an understanding of what CLODO experienced. They could gain familiarity with the buildings CLODO staked out and the streets they roamed. They could ask similar questions about the threats of computation and attempt to understand the reason behind CLODO’s attacks. This provided a connection to CLODO that had not been experienced before, a connection that was not possible by solely investigating newspaper articles or viewing locations through investigatory computational tools, e.g., Google Earth. Knowing CLODO meant becoming CLODO.
Perhaps one of the most powerful aspects of the film is the embodied projection of the stakeout, of becoming CLODO. The audience is emerged in the nocturnal stakeout as the camera travels across the various locations throughout the film. More than just panning, the camera moves like a person, embodying the role of the observer, the planner, the attacker. Suspenseful music accompanies the night-time scenes, the anticipation of the attack mounting, leading you to question how CLODO felt. Were they nervous? Did they get a thrill out of it? Why were they doing it?
Knowing CLODO’s view of the use of computers as tools to exploit and control sheds light on why they attacked them. Through the attacks, CLODO was not resisting the computational technology of these machines, but what these machines could lead to. They could be used to cause destruction through military violence, and they could be used for surveillance within everyday life, therefore, CLODO saw these machines as dangerous. Their focus of concern was on computers, and unlike other groups, CLODO caused violence-without-death. They did not target the people working or monitoring the computers, but the machines themselves, burning them to the ground. Engulfing these machines in flames destroyed an archive of data, it was present and then absent, lost in the flames with only fragments left behind.
Through the production of a documentary film, Thomas and Andrew engage in an interesting conversation about conducting archival research. In creating new traces, they suggest that they are adding – to the archive – material on a collective whose existence was concentrated on the need for self-erasure. Mapping out the locations of CLODO’s attacks on Toulouse, through the use of people of interest and archival material, led Thomas and Andrew to question whether all they discovered in their investigation was in fact adding to the archive they should have been depriving. Should an archive shrouded in destruction, both by the cause and effect of the attacks, be celebrated when additions are made several years later? Furthermore, Thomas and Andrew admit that they relied on machines throughout their research, the opposite of what CLODO warned of doing. Was this CLODO’s point then? That the archive cannot be undone by its own logic. This leads the filmmakers to ask a number of questions on the nature of archives; what it means to document a particular form of knowledge; if there can ever be an anti-authoritarian archive; and, the destruction of archives by flames.
Machines in Flames provokes a discussion around CLODO as a group and its politics, exploring how control and surveillance through computation led to a response with flames. CLODO showed coordination and purpose in their attacks, targeting computers that were being used to control, dominate, and exploit. The film also investigates important methodological questions around producing a documentary film and the nature of the archive. CLODO realised that the archive is not only underpinned by control and containment, but also by an “uncontainable entropy that leads only to self-combustion” (Machines in Flames, 2022). As Derrida (1996) argued in Archive Fever, the archive is both memory and loss, where things are created but also destroyed. Therefore, like fire, the archive is a measure of both life and death.
We would like to thank Thomas and Andrew for presenting such a thought-provoking documentary film which led to an engaging discussion at Landscape Surgery. You can find Machines in Flames on Twitter (@flames_film).
Written by: Beth Williamson
Edited by: Eva Barbarossa
Derrida, J. (1996) Archive Fever: a Freudian impression. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
On 18th January 2022 we welcomed Oliver Dawson, a final year PhD student at University of Bristol, to Landscape Surgery. Oliver’s thesis, titled “Poetic Cartographies and Ecosophic Thought” focuses on poetry as a process of encountering non-human forces which operate within this world, disrupting its obvious and performative imagination of worlds.
About
After finishing his Undergraduate degree in American Literature at the University of Sussex, Oliver began working in the arts and cultural sector and ran The Poetry School, an organisation based in London which provides poetry writing classes for adults. Through this organisation, Oliver was introduced to a range of poets and began to explore the contemporary poetry scene in the UK. The organisation saw people from all walks of life engage with poetry, many of whom went on to publish their work and return to teach at the The Poetry School.
