Deep Topographies: Inspiral London’s explorations into other spaces

Swedenborg House
22nd October 2016

Notes from Talks

SPIRALS- Recurring sign that binds the universe together

WALKING:
- Travel journals 
- Landmarks, uniting devices
- Walking stands for living
- Swedenborg: 'walking and journeying purvey mans movements'
- Walking and thinking: walking as inspirational -  too romantic and old fashioned view of connecting with the natural

Will Rowlandson
IMAGINAL LANDSCAPES

'The Holloway' - romanticising and anthropomorphising nature. Good speaker but nostalgic narrative!
  
Ken Worpole
AGAINST OBLIVION

'An Essex Journey', photographer Jason Orton
Photographs always make us reflect on the past as they are always necessarily images of the past.
Utopian settlements in England/ Land Colonies e.g. Silver End, Marylandsea.../ Experiments in alternative living

Discussed the IMMEDIACY OF SOUND (relates to Janet Cardiff) 

METROPOLITAN TRAILS: GR2013

Marseille – a city on the edge/ the margins

Group of artists developed a trail and accompanying guidebook

Around the Bear Sea – largest inland sea in Western Europe

Heritage as narrative – intertwined histories (Doreen Massey in For Space– space as a complex meeting point of histories, not as a simple surface)

Walking and landscapes as complex:

- Creating narratives

- ‘Art as an experience’

- ‘The museum is the territory itself’

- ‘Getting lost in complexity’

Tension between urban planning and perceived ‘nature’

GR2013 as an experiment in dematerialised urban planning, made to create narratives

METROPOLITAN TRAILS – Created an official national federation trail in Marseille:

-          Hiking in the city

-          Connecting with the Anthropocene epoch

-          Discovering our own cities

-          Re-framing the city as a space to be explored

http://www.metropolitantrails.org/index