MA Week 50 - Bathmaker : Life history and identity

Bathmaker : Life history and identity 

In the introduction to the book which she edits with Penelope Hartnett, Anne-Marie Bathmaker sets out some arguments in favour of the individual telling their story of their life-as-lived and highlighting how it conflicts with the over-arching narratives of our time. This book chapter has been enlightening and inspiring to me since I first read it six or seven months ago. Below is my short analysis of the chapter. 

Bathmaker articulates the idea of the “life history” as being the “life story” of a person set within the social and historical context in which it took or is taking place (p2). The use of narrative enquiry within life history research documents the “complexities and contradictions” of real life. The ambiguity is revealed and the homogeneous result that a large sample size may produce is disturbed. Such enquiry “may call into question dominant narratives that do not match the experience of life as lived” (p3). This in turn may “speak truth to power” (p5).  

Life history research is also important, argues Bathmaker, because the previous trajectories for life (class, gender, race) no longer hold true – for better or for worse. (p3). If you tell your story, you can articulate and recognise your identity. Individual agency is restored and there is a move away from “big narratives” such as Marxism and feminism. However, the big narratives still impinge on an individual’s daily life. Understanding an individual’s story in the context of particular social structures gives a deeper illumination of both their story and the social structures.

For me this is very important reading as my own practice has grown from what I’ve called my “lived experience”, which tallies very closely with Bathmaker’s description of the “life history”. Bathmaker’s discussion illuminates further for me the manipulation and repurposing of history that we encounter passively every day, whether by government, media, teachers or multiple other agencies. From whose viewpoint do we really recount history? Media/journalists? Individual historians? Why are some voices more valid than others? The “life history” concept seems to me to allow more validity of the individual’s voice than simply “history”. It disrupts my tenet of the "official".

Another thought that arises is that individual identity is complex and cannot be defined by one theoretical perspective. The big narratives can easily become oppressive. For example, there are some areas of feminism and socialism with which I strongly agree, but I don’t agree with everything that each of these metanarratives stand for. It is easy to pigeon-hole individuals on the basis of a part-identification with a particular metanarrative, but just because it’s easy, it’s not necessarily correct or justifiable.

 

 

MA Week 48 - Heritage Readings (2) - Laurajane Smith

Heritage readings (2): Laurajane Smith, Uses of Heritage.

 

Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD)

Laurajane Smith posits the idea of the ‘authorized heritage discourse’ (AHD) (p28),which arises from the aesthetics of its policy makers and practitioners, and its institutionalisation within various national and international codes. This AHD is largely concerned with monuments that have a perceived universal significance and which are tangible. Smith identifies two challenges to this: the desire of local communities (geographically- and/or socially-cohesive groups) to demand recognition; and the backlash against ‘Disneyfication’ of mass heritage tourism.

AHD uses the rhetorical device of ‘the past’, which is vague in definition, and therefore needs experts to understand it for us. Such a term disengages from the “very real emotional and cultural work that the past does as heritage for individuals and communities. The past is not abstract; it has material reality as heritage , which in turn has material consequences for community identity and belonging”(p29). AHD reflects the grand narratives of nation and aesthetics and privileges the view and stewardship of the expert (p.42).

“Material or tangible heritage provides a physical representation of those things from ‘the past’ that speak to a sense of place, a sense of self, of belonging and community’” (p30). However, the primary form of identity associated with AHD is often national, but this is under challenge as it ignores sub-national identities. AHD also promotes elite social classes - “non-traditional” concepts of heritage are excluded. Smith quotes Barthel (1996, pp 68/9) talking about the industrial site, and the masculinity and general unpleasantness of the dirty, grimy workplace; these are not presented to the public in the sanitised reconstruction. In fact, the public are seen as empty vessels or passive consumers (p32) as heritage has simply become a form of consumption via mass tourism (p33). Alongside sanitisation, authenticity can also become an issue with reconstructions and dramatizations and we are in danger of the ‘heritage theme park’ (p40).

 

Heritage and identity

Smith states that “material culture as heritage is assumed to provide a physical representation and reality to the ephemeral and slippery concept of ‘identity’”. It “fosters the feelings of belonging and continuity” (p48). Often, however, this identity is assumed in the literature to be national identity, as mentioned above. She posits the idea of the use of “symbolic elements” (e.g. flags) at national level, but these can then be used at a sub-national level as reminders and constructors of identity (p49).As modernization erodes customs and expectations, individuals and communities are forced to re-articulate and recover a sense of the past. This sense of the past can be used to confirm or reject identity.  

Smith introduces the idea of intangible heritage as part of the heritage discourse: “while there may be a physical reality or aspect to heritage, any knowledge of it can only ever be understood within the discourses we construct about it”(p54). I conclude that the idea of heritage covering the non-material must have been quite new when the book was written; she describes intangible heritage, including memory, music and oral history, as quite distinct from tangible heritage (p56).

 

Memory and remembering

Smith identifies an increasing interest in commemoration, arising from War anniversaries and the Millennium. At the point of writing of the book, she had identified only a passing mention of memory in the heritage literature. She argues this may be because “memory may be seen as subjective and not always reliable whereas history is about the accumulation of fact within an authorized narrative” (p58). A group can constructs an identity for itself though shared memories, i.e. the collective or social memory. These memorise are socially constructed in the present and make meaningful common interests and perceptions of collective identity. The collective memory is passed on and shaped in the present and is reshaped daily by interaction between members of the collective (p59). Smith further argues that “memory is an important constitutive element of identity formation” (p60). Unlike professional historical narrative it is personal and powerful.