Oliver went on to study an MSc in Human Geography: Society and Space at the University of Bristol where the university’s strong philosophical roots influenced his approach to poetry. Through his exposure to the works of thinkers such as Spinoza, Deleuze and Guattari, Oliver began to approach poetry as an encounter with impersonal forces and sensations.
Research and Influences
Whilst Oliver did not set out his career as a ‘geographer’ he states that he is on a journey to become a geographer. The combination of his studies, work and research have situated his research within cultural and historical geography, with a particular interest in geopoetics.
“Geography is not confined to providing historical form with a substance and variable places. It is not merely physical and human but mental, like the landscape” – Deleuze & Guattari 1994: 96
Guattari has had significant influence on Oliver’s research; his thesis aims to enact a certain ecosophic thought traditionally associated with Guattari, focusing on the combined importance of mental, social, and environmental domains in the production of subjectivity.
Ecosophic thought centres on how thinking these domains together actively composes a ‘wisdom of the home’. Oliver talked us through the understanding processes and productions of subjectivity as more than human, as a process which always involves non-human forces and therefore can be seen as a way of “thinking with the earth”.
“Something in the world forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition but of a fundamental encounter.” – Deleuz, 1998
Oliver’s research aim therefore, is to think of poetry as an operational part of this world, as opposed to a commentary of the world. “Once poetry is a commentary it is a representation and confirmation of existing thoughts and ideas, the realities of what we already know”. Discussing the climate emergency, he argues that geopoetics should be less attached to commenting and responding to preconceived problems. Instead we should use geopoetics as a way of thinking with the earth when addressing realities such as the climate emergency. Oliver states that he has resisted engaging with ‘obvious’ poetry within his field such as eco-poetry, in doing so he establishes the challenges of geopoetics as not thinking from the self but instead thinking with the forces of the earth, deterritorialising the language used by thinking without a ground or foundation. By removing the ‘ground’, poetry and language have the potential to connect with the changes and movements of the earth.
His research reveals an interest in the relation of poetry and language, and understanding language as a system which covets order. In his attempt to address the asignifying side of language, Oliver draws on the disruption to order, by assigning events with poetry as ‘sites of disruption’ for performative ways of thinking. This has influenced his research methodology whereby he takes onboard the experience of meeting a poet, reading their work as well as the work which has influenced them, and then introducing his own philosophy. This method allows Oliver to be alert to the potential eruption of ideas by letting things emerge through the encounter, disrupting habitual patterns of thought and altering the production of subjectivity in novel, unpredictable ways.
Oliver sees geopoetics as a field he would like to explore further, potentially through the publication of a book. He is particularly interested in further exploring the meaning within the ‘geo’ and how his approach to poetry can act as a contribution to geopoetics as a whole.
We would like to thank Oliver for sharing with us his thought-provoking research and look forward to seeing his further exploration of geopoetics.
By Evie Gilbert
DELEUZE, G. & GUATTARI, F. 1994. What is philosophy?, New York, Columbia University Press.
In October 2021 we welcomed Himani Upadhyaya to Landscape Surgery. Himani is a visiting PhD student from Ashoka University. Her research examines surveying and map-making in British Kumaon in the central Himalayan region of Northern India and investigates knowledge-production under 19th century colonial rule.
Himani began by introducing us to Pundit Nain Singh, named on the walls of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) Kensington Grove entrance as a recipient of the Society’s Gold Medal in 1877. This demonstrates a rare case of the medal going to a non-European awardee. Nain Singh was a Bhotiya (a tribal community living in the Himalayan belt) from the Kumaon region and received the award for his success in completing the secret surveys of trans-Himalayan routes to Tibet. Singh was trained by military officials of the Great Trigonometrical Survey (GTS) of India, and British geographers and surveyors have held his surveys in high regard. Nain Singh’s nephew, Pundit Kishen Singh, was also a surveyor and their busts are displayed at the Survey of India HQ in Dehradun to remind visitors of their extraordinary achievements.
