Week 3 and the reading for Humanities is on the theme Place and Space. It includes poems from Radical Landscape poets in the Ground Aslant which I own so that was a boost. Plus John Burnside a Fife writer whose poetry and short stories are among the narrow selection of my books I brought to the cabin. Another bonus! Thanks to a Burnside podcast, I discovered WS Graham whose poem The Nightfishing gripped me and tied in wth my embryonic project idea - more of that later. I listened to it being read by the poet himself several times this week - got very immersed in its rhythms, layers, changing tenses. I'll come to this place come to this place which I'll not pass though one shall pass wearing seemingly this look I'm wearing yet this place finds me and forms itself again this present place found me. He was also a big pal of artist Peter Lanyon (1918-1964) whose work I fell for when I saw it in St Ives two years ago. (Pictured) An injection of humour came in the shape of Roy FIsher's Six Texts for A Film and the one about his home city Birmingham: Birmingham’s what I think with. It’s not made for that sort of job but it’s what they gave me. As a means of thinking, it’s a Brummagen screwdriver. Apparently he also made a film of himself carrying the front door of his childhood home around the city - still to be investigated. The theoretical aspects of space and place were the topic in the paper by Yi-Fu Tuan "The Perspective of Experience" which I'd also read thanks to Jane, a former York College student. So I was feeling well on top of this topic! Tuan Quote: Place is security; space is freedom; we are attached to the one and long for the other. There is no place like home. What is home? Quote: Places are centres of felt value; spaces are marked off and defended. Also read the entertaining : Species of Places and Other PIeces Georges Perec. Quote: Space melts like sand running through one's fingers. Time bears it away and leaves me only shapeless shreds And In Praise of Shadows by Tanizaki. Still to read activist and artist Lucy Lippard's The Lure of the Local which is waiting for me in the library. Other familiar names that came up were: Robert Macfarlane, Kathleen Jamie and TS Eliot. And we shall not cease from exploration and the end of our exploring shall be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time..." So just when I'm sitting comfortably along comes Phenomenology in the form of a lecture from Professor Norman Shaw whose bio says he's an interdisciplinary artist, writer, educator, curator, dj and musician which explains immense LP collection which is his backdrop during the Zoom lecture. Phenonmenolgy will get its very own post once I've learned how to say it and spell it. I also have to work out what my ontological position is. Google Maps no help at all. Meanwhile a fellow student shared the Muppets hilarious take on the topic to keep us right. Next up is Sound Art
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