 

Place

“Heritage is about a sense of place” (p75, Smith’s original emphasis). Heritage provides not only a “geographical sense of belonging” but also a “cultural place or sense of belonging”. “Heritage…[can be used] to express, facilitate and construct a send of identity, self and belonging” (p75). Smith is clear that place is not only physical, but also socially constructed and posits that the national is actually constructed from many sub-national places, rather than the opposite. She also acknowledges the vital role that place plays in everyday life :. “place is part of lived experience …an embodiment… of feelings, images and thoughts”(p 76). Futhermore, “heritage as place… creat[es] an affect on current experiences and perceptions of the world”. Thus, a heritage place may represent … a sense of identity and belonging for particular individuals or groups” (p77).

 

Reflection

From Smith’s work I understand AHD is a restrictive construct, concerning itself with a sanitised version of the past, politically constructed to suit the “experts” in history. Its exclusion of non-tangible heritage necessarily removes the individual as all our experience and memories are different – even within the same communities and families. Its driver is often the establishment of a national identity, with regional identities being marginalised. Members of the public are expected to use the heritage site in the way it has been prepared for them. Smith paves the way for subsequent researchers to break the restrictions of AHD. 

She argues that the past does play a part in the construction of our identity. The use of symbolic elements as constructors of identity at sub-national level could bring into play the Yorkshire Rose, a unifying symbol of Yorkshire. But any emotional affect that the Yorkshire Rose, or any other aspect of heritage has, is outside AHD as it is not factual. Yet as Smith acknowledges, it is powerful, and it is more likely to shape our identity.  

Memory also plays its part as a conduit between heritage and identity. We constantly reform and repurpose our memories. They become a discourse rather than a fact. But how can we say history is factual? If researchers are using archival research, they are potentially interpreting someone else’s interpretation of a particular event. Surely history is also a discourse – as Smith eloquently argues throughout the book, it is deliberately excluding and including to serve its own ends. Heritage is also associated with a place. This can be a physical place but could also be one’s cultural place in the scheme of things. Place is inextricably linked to lived experience and causes affects in the past and present. 

Place construct is also complicated and at this point it serves us to reflect on how the past and the present, our physical and cultural places, and our individual and group identities, are commingled. As I read more of the literature on these topics, rather than clarifying boundaries between them, I find they are more intertwined than ever and that any given book or paper privileges one approach simply because of the background of its author(s). This is not problematic in itself, though, as it simply underpins the autobiographical nature of my practice and the complexity of trying to compartmentalise its various components. The more I read, the more I think the visual can portray these topics as well as, if not better than, the text-based discourse as the visual serves to unify rather than dissect them.

MA Week 47 - Sense of Place and Place Attachement

Sense of Place and Place Attachment : an analysis of two journal articles

 

Scannell, L., & Gifford, R., (2010) Defining Place Attachment : A tripartite organising framework in Journal of Environmental Psychology, vol 30, Issue 1, March 2012, pp1-10

Summary

Place attachment is defined as a bonding between the individual and a meaningful environment. It is multifaceted, with many definitions, and Scannell and Gifford attempt to cram it all into a framework based on Person/ Psychological Process / Place. The person is “who”; the process is the “psychological drivers” the place is the “object of attachment” .I don’t propose to summarise the whole framework, but rather here I pick out the points most salient to my own research.

A place, and one’s experience in that place, make it meaningful to you, and the personal connection helps engender a stable sense of self. The authors posit attachment to a place as a fundamental human need; the “attached” place (my term for it) gives security and comfort. The attachment comes about via memories, beliefs and meanings, implying that one’s past and heritage are of significance when attaching to a place. Each individual has a “schema” of knowledge and beliefs about that place, which make it their ”own”. The place can contain the essence of important events. Elements of place can also come to represent elements of who you are.

Place includes social and physical aspects : connection via community, bondedness to neighbourhood, aspects that are not-place specific e.g. religion. Ties created by the broader social system give rise to homogeneous communities. Civic place attachment may occur by a group as symbolic, e.g. attachment to a city, pride in the county. To summarise, drivers of place attachment can include : amenities, personal friends/family, memories, good experiences, security, fit between yourself and place.

Analysis

On reading this rather difficult paper, I could immediately see a great overlap between the person and the psychological process. I am unsure that these can be separated, although this is in a psychology-based journal, so I have to assume that psychology classifies your “person” as different from the way you interact with any given thing.

Overall a lot of the points made seem like, well, good old-fashioned common sense. You connect with a place because it’s familiar, your family lived there, you’ve always had a good time with your mates there. However, I have to acknowledge that I’ve lived in the same place for most of my life, so I wear my place attachment very lightly.

Looking deeper into the points that the authors make, they argue that attachment comes about via memories, beliefs and meanings. Therefore I can conclude that heritage and history contribute to place attachment, and place attachment contributes to identity. Thus the construct of place is important in heritage – the heritage occurred in a place, and that place then becomes a site of attachment. This then contributes to the idea of the contingent heritage of individuals and groups who may or may not know each other but who have a shared attachment to a place, and again the shared attachment may or may not be known to each other. So we have elements of heritage and identity that are shared with strangers and vice versa. The authors’ idea of symbolic civic place attachment is a nice one, particularly speaking as a Yorkshirewoman, but I think it is an over-simplification and easily glosses over the multi-cultural make-up of many cities today, with all the benefits and problems that may bring.

 Therefore I think a note of caution has to be sounded here, though. Bathmaker argues that the former trajectories for life (class, gender, race) no longer hold true, although the big narratives still impinge on an individual’s daily life. Bundling our “heritages” and “identities” and “civic pride” together with those of strangers could be an over-simplification and an indicator of nostalgia creeping in.

The over-riding message I took from this was “Self as place and place as self?”. If you have spent a long time in a place, it becomes inseparable from your identity.  It gives a whole new meaning to the football chant “We are Leeds”.

 

Beidler, K., & Morrison, J., (2016) ‘Sense of place: inquiry and application’ Journal of Urbanism : International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability, 9, (3), pp205-215

Summary

Beidler and Morrison’s article is a literature review-based paper which also proposes a framework for investigating and defining sense of place.  Their model is four dimensional, bsed on the self, the environment, the social interaction and an all-important fourth dimension, time.