Pundit Nain Singh (left), Pundit Kishen Singh (right). Photograph taken by Himani Upadhyaya during a visit to Survey of India, Dehradun (India), in 2019
Bhotiyas from Kumaon, Mani Singh and his cousin Nain Singh, were among the local inhabitants selected for training in surveying technologies at the Survey of India’s HQ in 1863. When geopolitical tensions arose in central Asia, the GTS turned to local inhabitants and employed them as ‘native surveyors’ to secretly survey areas outside of British territory. Himani stated that with a few exceptions, scholarly discussion on Bhotiyas has mostly centred around Pundits Nain and Kishen Singh.
For this seminar, Himani focused on the route surveys of Kumaon in the 1840s before Bhotiyas were formally trained by the officials of the GTS. Scholars have argued that there was a gradual move away from exploratory and observational modes of doing science in the 19th century and that by the 1860s and 70s travelling modes of conducting science were almost over. However, Himani’s ongoing work suggests that even though there might have been a shift in knowledge producing technologies and institutions of the colonial state as the 19th century progressed, reliance on local networks in this Himalayan frontier continued throughout this period.
Map showing the research area in the Kumaon Himalaya
Surveyors in the Himalayas were routinely assisted by the patwari (a local official with multifarious duties including land revenue) for his knowledge of the boundaries, names of villages and other information essential for the surveys. The British surveyor, Captain Montgomerie, indicated that the office of the patwari helped maintain British influence in the high-altitude villages of the Himalayas where there was little permanent European presence. Mani Singh was patwari between 1851 and 1863 which made him a suitable candidate to be trained as a surveyor. As patwari, he frequently assisted civil officials, military officials and scientific explorers who arrived in Kumaon en route to Tibet and central Asia. Mani’s influence on colonial officials led to Nain Singh securing a place to assist surveyors, and subsequently later being employed as a surveyor too.
Himani positioned the Strachey brothers as important individuals in explorations in the Himalayas in the 19th century. Henry Strachey, who was a military official of the Bengal Infantry, visited the region in 1846. His brother, Richard Strachey, had an influential imperial career, holding powerful positions in India and as a member of the imperial council. Richard conducted route surveys in Kumaon between 1846 and 1849, collecting scientific specimens and producing essays and maps on the geology and physical geography of the Himalayas, which were then presented to the Geological Society and RGS in London.
In 1848, Richard, alongside the botanist J.E. Winterbottom, was ordered by the government of the north-western provinces to conduct an official mission of scientific research in the Himalayas. They spent two months in the Himalayas and Tibet collecting a range of botanical and geological specimens. These specimens were compared to named specimens in the botanical collections in Europe and between 1852-53, the Herbarium was distributed in Europe. A plant catalogue of this herbarium was later edited and published, and interestingly, many species were associated with the Strachey family name. Colonial power shaped the order and arrangement of the plant specimens in the mountainous Himalayan regions. Vernacular names were ignored and absent from the catalogue as the plant specimens were placed within the Linnaean system of scientific names, often dedicated to European personalities. However, unlike Richard, Henry was more attentive to the vernacular local terminologies.
The Catalogue based on Strachey and Winterbottom’s collections can be found here.
Himani argued that a lack of attention given to regions where famous geographers and surgeon-naturalists did not travel to has resulted in little research into the interactions between local and European knowledge systems. There was a large reliance on the resources, influence and networks of local communities, such as the Bhotiyas, by influential military officials during the travels to the Himalayan frontiers of the East India Company’s territory. Despite this, little is known about these communities who are only partially visible in travel accounts. For example, of the sixteen Bhotiyas accompanying Strachey and Winterbottom on their travels, only two were named by Richard in his account.
Although Bhotiyas were characterized as ‘intelligent’, ‘loyal’ and ‘civilised’ colonial subjects, not all surveyors developed the same relationships with the Bhotiyas. Some Bhotiyas were simply indifferent towards the English officials. Locally posted colonial officials of Kumaon often observed that many of those who were described as Bhotiyas did not self-identify with this term, and resented this extraneous identity label. Himani argues that histories of scientific knowledge production in the Himalayas in the 19th century need to pay closer attention to such complexities, with new histories of 19th century science and exploration requiring investigations into more local and regional founded sources.
