LT909-2: Thin and Other Places

Memory maps, 2014-15

Chris McCully

cmccully@essex.ac.uk

Geographical and meteorological features and place

• Some (though not all) cave paintings (e.g. those of the Cresswell crags) were constructed so that they were viewable in the light of the sun – the paintings on the Cresswell crags are in south-facing caves

• How have humans made use of geographical features in developing and maintaining their cultures? That is, how does culture makes places from spaces?

What if spaces aren’t (or are in the process of becoming) places?

(synoptic epic 3, draft; lineation not original)

Stood on the shore of the great salt rivers. A mammoth carcase sang in the wind. The problem was floods and what to do with the corpses. Villages no-one had heard of floated past towards Doggerland. Discovered fire when fen became coal, and flint was useful, also for building. Opened the anthology and it was empty. Blamed the others and tried to plug in the lights but there was no electricity. Earth talked and it wasn’t reassuring. Wives farrowed. That passed the time. There were no messages and the sky was lonely. By then it was an issue: how to converse with tundra that had become tideline. Tried to trade it away for a piece of amber but settled for a bone. Pierced it with the tongue of a buckle. That night the ambient gods spoke through a hollowed pipe while the weather hurled from the north-west. Death was a flute in a femur. Children danced. A lake appeared, and giraffes. Music became settlements.

How do spaces become places?

(synoptic epic 22, draft; lineation not original)

Almost Famous Interviewer: My guest today is Adam Knott, poet, philanthropist and...

Knott: ....Take a ford. Ford becomes a trading spot, then a city. Then the place is overrun by foreigners. ‘Send them home’ is the cry, followed by ‘Send them home, unless they make real money and learn our language’. Enter some no-hoper in an apron, translates the Vulgate into Flemish – puzzlement all round. ‘Either burn the bugger, or let him stay if it looks to be permanent and he’s opened a bank account’. Money from an accident of stone, that happened in a river. Strange, if you think about it. Not that anyone does. They’re usually too busy eating hamburgers or moaning about how unfair life is. Or their feet, naturally. Feet are often culprits, you know. Shoddy footwear – at the root of global terrorism. Man can’t think of anything sensible if his feet hurt. He just wants other people’s feet to hurt. Never mind, eh?

Extending ‘psychogeography’ (1)

• Definition of psychogeography in e.g. Coverley is as something primarily urban. He lists features such as ‘urban wandering, the imaginative reworking of the city, the otherworldly sense of spirit of place, the unexpected insights and juxtapositions created by aimless drifting, the new ways of experiencing familiar surroundings’ (p.31)

Extending psychogeography (2)

• But why should psychogeography be essentially urban? True, urban environments (London, Paris) provide the clearest examples of how spaces have become places, but there are several – in fact, almost infinitely many - other environments whose ‘spirit(s) of place’ (genius loci) can be and has been described.

Extending psychogeography (3)

• Some of these environments are rural. That is, psychogeography includes ‘a loose allegiance of overlapping themes…through which landscape, whether urban or rural, can be imbued with a sense of the histories of previous inhabitants and the events that have been played out against them’ (Coverley, p.33). Coverley mentions that Peter Woodcock ‘identifies the hallmark of genius loci in the Neo-Romantic movement of Paul Nash and other artists who flourished in the inter-war period’ (p.33)

Neo-Romanticism and Paul Nash (1)

• [Death and burial customs] became significant themes for Nash when in July 1933 he went to Marlborough on holiday and visited Silbury Hill and Avebury for the first time. This ancient landscape with its neolithic monuments and standing stones "excited and fascinated" Nash and stirred "his sensitiveness to magic and the sinister beauty of monsters" according to Ruth Clarke who had accompanied him to Marlborough.[9] Nash went on to paint the landscape at Avebury several times in different styles, most notably in his two 1934 paintings, Druid Landscape and Landscape of the Megaliths.[9] The 1935 painting Equivalents for the Megaliths stresses the mystery of the site by portraying it in an abstract manner rather than a more literal depiction

(from wikipedia entry, see esp. the paragraphs on Avebury and Swanage and see References below for access to an important Paul Nash painting of a wood on the Downs (1930)).