They acknowledge that “at the center of all experience is the individual who is engaged in that experience”. The self converts a ”space” to a “place”. They quote Cross (2001, p10):’To some degree we create our own places, they do not exist independent of us’. The environment is the physical setting of the place, but enlarged to include such constructs as the town’s character. Within this element they also allude to the power constructs with which city planners try to make us use the city in a certain way. The social interaction brings into play the shared experiences of those people who use a place, and the relationships they build with other people as well as the place. Regarding the time dimension, the authors acknowledge the concept of “rootedness”, living in a place for a long time, and this giving you an intuitive understanding of your surroundings. They quote Relph: ‘An authentic sense of place is above all that of being inside and belonging to your place [original emphasis] both as an individual and as a member of a community and to know this without reflecting upon it’ (Relph, 1976, p65). However, they point out that different groups may be using the same space in different ways.

Analysis

Beidler and Morrison effectively argue the idea of sense of place as a discourse between the four elements of their framework. This inherent sense of fluidity in their argument makes a good deal of sense to me. Their centring of the framework on the self, narcissistic as that may seem, also appears completely logical. In a lot of the reading I’ve done, it has appeared that the authors frame their arguments based around an amorphous mass of people who just happen to share some characteristic (e.g. they live in the same place) without acknowledging that this mass is composed of individuals who are trying to make something of their lives.

The elements of the town’s character and the social interaction inevitably overlap, but it is the social interaction element that is most pertinent to my research. They state that ‘Phenomenological research stemming from cultural geography [in the 1980s] argued that ‘lived experience’ was central to place interpretation’. This fits exactly with my own argument of understanding a place because you’ve lived there for a long time, and can also be extrapolated to liking a place you’ve only visited once because you really enjoyed your day there. They stress the significance of memory, experience and social relations in the construction of the meaning of the place to the individual.

Regarding the time dimension, this appears to me as a kind of ”vessel” which contains or underpins all the other points. I couldn’t agree more with the Relph quote – I know this to be true intuitively. Their descriptions of the different groups using the same place give rise to the idea of any one person’s different identity and role within a place; different individuals, roles and communities within one place will have different degrees of and different experiences of place attachment.

Comparison

Beidler and Morrison’s article is much more accessible to me as a non-psychologist/geographer than Scannell and Gifford’s, but there are some common themes between the two. They both agree that place attachment and sense of place has some construction by the individual and by groups. In Beidler and Morrison’s case they attribute this to groups who physically interact, whereas Scannell and Gifford’s argument can be extrapolated to refer to strangers with contingent histories.

Both papers agree that memory is important to place construct. However, neither of them touch on the idea of nostalgia, despite both papers skirting around this. It seems reasonable to infer that place attachment via, say, the memory of a nice day at the seaside can turn into nostalgia with the passage of time. Scannell and Gifford’s paper says much less about this physical environment, but both papers agree that social constructs and human relationships are important in the construction of place. Buried within both articles are implications of heritage, history and identity and their complex entanglements with place.

Beidler and Morrison’s overt use of time as a “fourth dimension” in their paper seems to crystallise some of Scannell and Gifford’s arguments about memories and the essence of important events. Their acknowledgement that time spent in a place contributes to the construction of place attachment and sense of place seems self-evident to me, yet it lacks in Scannell and Gifford’s paper. Again this appears to me to flag up my individual experience and to underline once more the general academic treatment of the individual as an amoeba in an amorphous mass. Overall I found Beidler and Morrison’s article the much more helpful of the two.

MA Week 43 - Printing, partying, networking and writing

Reflection on the week - 18th October 2016

 

Printing

I finally got into the Print Room on Thursday 13^th October and finished the pylon drypoint. It lacks symmetry, or better said mirror imagery, but I don’t think that is too much of a problem because it is hand cut. I did have some trouble printing it, though. I couldn’t get a good black line out of it. I think the grooves I’ve etched may not be deep enough. It will hardly take any wiping at all. I need to talk to Mike or Mick about it but I didn’t get that far.  

I did do a bit of experimentation with paper for the first time. Mick had kindly given me some offcuts of Canaletto paper which is about 300gsm, so really it’s like thin card. I soaked it for about 20 minutes but I think perhaps I should have soaked it longer. It did seem to take the print a bit better than the cartridge paper, though. Certainly more experimentation to do but that would be no hardship!

 

View inside pylon - 1

I also printed it onto a couple of monoprints, one of which had tissue paper on. As I suspected, some of the tissue soaked off when I gave the paper a quick soak. I think I could probably glue it back on so I will have to see to that in due course. I also printed onto a two-tone scratched monoprint and I liked this one. I haven’t had time to reflect fully on these and where next but I don’t see that as a problem; the dissertation has to take priority this term and the printing will kick back in as the priority from January. Any printing I can do this term is a bonus.

View inside Pylon - 2 - drypoint over monoprint

 

Leeds Print Workshop opening

 

On Friday I went to the opening party of the Leeds Print Workshop and it was grand. It was kind of like hanging out in a printerly environment with beer. What more could a body want?

I also had lots of good conversations, including with my classmates Carol and Sue. Then I met two of the first year MA students, Will and Russell. Russell’s work seems to have some overlaps with mine so we have agreed we will get together to discuss in more detail and see if there are any avenues for collaboration. It was interesting trying to answer Will and Russell’s questions about the course; they are very similar to the ones I was grappling this time last year and they reflected back to me that fact that I have learnt something.I caught up with College printroom staff past and present which was good, especially to see Lyndon, and was also delighted to see my friend Filippa up and about after a bit of a low time.