We would like to thank Himani for sharing her inspiring research and look forward to hearing about the discoveries she makes during her time researching in the archives in London.
NOAA-19 S 75W 2021-07-20 12-18 GMT pristine from NOAA APT 1.3.0.png NOAA-19, London, 20 July 2020, 12:18 GMT Source: open-weather CC BY 4.0
What happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic. The region is warming three times faster than the global average and staying within 1.5 degrees temperature increase has been top of the news agenda. To coincide with COP 26 in Glasgow, Landscape Surgery showcased three projects that capture responses to the climate crisis; from China, from the depths of an underwater cave and from outer space.
Liling Xu, a historian in the third year of her PhD at Royal Holloway, has been tracking China’s national security policies alongside accelerating climate change impacts. China has been experiencing increasing numbers of extreme weather events, threats to food security and other emergencies. A central focus of Xu’s work has been to investigate if, and how priorities have changed in China since the United Nation Security Council‘sfirst debate on the impact of global warming on global peace and security.
China became an observer in the Arctic Council in 2013 and as part of her research Xu has been looking for the “missing link” which connects China’s national security policies to more frequent climate impacts. Early policy papers use vague wording, “affects” and “impacts”, to refer to extreme weather events in parts of China.
China has significant interests in the Arctic. The shipping routes through the Northwest Passage are like a Polar Silk Road. Nevertheless, even in 2018 a policy paper outlining those concerns used slippery language when mentioning threats to national security due to the impacts resulting from global warming, says Xu.
Images such as the vertical map visualise China’s positioning as a growing economic powerhouse. Europe is represented as an outpost, squashed up at the top of the world while China opens out to a vast and ice free Arctic, criss crossed with shipping lanes that reduce the distance between the markets of the East and the rest of the world.
A Chinese ‘vertical world map,’ showing the world in a different perspective from the Eurocentric view that has mostly dominated cartography. Credit: Prior Probablity.
Shifting away from the Arctic and geopolitical narratives of the climate crisis, the next presentation plunged us deep underwater. An ongoing collaboration between artist Flora Parrott and writer Lindiwe Matshikiza centres a moment of encounter between a cave diver and a previously unknown species of cave fish, which has seemingly adapted itself from a surface dwelling species of loach. In the video, we follow the dim light of the divers as they swim deeper into the cave system. In those murky underground habitats, different imaginaries emerge as humans find themselves surviving only by means of technology and scuba skills. Perhaps when we emerge again at the surface we find our reflections bubble with new ideas and a rethinking of human relationships to environments.
Soaring upwards once again, this time beyond land and sky, and into space, Sasha Engelmann let us into a secret… It’s not that hard to photograph space…. With a bit of know how and a radio antenna, Open-Weather (Sophie Dyer and Sasha Engelmann) alongside Rectangle (Lizzie Malcolm and Daniel Powers), created a global network of citizen-artists to collectively image earth.
‘When I image the earth, I imagine another‘ is a global weather report made up of snapshots taken by people engaging in the project from all over the world. Operating DIY satellite ground stations, citizen-artists from Buenos Aires to Abu Dhabi captured a collective snapshot of the Earth and its weather systems: a ‘nowcast’ for an undecided future.
On the eve of COP26 (October 31st 2021), tuning into transmissions from three orbiting National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites, members of the network captured their images and submitted their fieldnotes. Combined, these contributions generate a polyperspectival (from many angles) image of the earth as experienced from Japan, Mauritius, Los Angeles and countless other locations.
Satellites transmit in analogue and the signal can be encoded mechanically into a radio wave. The radio environment can interrupt the signal and Engelmann described how the movements of the photographers were inscribed in the images. Swirls and patterns from multiple perspectives and many situated positions, helped to close up the gap between a detached and politicised understanding of the climate crisis and the everyday experiences of people. Weather fronts forming far away, at the edge of earth entwined with the familiar, intimate experience of someone in their balcony, arm outstretched and holding a radio antenna.