Neo-Romanticism and Paul Nash (2)

Note that Nash often placed everyday objects into his landscapes in order to give them a new kind of identity: that is, the objects became symbols. Paul Nash was also among the first British painters to experiment with objets trouvés (‘found’ material):

For a collage of black and white photographs entitled Swanage, Nash depicts objects found in, or connected to, locations around Dorset within a surrealist landscape. On Romany Marsh [sic] Nash found his first surrealist object, or Objet trouvé. This piece of wood retrieved from a stream was likened by Nash to a fine Henry Moore sculpture and was shown at the first International Surrealist Exhibition in 1936 under the title Marsh Personage (from wikipedia entry)

Art, interpretation and the genius loci

Yet one could make a case for almost any landscape artist imbuing their work ‘with a sense of the histories of previous inhabitants…’ Take Constable’s ‘Haywain’, for example….or even better, Constable’s ‘Wivenhoe Park’ (1816). In what ways are these works – better question, how did these works come to be interpreted as – ‘iconic’?

Constable’s ‘Haywain’ (1821)

Constable’s ‘Wivenhoe Park’ (1816)

Iconicity and Constable (1)• What was depicted in the brush-strokes [of ‘The Haywain’] was something

iconic: an image whose significance was transcendent, more than the sum of its technical parts. That significance centred on a particular kind of Englishness: the cart crossing the river is on its way to pick up another load of cut hay, emphasising the point that haymaking was not only an essential rural occupation but also one vital to the national economy. To further emphasise the point, Constable painted local haymakers working in the field beyond the river (lower right of the painting). On the far bank of the river, a flat-bottomed wooden boat is moored, and concealed in the bushes by the boat’s prow there’s the figure of an angler: the river, like the land, is rich with stock. The farm buildings dominating the left of the painting – Willy Lott’s farm, all mossed brickwork among willows – point the fact that farming could still be considered a congenial occupation, and here Constable made use of a concurrent literary tradition, expressed in Aikin’s Calendar of Nature (1799), a work Constable knew well. Aikin wrote that haymaking was ‘one of the busiest and most agreeable of rural occupations. Both sexes and all ages are engaged in it. The fragrance of the new-mown hay, the gaiety of all surrounding objects, and the genial warmth of the weather, all conspire to render it a season of pleasure and delight to the beholder’ (cited in Rosenthal, p.120).

Aikin’s Calendar of Nature (1799)

Iconicity and Constable (2)‘The Hay Wain’, then, is essentially a georgic representation of England, and it’s

worth remembering that the term ‘georgic’ has its origins in Virgil’s Latin poem of c30BC: Virgil’s Georgics, in four books, are themed around agricultural topics, but the works are impossible to read as examples of peaceful rural idylls. Book IV, for instance, contains a harrowing account of Orpheus’ loss of Eurydice. Nevertheless, the fact that such poetic works were circulating in Augustan Rome, when Roman culture (and military and political extent) had reached its zenith under a new Emperor, is distantly significant for Constable’s ‘Hay Wain’. That is, the painting expresses both harmony and above all, confidence: national needs could and would be provided for by happy rustics working in the fields or exploiting the riches of rivers and meanwhile, one could be assured that all was probably fairly well with the world, that English prosperity was assured and that God was very probably an Englishman. This is, I think, why the painting has come to be regarded as iconic: drawing on both literary and artistic precedent, ‘The Hay Wain’ depicted, and urged meditation on, how English society seemed to be constructed.