Alongside the Print Workshop opening was an exhibition called “Out of Bounds”, which carried on from residencies that various East Street Arts artists and associates had undertaken in the Summer of 2015. I visited East Street Arts’ Patrick Studios to see some of the outcomes of the residencies in September 2015, and was particularly inspired by the urban mark-making of the ceramicist Rebecca Appleby. Rebecca was exhibiting two pieces from her Urban Palimpsest series and I had the good fortune to be able to chat with her again. She has had a fantastic year, including winning “Best Newcomer” at the prestigious Ceramic Art London. She gave me a bit more of an insight into how she is drawn to the urban as her source material, and also advised me to keep working and striving so that I could be ready for things to start happening when the time is right. It was a real boost to be able to talk to her a year on.

Thinking ahead

 

Another thing I’ve been doing over the past few weeks is working with my classmates Sue, Carol and Paula, to try to find a venue for our end-of-year show this time next year. To be honest I have done the least work of the four of us. However, it has opened up a conversation with East Street Arts about using temporary space. I would love to exhibit in the space that Out of Bounds is currently occupying. Carol told me the same thing as Rebecca – get making!

Thinking

I’ve had plenty of thinking to do as I press on with my dissertation. I’ve written a couple of short critical analyses. One concerns Tina Richardson’s chapter A Wander through the scene of British Urban Walking in the book she edited, Walking Inside Out : Contemporary British Psychogeography.  Her chapter throws up some interesting links with nostalgia and therefore heritage.

I’ve also written something about Constructing ‘The North’ : space and a sense of place, a book chapter by Stuart Rawnsley. in Northern Identities : historical interpretations of ‘The North’ and ‘Northernness’. Rawnsley offers a potted history of the construction of Northernness. His approach is quite aggressive in terms of exposing agencies that he considers to control constructions of “the North”. I agree with some of it, but I found it went much further than my own viewpoint.

Finally I have been browsing Discourse and Identity by Bethan Benwell and Elizabeth Stokoe. This has given me a really useful overview of factors at play in the construction of identity. These authors argue that identity is fluid and will change depending on the individual’s situation. The negative point for me with this book was that it seems to stray into the idea of the individual being part of a kind of mass of people who can’t think for themselves – I’ve found this in a number of what I would call “Social Sciences” texts. However it did throw up links to identity being linked to relationships and with place. So a kind of web of heritage – identity – walking is beginning to emerge.

A quick psychogeography and culture lesson

I was really pleased to be able to meet up with Dr Zoë Tew-Thompson of Leeds Beckett University on Tuesday. Zoë is taking part in the “Being Human” event that I mentioned last week. She is a lecturer in Media, Communication and Cultures and has a particular interest in place and space. Her research has included telling the “small stories” behind the “big shiny” official stories (my words) – much like I am trying to do. Also similar to me, she had to pull theories from many different disciplines to be able to understand her research and it was great to know that I’m not going mad trying to find the academic underpinnings of my visual work. She gave me a few more psychogeography references to follow up and we talked in some depth about the importance of viewing the city in a different way to that which the city planners have defined. The shapes, smells, colours are all there to be observed if you simply open yourself to them. Zoë is interested in the idea of disrupting the “official history” to tell the narratives of the individual stories underneath, because really these are not only the story of one person – they are the stories of many contingent people.  In this she articulated at least some facet of why I’m doing what I’m doing. It was quite exhilarating to be able to talk to someone who knew what I was on about and could offer insights that unlocked some of the academic blockages I’ve been wrestling with. As a result of our meeting, though not of any particular thing that Zoë mentioned or suggested, I’ve realised I can improve the structure of my dissertation so that it will flow significantly better.

MA Week 43 - Benwell & Stokoe on Identity and Discourse

Identity was historically considered to emanate from the self and there was a belief that at least some level of a stable, non-changeable identity existed in each person. This paradigm has been gradually overtaken by the idea of identity as changeable – “performative”  - depending on the situation in which the individual finds themself. Many different external influences inform the construction of identity and the facets of identity change depending on the circumstance. 

Identity theory moved from a belief in the individual identity to that of a collective identity, a label, in the second half of the c20th. (Self/other becomes ingroup/outgroup). However this could often provide a justification for a negative view of that labelled group. There was a gradual recognition that an individual is not just a member of one group and that these collective identities intersect. This is taken further by the idea of hybridity, which is particularly seen individuals who belong to more than one clearly definable group and who give the lie to the idea of binaries in identity theory. A problem with the discursive, performative definitions of identity comes with the fact that it ignores the physical body and concentrates only on the psyche.

The recurrence of the idea of post-modernity as causing fragmentation and the need to identify with very clear groups is interesting. That said, this text is 10 years old. However this does find a resonance with the idea of nostalgia due to the risk caused by speed of change, which more and more appears to be one of the paradigms underpinning my research by practice.

My own opinion is that there is some level of self-identity otherwise the very small group who belong to all the same collectives would all be the same. Denying self-identity seems to me to be a power construct that is designed to try to homogenise the individual. At the same time, there is no denying the large number of influences on the individual’s identity and it would be difficult to argue that we as human beings do not feel a need to “belong” to some group or groups. I also think that there is some element of intrinsic individual identity in the choices we make of groups to belong to.

Touched upon peripherally is the idea that identity is always being forced upon us from all over the place, but that we are seen mainly by researchers as passive consumers of these influences. In one or two places the idea of the individual as the possessor of some sophistication and judgement is aired, but for the most there seems to be an overwhelming sense that people are a bit stupid and flock together with those like them without any apparent thought. Not only in this book (which I’ve found fairly accessible), but also in other social science-based texts, I read the subtext that the researcher is in their own (superior) “ingroup” and the rest of the world is their “outgroup” and their subject (in all senses of the word).

The authors identify a useful list of identity settings:

• Everyday conversation and interaction – how we act with friends, and perform e.g. our gender with them
• Institution e.g. how we act within the university, the doctor/patient setting
• Narrative – telling stories about self and others
• Commodified: identities of consumers, how ads engage with us, representations of identities in commodified contexts
• Spatial identity : links between place, space and identity construction-
• Virtual identity

Two of particular interest to me are commodified identities and spatial identity.