A participant in Glasgow captured an image of a cyclone passing over the city and their field notes describe the moment in time when they took the picture. The artwork is a feminist experiment in imaging and reimagining the planet in an era of climate crisis and, I think, a collection of images and words that spark enchantment and hope.
More about ‘When I image the earth, I imagine another‘ here
Written by Viveca Mellegård
Edited by Evie Gilbert
More information on; China’s geopolitical imaginations of the Arctic, explorations into how climate change has been embedded into China’s imaginations, representations and practices in foreign policy, academic research, popular culture and domestic tourism:
On the 9th February, Jack Morton and I presented in a session chaired by Oli Mould on the topic of the global pandemic and its consequences for the precarity and wellbeing of creative freelancers.
The stranglehold that the coronavirus has had on the world over the last year has choked the creative industries, and its freelance workers – who account for nearly half of the workforce – have felt the squeeze the most. Although playing a crucial role in ‘stitching together’ the sector, Jack explained how their project-based work is exceedingly precarious, characterised by a lack of economic security, low levels of unionised representation and exploitation. Nevertheless, these precarious conditions have not impeded the attraction of such work. Many freelancers see these ‘risks’ as liberation from corporate control and enjoy the flexibility and autonomy of their jobs.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had severe implications across the world for many forms of labour, but as Jack pointed out, “the precarious nature of freelancing … has left these workers at the mercy of the coronavirus impacts much more than others”. With many unable to enrol for Government support due to moving in and out of contracts, taking on unpaid roles and working concurrently in other sectors, borrowing money has become rife. The Government may have announced a £1.57 billion support package for the creative industries in July 2020, but it only contained a passing reference to freelancers. Not only have 50% of freelancers lost at least 60% of their income, but 50% are also considering leaving the industry for more secure work in a bid to ensure they can pay their bills, support their families and survive.
Data from The Personal Finance Research Centre at the University of Bristol Commissioned by the Standard Life Foundation
As a result of this, Jack raised serious concerns about the possibility of a labour crisis in the creative industries in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and the shock the economy is experiencing. Labelled as a ‘cultural catastrophe’, the Creative Industries Federation are reporting that over 400,000 creative jobs – that’s 19% – could be lost; 290,000 of which are self-employed jobs. Referring to his own research he explained that, while freelance labour has been cut by firms in a hope to survive the impacts of COVID-19, their labour will be needed again as soon as restrictions are lifted and there are concerns that the labour pool will not be big enough to meet the needs of these firms and ensure their survival in the industry too.
Millions of pounds in bursaries and grants may have been made available by NGO’s, but are disproportionately spread across the creative industries, with the majority concentrated in the TV and film industry. Even though unions have been providing information and advice to the Treasury, the Government is yet to address the reality that the support packages fail to acknowledge and encompass the heterogeneity of freelance work, and the detrimental impact this could have on a flagship sector of the UK economy.
“They have fallen through the gaps in government support, and it is a scandal that they have been ignored by the government so far.”
Philippa Childs, Head of Bectu (Broadcasting Entertainment Communications and Theatre Union)
Placing more emphasis on their personal experiences, I took the opportunity to focus in on what all this has meant for the wellbeing of these creative freelancers. Prior to the pandemic, it was clear that there were benefits to being self-employed. Usually attributed to the greater autonomy and freedom they experience and the type and diversity of work they get to do, it is believed that the self-employed have a higher level of job and life satisfaction than employees. However, the precarity often experienced by these independent workers has been connected to work-life conflict issues and mental health problems in the form of nervousness, anxiety, depression and psychological distress.
Creative workers are often romanticised figures and are portrayed as being mentally and physically fulfilled by their work, but the validity of these narratives has also been called into question. While studies have found that those in more traditional art sectors experience higher levels of subjective wellbeing than those in non-creative jobs, the opposite is the case for those in ‘new creative economy’ sectors such as marketing, film and TV, and IT. Creative work does often enable self-expression and fulfilment, but this is often used as a reason to pay workers less for long hours and precarious working conditions which, along with a pressure to reach high standards and a lack of appropriation recognition, is the reason why they are three times more likely to suffer from greater mental health problems than the average person.