• (from Chris McCully, Stour Diaries, unpublished typescript 2015)

Interpretation, psychogeography and creative utility

• In the last few slides I’ve really said nothing more than ‘artists interpret’ and that doesn’t get us far in terms of psychogeography or anything else. However…

• It’s useful to think of how different are the ‘interpretations’ of Constable and of Albert Sloman (who founded this university in the early 1960s). For Constable, the landscape of and around Wivenhoe Park could be interpreted aesthetically; for Sloman, the same landscape could be interpreted for use

Creative utility and determined space: Wivenhoe House and park

• Colchester campus and Wivenhoe HouseWivenhoe House was owned by the Gooch family until the 1960s. It had been used in WW2

and was then requisitioned by the SAS. The SAS whitewashed much of the original interior.

Essex CC acquired the house and site in the 1950s and original plans for building on the land included plans for a hospital. Eventually, however, a new university was built: it opened in 1964. The first intake was of c.130 students: they were taught in portakabins as well as in the house.

The key visionary of the new University of Essex was Albert Sloman (who gave his name to the university library). Sloman was determined to construct a university that was democratic by design:

– The campus has no ‘front’ or ‘back’: it’s constructed around central squares– The buildings interlock: such interlocking captured Sloman’s view of possible

dialogues between different subject areas– Social spaces and parkland were inherent parts of the design: it was important to live

as well as to learn– One of Sloman’s objectives was to help develop citizens who would use their vote

intelligently, as a result of careful critical thinking– Partnership and dialogue were seen as more important than hierarchy (there was

e.g. no ‘senior common room’ and ‘junior common room’ in the new University of Essex)

Using landscape and meteorology

…and so what Sloman and his team of architects and designers were doing in the early 1960s is no different in principle from what the humans who painted the walls of Cresswell crags were doing so many millennia before: they were alike making use of geographical and meteorological features to illuminate a space so that it became a particular kind of place

Case study in utility and psychogeography: ‘Thin places’ – Iona (1)

Case study: Iona (2)

• Iron Age hill fort on Iona (c200AD)• Iona chosen as Christian site by St. Columba in 563AD

(earlier name of the island was Icolmcille, Gaelic name today I Chaluim Chille, ‘Calum’s/Columba’s island’)

• Columba exiled from Ireland, travelled to Iona with 12 companions

• Site chosen for its apart-ness from the world – Iona is a tiny island off the SW top of Mull. Apart-ness = lack of distraction and disengagement from the noise of the world.

• Monastery and scriptorium (writing-house) established.

Cast study: Iona and Lindisfarne

Lindisfarne founded by Aidan, c.632

• The monastery of Lindisfarne was founded by Irish monk Saint Aidan, who had been sent from Iona off the west coast of Scotland to Northumbria at the request of King Oswald. The priory was founded before the end of 634 and Aidan remained there until his death in 651 (from wikipedia)

• Oswald (and his brother, Oswy) had been political refugees on Iona in their youth; they were trained in Irish forms of Christianity. Oswald’s first act on becoming King of Northumbria was to send back to Iona for a preacher who would help him convert his people. Oswald granted Aidan land for a religious site…and unsurprisingly, Aidan chose a ‘thin place’ on which to establish his religious house. Notably, a tradition of literacy (historical writing, hagiography, book illustration) was early established.

• Celtic Christian preachers preached in the vernacular. This was very different from the simultaneous mission of Augustine from Rome to the Kentish court: Augustine and his followers spoke no English. The Celtic Christian mission to Northumbria was in fact spectacularly successful – there are records of hundreds of people a day being baptised in the local River Glen.

• In Civilisation (1969), Kenneth Clark makes the point that Celtic forms of Christianity were essential in ensuring the survival of civilisation in these north-westerly parts of Europe

Iona and Lindisfarne: a common (psycho)geography

Both houses are founded on isthmuses, ‘thin places’. Not every isthmus was so tenanted, but there are surprisingly many such sites around the shores of the UK.