Commodified identities: concerned with consumption. The consumer is often seen as passive and manipulated; advertisers and market forces have the power. An alternative view is that the consumer has authority and is able to make a sophisticated choice between products on offer. There is no doubt that advertisers construct the identity of their target audience in a particular way, and the text points to the link between what is desirable but unattainable, and  the advertisers’ conflation of this with their product – in other words, their product will enhance your life, and presumably therefore your identity. Semiotics does important work here, with choice of language as well as choice of images (e.g. use of the word “you” to make the message more intimate). These reinforced representations fall into common usage. This links to Marshall’s idea of the appropriation of negative qualities as positive ones in the Yorkshire identity; the consumer (the Yorkshire folk) has chosen to subvert the message to their own end.

Spatial identities: This paradigm explores the connection between place, space and identity construction. Physical space is “socially constructed by human agents” – humans construct different types of boundaries and “police” them. This can be as simple as staking your space out on a beach (territorialising it) – an interesting idea of your identity displayed by bodily movement in physical space. People make spaces and vice versa – space constrains you but offers a site for identity construction.

“Who we are is inextricably linked to where we are, have been or are going” (p210) – this implies a kind of fluidity of identity based on place- but not just where you are now, also past and future. This then offers a link to heritage.

The authors quote Hetherington – social centrality of places as persons try to express their identity by meeting with others who identify in the same group (e.g. emos). People make sense of their “self” by attributing meaning to place (p212). Space produces ingroups and outgroups eg Chinatowns, male only golf clubs (p214). Again these are constructions of space and of identity; the space functions as a way of producing others. This also links to heritage as people start to identify with a particular group in a particular space – what Harrison would call “unofficial heritage”.

The concept of place as integral to the life story is introduced; place assists in construction of personal identity. “links between places and persons get connected in narrative accounts and is an example of how place/space is produced in, and as a topic of discourse” (p220). So the fact that everything takes place in some kind of space, and that we associate that event with that space, forms an inextricable link between identity and place. Further, using language about a place gives your opinion about it and therefore something about your identity and by implication the identity of the “others” (p216-219). This implies that people are given to talking about people in places and this links them. So we link people to places and vice versa. Then of course we have relationships with those people and possibly also with these places. These become intermeshed within our identity.

Nationalism and national identity are also at work in here. Semiotics of e.g. the use of the word “us” remind us (sic!) of nationhood. The nation as historically and rhetorically constructed. Therefore the link between place and identity is not just at an individual level (p227).

I hadn’t really thought of psychogeography being so linked to heritage an identity. I had thought of it more as a way of exploring these paradigms but here I am beginning to see it as heritage and identity being woven into the – theories? practices? of psychogeography.

One really interesting thing about this book is the cover, which is a painting by Anita Klein called “Watching the Sound of Music”. I’ve seen some of Klein’s work before; the people are packed into the canvas and there is a very strong sexual element, with large suggestive eyes and sensuous faces. This painting shows two women and a man, all displaying a sensual body language. Except that it is reproduced in full on the back cover and actually contains three women and a man (and a TV), with a complicated jumble of legs, such that it’s not quite clear which pairs (groups?) of people are attracted to each other and who is actually trying to watch the TV. I find it quite ridiculous that a book on identity should deliberately exclude one of the actors from the picture.

MA Week 43 - Rawnsley on Northern Identity

Stuart Rawnsley - Constructing ‘The North’ : space and a sense of place

A potted history of how the North came into being, and extremely useful for a beginner like me.  

Rawnsley argues that “no other region has such an intensified ‘sense of place’” (p3) – and yet the North remains ill-defined, despite the convincing arguments he puts forward in this chapter. Having read a few authors on the topic now, each one seems to have their own idea of what constitutes “the North”, just as I do myself. Neither does Rawnsley offer any information on what traits Southerners – or non-Northerners - might display. I did also wonder, as I read the chapter, whether these concepts of “the North” (and whatever is the opposite) still ring true in these days of social media, global crises and Brexit. However, following the “Grim up North?” symposium, I think they these ideas are still strongly held.

Rawnsley argues that “the North” was “originally constructed by 16^th century cartographers and reconstructed many times through various agencies” (p4). The industrial revolution caused towns and cities to become differentiated from each other (p6), and led to the formation of working class enclaves. The suggestion about towns differentiating and competing is borne out by Jack Southern’s paper at the “Grim up North?” symposium, and whilst the inter-city rivalry might not be so bitter now, I am personally aware that there is still competition between Leeds and Manchester – particularly as the latter seems to get all the funding. He also states that the Irish contributed to Northern identity (p7) - this is the first time that I’ve learnt that my Irishness is Northern!

Traits of Northernness (p8) are identified as: “independence, dignity of labour and solidarity both at work and in the community”, depicting the construction of a Northern working class. I’m not sure how much of this is factual and how much of it is just perpetuating a stereotype, re-constructing the Northern working class in retrospect. Anyway, with the advent of the railway by the mid-19^th century, tourists could see the North without seeing the urban (p9). The production of beautiful images for advertising allowed the sense of place  to be “distilled”and exported to London.

Rawnsley specifically mentions London and he equates London with the State. The concept of Northernness is as an “other” to the Englishness of London and the surrounding areas. Thus a broadbrush description of North arose and the whole North was stamped with it.  Regional planning, emanating from London and used in the war, made spatial divisions of the country and helped in the construct of “the North” (p12).”The North” could now be shown on a map, defined ideologically and the site of battles of power and control between labour and capital. Alongside the state, the BBC (which can be considered an instrument of the state), identified (p14) the area between Trent and Tweed as “intrinsically different” from the rest of the country, particularly in its “general attitude and culture”. The BBC’s choice of personnel and some of its publications reinforced this Northern stereotype. It subsequently moved to regional broadcasting (“the North” being a region) which broadcast items about ”Northern” local culture. Rawnsley purports that the BBC would not overtly recognise class differences but at the same time sought to reinforce them.