Back in March 2020 when the first national lockdown was called, many creative freelancers found themselves working from home for the first time. Since then, a significant number of them are likely to have experienced mental health problems as a result of the blurring of boundaries between their work and home lives, and poorer relationships at home if faced with inadequate workspaces. Childcare and the homeworking set up has been found to stifle the productivity and the sense of purpose of creative freelancers, and for those that have attempted to remedy this by working evenings, additional psychological stresses have come to a head.
Isolation and loneliness of freelancers and homeworkers were already a concern before restrictions on our everyday lives were put in place. Now with many confined to their homes and starved of any social interaction at coffee shops, co-working spaces, meetings and non-work social activities, the picture looks even bleaker. Studies of creative workers specifically have discovered loneliness to be the most widespread source of stress, and the social contact with colleagues and other professionals greatly missed.
“I am by nature, a hugely social musician. I get my wellbeing from meeting a lot of musicians and working with them and seeing something develop from stage A to stage B and feeling perhaps some responsibility for that process. And sitting in your study, looking at your text, doesn’t do that in quite the same way.”
But the main message of Jack and I’s presentations was that the precariousness of these creative freelancers is the biggest issue. A loss of work and income has led directly to financial difficulties and a decline in living standards with psychosocial, stress and anxiety related repercussions in tow. But a loss of work has also resulted in a loss of structure and the mental stability it brings, and a loss of enjoyment and meaning compounded only further, for some, by a potentially necessary change of career. As they see their community decline, they feel unsupported, forgotten, and a sense of despair at the impact the state of the arts sector will have on the rest of society.
The last Landscape Surgery session of the decade was opened by Katrina Navickas’s (University of Hertfordshire) presentation :‘Customary rights, property and contested belongings in English commons and village greens, 1765-1965’. The seminar was a collaboration with Provincialism at Large – a new seminar series co-ordinated by Ruth Livesey (RHUL), building on the collaboration between the Centre for Victorian Studies and the Centre for the GeoHumanities. Katrina was joined by Ruth and two PhD researchers (RHUL) Saskia Papadakis and Gemma Holgate, whose doctoral research projects are titled ‘Northerners in London: Englishness, place and mobility’ and ‘Writing Socialist Feminism: Women Activists and the Novel, 1887-1908,’ respectively.
Katrina positions herself firmly as a regionalist, and promotes the study of particular regions in English history. Today, she is presenting her research on legal geographies of the commons and village greens in England. The 1965 Commons Registration act was legislation which aimed to survey all common land in England and Wales, however it was flawed and revealed the widespread difficulties of defining a common, its rights and ownership — many of which still exist today. The resulting registers are inaccurate and conflicting.
1965 Commons Registration Act
But, how is common land defined? We were challenged to define these three terms as a group– with varying degrees of success!
Common: Private land which is subject to rights of common– including pasture, turbary (taking peat or turf), estovers (taking wood), piscary (taking fish)..etc. The land could be fenced or open and was usually attached to private property.
Waste: Land which belongs to the manor, is uncultivated and while is not subject to rights of common can be used for pasture.
Village Green: Land ‘owned’ by the village parish, which has been allotted for recreation and leisure for the inhabitants of the village.
A sign listing Coulsdon Common’s byelaws, and list of fees. From 1954 – still erected today it the common today.
Katrina reminds us of the importance of commons, to working people particularly, throughout history as meeting places; their integrity to political movements; the commons preservation movement; and points to the new shift to ecological concerns.
Today many are fighting for their commons to prevent housing developments and retaining commons as nature reserves. Katrina also points to the landmark case in November 2019 in the which the Supreme Court ruled the banning of Extinction Rebellion’s Autumn protest between 14-19 October was unlawful, which reminds us of how important laws on customary rights can be in the present: the right to liberty and protest still need to be protected.
We would like to thank Katrina Navicka for her engaging presentation, and imagery; Ruth Livesey and Sasha Engelmann for organising this session; Saskia Papadakis and Gemma Holgate for presenting their research; and the other Landscape Surgery participants for their contributions to the discussion.
Landscape Surgery 