And such thin places were also fairly practical…

• They offered some protection from attack from the mainland• They were abundantly provided with fish (image below is of a fish-trap on Strangford

Lough, N. Ireland)

But why should there by a tradition of spiritual reclusiveness (> monasticism) at all?

• Monasticism derives from the life and career of St. Anthony (C4th AD). He and his followers lived in caves in cliffs in what is today’s Ethiopia. They lived in seclusion partly because they distrusted how fashionable Christianity was becoming but also so that they could grapple in seclusion with the devil.

• And it was in Egypt that the first Christian monasteries were founded, during the life of Anthony. (The monastery near Hurghada – see next slide – was founded in 356AD and is the world’s oldest Christian monastery.)

St. Anthony’s monastery, Hurghada

Monasticism, thin places and art

• And so when Celtic monks in Ireland and England selected ‘thin places’ in which to live, pray and work they were responding both to spiritual precedent and practical need. Further

• Celtic Christianity is aligned with an interest in, even a delight in, the natural world: this shows up inter alia in artwork of the relevant period (C7-8th, see especially the Book of Kells and the great illustrations to the Lindisfarne Gospels)

Thin places and art

• Note the form and colouration of the initial capital (folio 27r from the Lindisfarne Gospels)

Cuthbert and the otters…Cuthbert was a Lindisfarne monk and bishop (c.643-87). After his death he became one of the most

important saints of the early medieval church, particularly the church as that existed in the North of England. His shrine in Durham Cathedral was a place of pilgrimage throughout the medieval period.

Now one night, a brother of the monastery, seeing him go out alone followed him privately to see what he should do. But he when he left the monastery, went down to the sea, which flows beneath, and going into it, until the water reached his neck and arms, spent the night in praising God. When the dawn of day approached, he came out of the water, and, falling on his knees, began to pray again. Whilst he was doing this, two quadrupeds, called otters, came up from the sea, and, lying down before him on the sand, breathed upon his feet, and wiped them with their hair after which, having received his blessing, they returned to their native element. Cuthbert himself returned home in time to join in the accustomed hymns with the other brethren. The brother, who waited for him on the heights, was so terrified that he could hardly reach home; and early in the morning he came and fell at his feet, asking his pardon, for he did not doubt that Cuthbert was fully acquainted with all that had taken place. To whom Cuthbert replied, ” What is the matter, my brother ? What have you done? Did you follow me to see what I was about to do? I forgive you for it on one condition,-that you tell it to nobody before my death.” In this he followed the example of our Lord, who, when He showed his glory to his disciples on the mountain, said, ” See that you tell no man, until the Son of man be risen from the dead.” When the brother had assented to this condition, he give him his blessing, and released him from all his trouble. The man concealed this miracle during St. Cuthbert’s life; but, after his death, took care to tell it to as many persons as he was able.

(https://exlaodicea.wordpress.com/2010/03/21/st-cuthbert-and-the-otters/, accessed 7 January 2015)

Thin places, Essex and Cedd• The chapel of St. Peter’s, near Bradwell on Sea (Essex). • Founded by Cedd in 654AD. Cedd was one of Aidan’s

followers and had been trained at Lindisfarne. I hadn’t realised his ministry stretched so far south….but there his chapel was, remotely sited on the Essex coast.

Conclusions

• Psychogeography isn’t necessarily urban• Psychogeography isn’t merely an aesthetic

posture

• Psychogeography involves continued acts of attentiveness to the forms and demands of human and other histories

• Psychogeography is a set of activities• Noticing, finding and using are essential parts of

these activities

Selected additional references

Gascoigne, Bamber (1977) The Christians. London: Jonathan Cape

Rosenthal, Michael (1987) Constable. London: Thames and Hudson.

Paul Nash, ‘Wood on the Downs’ (1930), see http://jamesrussellontheweb.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/paul-nash-in-pictures-wood-on-downs.html

(On Paul Nash see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Nash_%28artist%29)