Between the wars, the traditional industries started to decline and service industries started to appear. The North-South divide became more deeply entrenched (p16). The distress of North on appeared on TV in the South, once again underlining the “otherness” of the two areas to each other. “Photojournalism” became a kind of acceptable form of voyeurism (p17). I interpret this as a kind of virtual dark tourism of the North.

In the concluding pages of the chapter (pp19/20), Rawnsley stresses the importance of mapping, and therefore borders, in the construction and control of the North. He sees the boundary as controlling. He then concludes with a statement that can be interpreted in various ways: “In the modern world place is separated from space in the sense that knowledge of and familiarity with a place no longer depends on the immediate environment”. I presume he states this as his interpretation of “The South” presuming that it understands “The North”.

I think Rawnsley does overstate some of his arguments. He is clearly anti-State and goes so far as accusing the State of surveillance. However, the chapter does lead me to reflect on how much of my Northernness /Yorkshireness is socially constructed and how much is my actual experience. I think most of it is experience, but against that is the fact that I can’t go back in time and unpick how much media and social manipulation my own construct of Yorkshireness has undergone.

The reiteration of the county border as “controlling” also fails to take into account the pride of Yorkshire people in their (our) identity. I’ve previously mentioned the 2014 Tour de France Grand Depart in this context, when the whole of the county seemed to turn out to put the county very firmly and definitely on the map – possibly literally as well as figuratively. The Grim Up North? symposium revealed the Yorkshire-Lancashire rivalry to be still alive and kicking.

Regarding the disconnect of place and space, my own wanderings provide a counter argument to this. It is only by moving, physically, mentally and emotionally, within a place, that one can gain a knowledge of it.

Overall I found this chapter very useful and informative, not least in the counter arguments it made me construct.

MA Week 41 - Printing and Perusing

Reflection on restarting – 4^th October 2016

 

So, back in the thick of things. Since I gave the paper a couple of weeks ago I’ve made a start on my dissertation and done a bit of printing.

 

I’ve spent quite a bit of time poring over books and perusing papers. My dissertation will have the same theme as my paper but obviously will need more academic rigour, so there’s quite a bit of referencing to do. There was a lot of food for thought about identity and heritage in the symposium itself and some of this has been borne out in the reading I’ve done.

 

I’ve also gone back into the print room. It was strange, restarting, and I made some of the same stupid mistakes I made last term – doh! On Thursday I did some monoprinting. I decided to use grey and black as a change from red and black, but the grey didn’t work brilliantly well. I mixed some white into Payne’s grey and it went really thick. When I scratched into it with the comb, it gathered at the edges of the paper.

 

Some of the Vernon Street staff are now in the Blenheim Walk print room and this means I am getting some additional views and information as obviously everyone has different experiences. This is even better than before! Mick Welbourn advised the use of cobalt drying drops. I completely forgot to put them in the grey but put them in the red. The red ink definitely dried quicker – by the afternoon it was difficult to roll whereas the grey was still going strong. It also dried better on the paper.

 

Rack of monoprints. Happy days!

 

I tried two different types of paper: a coated paper and my usual cartridge paper. The red didn’t work very well on the cartridge at all. On the other hand, it worked really well on the coated paper. Susie (a technician) told me that this paper is used for commercial printing as it’s glossy and takes up the ink really well. You need to do at least one pull on cartridge paper first or the ink overwhelms the (coated) paper. So this is all fodder for my desire to experiment with paper this academic year.

 

On Friday I started to etch a photo I’d taken looking up a pylon. It’s gone a bit astray in places but so far so good. Mick showed me how to ink it using oil paint. You apply the paint onto the plate with a cardboard square then scrape it away and polish it – no scrim. It’s a lot cleaner but I missed the scrimming. And there was no black, just bl**dy Payne’s grey. So I’ll ink it properly when it’s finished.

 

Pylon drypoint - WIP

 

“Grim Up North? : Symposium on Northern Identity, History and Heritage (2)

“Grim up North?” presentation

16^th September 2016

This was my first academic presentation and it was gratifying to be a part of a well-organised and well-attended symposium. The symposium itself was supported by the Heritage Consortium of Universities and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). It was ably organised by two PhD researchers, Michael Reeve and Andrew McTominey. I've posted about the day itself here.

I presented on my research by practice to date, with the title “Using Urban Wandering and Visual Outcomes to investigate Northernness : How did I get here?”. Within my powerpoint presentation, I used photos from my urban wandering as backdrops to the slides, with the intention of adding context and interest to the paper.

I started by describing how my practice is fuelled by my own lived experience and is an investigation into what’s happened, and what is happening, to me – hence my subtitle, “how did I get here?” (which also links back to my 3-minute presentation at the“Heritage Show & Tell” back in March – this presentation built on that one). I then mentioned my emerging methodology of wandering and response to investigate Northernness and positioned this as a synthesis of academic research, wandering and visual outcome.

I went on to talk a little about my own lived experience – my own personal narrative – as context for my research, mentioning my family as Engineers and the trauma of redundancy when the industry closed down. I explained that when I restarted my art practice, it quickly became apparent that I was expressing “what’s inside me”. I showed an example of my work (on the slide below), and that when I came to write my MA proposal, I needed to express this in a more elegant written format – hence the research question on the slide below. And that was how I “got here”, i.e. presenting my work to a room full of historians!

 

 

Next, I talked a little about my theoretical perspectives, admitting I had no background in heritage, but quoting Harrison on heritage: the ideas of heritage concerning people, places, objects and practices, and heritage only happening if something is at risk – and obviously our industry was at so much risk that it disappeared. I also quoted Bathmaker on life history as the life story in its social context, which resonated with Jack Southern’s comments on microhistory earlier in the day. I used these two points to illustrate my argument that the two work together – heritage and identity, past and present.

After this came the main point of the presentation – the urban wandering, and beyond. I showed some images of my wandering from Woodhouse to Armley and talked about my purpose of seeking Northernness, and how it then became clear to me that I was also moving into the area of psychogeography, showing a definition of pyschogeogrpahy from Tina Richardson. I talked about crossing the boundary into Armley, findng the canal, the repurpsoed mill, factories derelict an in use, and how I took the splashes of colour – e.g. the yellow of some skips – to be a sign of life amidst the soot-ingrained bricks of the buildings. I told the story of me being in my Dad’s space, but not our space together, and yet it was no longer his space as the industy had moved on – an example of the quotidian of yesterday forming the heritage of today. I explained that this had been a really direct and immersive experience of the theoretical perspectives of heritage and identity and I re-quoted Richardson’s quote of Abdelhafid Khatib, one of the founders of psychogeography: “at the same time as being a form of action, it is a means of knowledge”.

 

Explaining one of the Armley abstracts (photo: Mel Dewey)

 

I therefore had found Northernness, conflated with industry and memory, and my next action was to depict it. I showed a couple of my visual outcomes from the wandering, and offered some insights into how I’d used what I’d experienced. I explained how I had repurposed the shapes and colours I’d seen, using the colours as a palette. I’d used collaged black and white images to represent the past amongst the colours of the present. By using an abstract approach, I had tried to offer a universal way into the work, to invite viewers to join me in my experience; not just what I’d seen, but what I’d experienced. I also showed some close-up details and drew attention to the layering and scratching, depicting memories, the hidden and the revealed, leading to the painting becoming an industrial palimpsest.

Further explanations about developing a visual language to depict embodied experience (photo : Mel Dewey)

Explaining that this was the start of a personal visual language of Northernness, I went on to talk about how it had taken on a life beyond the wandering, giving a new sense of direction and purpose. It carried on in car journeys, with me taking pictures of anything and everything I found interesting and industrial and Northern, and I cited the example of the pylon abstracts, produced using the same methodology as the Armley abstracts from the picture in the slide below. I concluded this section with images of some outcomes from the Holbeck wandering, explaining that I had introduced printing using the shapes I’d seen.

My talk finished with a brief mention of my next steps: more visual and academic research, the possibility of collaboration, and the definite undertaking of further wanderings.

 

Reflection

I’d rehearsed the talk a few times, and had tested it out on a couple of people to ensure there was a logical flow, so I was quite confident about getting up and presenting. That said, I was still nervous when I stood up. However, it went well, I said what I wanted to say, only one slide got stuck, and I was more or less within my 15-minute slot.

It was clear that my research was at a much earlier stage than most of the other presenters, who were all PhD candidates or Early Career Researchers. However, I didn’t see this as a problem, simply a fact. There was a difference in presentation style and that’s something for me to consider  if/when I do another presentation. My presentation was much more personal than the others, although that is in part because my research by art practice is very personal. The others’ talks were clearly part of their ongoing research – a window into their research at this time, so to speak – whereas my presentation was a business-style affair with a definite beginning, middle and end and slides that had been prepared specifically for the occasion (some others had obviously done this, some not). I prefer the business-style presentation but I do wonder if perhaps mine was a little too personal on this occasion; however, there is no escaping that my life history is the basis of my research. I also made a point of including lots of visuals in my presentation rather than just loads of text. I do think this helped maintain interest.

After my panel, some people came up to talk to me. I hadn’t anticipated this and it was a shock, and a pleasant surprise, to find that people were interested in my work. The psychogeography element definitely captured people’s imagination. I think most people in the audience were from some kind of history background and I think the psychogeography angle gave them a way into my art practice. This was an interesting and potentially useful revelation. One participant told me he had done something similar as part of his undergraduate studies and that he had actually walked to some of the same places as myself. He did say he would share his writings with me but that hasn’t happened yet, which is a shame. He was also complimentary about my art work which was really gratifying. 

Cate Benincasa, who was formerly a lecturer at Leeds College of Art and is now a Senior Lecturer at the University of Huddersfield was really encouraging and complementary about my talk and told me I had pitched it at the right level. That was really useful and encouraging feedback. She also complemented me on the red pylon abstract which I was very pleased about. 

I realised afterwards that this is the first time I’ve shown my recent work to anyone publicly. I’m glad I didn’t realise it beforehand or I would have been very nervous. To have the work complemented was fantastic.  

Dr Henry Irving of Leeds Beckett University also approached me regarding a possible participation in Leeds Beckett’s “Being Human” festival event, when he and colleagues will lead participants on short walks around Leeds City Centre and help them produce written response. He was interested in possibly producing visual responses. This is really interesting and I hope it will come off. 

The whole experience was a really good one and I hope I can give another paper at some point. Although the preparation took a long time, the research I did will form the basis of my dissertation, which I will write on the same topic.

“Grim Up North? : Symposium on Northern Identity, History and Heritage (1)

Grim Up North?" : Northern Identity, History and Heritage

The Leeds Library, 16^th September 2016

An extremely interesting day spent in the fine surroundings of the Leeds Library. There were three panels, summarised below, including my first academic paper. 

 

With other Symposium participants during a break (photo : Mel Dewey)

 

Panel 1 : Identity 

First up was William Marshall (independent), who discussed negative Yorkshire stereotypes and how they have been appropriated positively by Yorkshire folk constructing their own identity. One example he gave was that of horse dealers who allegedly swindled unsuspecting non-Yorkshire folk of their horses. This gave rise to the positive ideas of humour, thriftiness and cunning as part of the county’s identity, and gained particular currency with the advent of print. William argued that the adoption of negative stereotypes as positive constructs could be both a form of defence and defiance. 

The second speaker on the panel was Jack Southern (University of Central Lancashire), who spoke about the Lancashire cotton industry up to 1915. He argued that previous investigations have often focused on the economic situations of the time, rather than the effects of those economic terms. This he termed microhistory. Neighbouring villages competed, taking pride in their industrial outputs. They built their identity based on industrial reputation and local principles, propagating these until they became the stuff of myth.The local identity ignored civic boundary changes. Women also had some financial independence, and although this point was not pursued, there were comments asking is history gendered? 

The last speaker of the morning was Anna Feintuck (University of Edinburgh) whose research investigates the amalgamation of Leith into Edinburgh. . Although Leith had and has its own identity, it also had and has connections to Edinburgh e.g. by public transport and tracks. Anna made a strong point of how arbitrary boundaries can be, citing the anecdote of the Hull – East Yorkshire boundary running through her own back garden when she was a child. She raised ideas of the boundary being at once definite, permeable and arbitrary, depending on whose viewpoint was under consideration.  

All three talks had a strong theme of the self-determination of identity by residents, drawing on myths, microhistory and reputation. Boundaries imposed by civic authorities were not necessarily accepted by local residents. However there is a boundary fluidity. Boundaries are invisible. How do we know they are there?

 

Panel 2 : T’other

The first speaker in this panel was Adelle Stripe (Manchester Metropolitan University) who spoke about the Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar, who wrote “Rita Sue and Bob too” amongt other works. Dunbar wrote the stories she saw on the Buttershaw Estate in Bradford, for example in her local pub, the un-aptly named “The Beacon”. When her work was performed in London, audiences laughed, leaving Dunbar nonplussed. Opening up her lived experience of Buttershaw to the whole country caused disuputes with neighbours because of the way she portrayed the estate. The media played a part in this, constructing their own versions of Dunbar’s and Bradford’s identities, ultimately contributing to Dunbar’s early death.

Next up was Rhiannon Pickin (Leeds Beckett University) who spoke about constructs of Yorkshire identity in Yorkshire Crime and Punishment Museums, in particular contrasting these museums in Ripon and York. Both museums offer experiences for children to understand their heritage (and by implication, add to the construction of their identity). However, as one might expect, York’s Museum has more of an international outlook, whereas Ripon draws on local volunteers who have actually worked in the judiciary and are therefore passing on direct experience. So the experience for the children is quite different. She also explained that there was little research about historical judicial systems outside London.

Closing the panel was Tosh Warwick (Leeds Beckett University) who spoke about the World Cup 1966 in Sheffield and Middlesbrough, which were both host towns (used as a generic term as Sheffield is a city). His research reveals that people (FA officials, foreign journalists and FIFA officals) didn’t want to go there. The two venues set about selling manufacturing towns as tourist destinations, with differing ideas of Northernness. Sheffield showcased its steel industry but Middlesbrough wanted to create a sculpture-based art trail (much to the dismay of some locals). Tosh associated this with Middlesbrough’s gradual move out of Yorkshire proper and towards Teesside.

 

Within all three papers there was the concept of the “other” being London; it wasn’t overtly stated, but it was implied. There were though also other others e.g. the media (Stripe), foreign FIFA officials (Warwick). Again the paradigm of identity construction emerged strongly, although this time not as self-determined, but as determined by others (e.g. museum staff, media).

Panel 3: Heritage

This was my panel, and unfortunately the two other speakers had to drop out. However, a replacement speaker was found for one of them. I presented on “Using wandering and visual response to investigate Northernness: How did I get here”?. More on this here.

 The other speaker, Catherine Flinn Goldie (independent) gave a paper on the politics of postwar rebuilding in Hull. She discussed arguments at local level regarding how to proceed, causing stumbling blocks. An interesting point was that rebuilding plans made no mention of heritage and there was the concept of the past being swept away as modernism prevailed. Oddly, some of the temporary structures put up are still in existence. This was a glimpse of the urban palimpsest in the city.

 

With Catherine Flinn Goldie taking questions after the papers (photo: Paula Hickey)

 

The keynote address, by Barry Doyle (University of Huddersfield) looked at health indicators in the inter-war years in Leeds and Sheffield. He discussed that this can be politicised and that there is evidence that it wasn’t so “grim up North”. He also, again, touched on the idea of London as “other”.

Discussion

The Symposium had a number of recurring themes:

Boundaries – boundaries featured strongly and it was clear there were definitions other than those used by the authorities. Boundaries could be fluid and could be invoked by local people when necessary and equally, ignored when necessary. There was a playful jibe at Jack Southern from the panel chair that he was from the wrong side of the Pennines (i.e. Lancashire) and Jack gave as good as he got – the county rivalry lives on! This gives rise to areas for investigation, e.g. what boundaries do we have that we acknowledge (myself and my classmates gave the example of the boundaries of where you could play out as a child). Conversely, what boundaries do we have that we don’t consciously know about or refuse to acknowledge?

Construction of identity – this massive topic was touched on in various ways. To at least some extent, we self-determine our identity, and our community does the same. However, there are many external agencies at play, particularly the media. Alongside this, .I felt there was the question of whose voice constructs our history, and therefore our heritage, thereby feeding our identities? Certainly all the speakers were giving some voice to their own view of history.

London – London was identified as the “other” several times. This poses the question – what about that part of the country (England? UK?) which isn’t the North and isn’t London? Just as some papers argued that previous research had only investigated London, and by implication there is a conflation of “London” with the “UK”, so I felt we as Northerners were conflating London with the South.

Moving around the urban space – this was another strong theme, which my own paper relied on, and which also arose in discussion of boundaries and in persons or groups moving to another place. Reactions to the urban space and to moves help create identity.

Microhistory – I hadn’t heard of this term before, but I identified it with Bathmaker’s idea of “life history” (one’s life story in its social and historical context) which I used in my own paper. Again, I think this is something that my work is exploring. The very brief mention of the gendering of history was, alongside this, also an indicator of the question of whose voice shapes our history.

Heritage feeding identity – this is a key tenet for me and it came out very strongly from many different viewpoints. This confirmation was very satisfying.

Above all, there was a joy of Northernness and a real affirmation of the value and importance of researching regional and local identity. It was a fascinating day and a great experience for me to be a part of it.