Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network

The unconventional form of the novel as a place of encounter: the reader’s self-awareness

Berta Ferrer — 2022-02-15

Conventional narrative fiction has been defined over the centuries with a linear structure and lack of visual intrusions. In a standard novel, each page looks more or less the same as the others, connected by the uniformity of page design to avoid distractions on the reader’s side. This article analyses the way in which Laurence Sterne made the reader self-aware through the use of unconventional visual devices in his novel Tristram Shandy (1759–1767) and transformed the act of reading into a physical dialogue between author and reader. In addition, it examines its influence on the graphic dimension of contemporary works concerned with the unconventional form of the novel, such as B.S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates (1969), Mark Z. Danieleweski’s House of Leaves (2000) and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes (2010).

Visible Knowledge in the Imagined Landscape

Rachael Jones — 2022-02-15

This paper discusses the value of process, productive tension and creative limitation in the revision and development of a practice-based research methodology, which, through methods of drawing, photography and film, reveals a dialogue between researcher and participants as co-creators of a visual document. The Cornish landscape is the subject and centre for this participatory arts-based research project, where visual artefacts made by participants are collated and reinterpreted by the researcher into a non-fiction film, overlaying 16mm film footage to collaboratively document the landscape. Joining experimental film techniques, visual ethnography and social research, images act as material objects of engagement, where a connection between creator and landscape is evidenced through the materiality of the images and the film grain.

Robot Avatars and the Vicarious Realm

Nicola Robertson — 2022-02-15

I introduce the concept of the vicarious realm as existing between physical ‘place’ and virtual ‘space’. Using the words of students who employ telepresent robots to attend class for them, I speculate on the role of the robot as a pliable representation of a person, and how it offers the human the opportunity to retain an embodied presence in a place (classroom) in a way that is impossible via the use of a screen. Embodiment and interaction – known as intercorporeality - is unique to the notion of ‘place’; without it, we cannot lay claim to being in any place. This assertion has implications for the argument that there can be such a thing as an online ‘place’. It is my intention that my paper will provide an inspirational base for future researchers to consider our relation to place as our notions of being somewhere come to be questioned.

(Un)placing Street Art: Augmented Reality and Urban Museums

Valentina Vavassori — 2022-02-15

Street Art was born with a strong connection to place. Due to its site-specificity, it is difficult to exhibit it inside a museum. There is an intrinsic risk of completely de-contextualise and un-bound Street Art. Therefore, there is an increasing adoption of online, mobile based solution such as mapping or using Augmented Reality in order to comment and narrate the artworks within their own placeness. However, the online mapping of Street Art and the adoption of AR is far from uncomplicated. Starting from the interviews conducted with stakeholders of the Museum of Augmented Urban Art, the paper considers the various narratives involved in the creation of the museum. It focusses on the selection of the artworks, on how the ephemerality of the street art has been addressed and how the relationship between Street Art and AR have unfolded. It also reflects how the museum acted as Contact zone (Clifford, 1997) and digital and physical memoryscape.

Places of Possibility

Harriet Parry — 2022-02-15

This film introduces an interdisciplinary PhD research project that utilises principles of scenographic theatre design, more than-representational theory (Divya Tolia- Kelly 2006), and co-productive fieldwork practices to weave together sensory, cultural, and social responses to heritage sites.

By attending to the multiple ways that participants respond to heritage sites, the research explores the ways that neurodiverse and embodied entanglements with place are articulated (Ingold 2010). A scenographer reads and records the geometry and identity of a found space or purpose-built arena to understand its affective qualities to stimulate connection between performance, performers, and the audience through their design. The interplay between a heritage site’s identity and locale, its visitors, and its atmosphere, has a sensory affect that influences the nature of connection to, or rejection of, that site. This methodology combines creativity with inclusivity when considering how heritage might be regarded, sustained, managed, developed, and made relevant for future generations.

Flirting with Space, the Question of Space and Beyond: An interview between Professor David Crouch and Harriet Parry

Harriet Parry — 2022-02-15

David Crouch is Professor Emeritus in Cultural Geography and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Derby, UK. David’s vital and inquisitive praxis attends to the creative nature of human and non-human relations in and with space, an approach also illustrated through his work as a practicing artist. His most recent research monograph Flirting with Space (Crouch 2010) exemplifies the rich rewards for such attention to the complexity, simplicity, playfulness and possibility that occurs through the practice of everyday living. Amongst his many contributions working to open up space for innovation in his field, David recently co-edited a publication entitled The Question of Space (Crouch and Nieuwenhuis Eds. 2017) with political geographer Dr Marijn Nieuwenhuis then Warwick University, now Durham. The text draws together a diverse group of authors writing across boundaries and territorialities that demonstrate the liveliness and ongoing value of playing with the concept of space, an approach that we have endeavoured to reflect in this special issue of Networking Knowledge Mediating Place.

The interview was conducted as a written email exchange over the summer and into the autumn of 2020, when universities started gearing up for a new scholarly year and the ongoing impact of the pandemic on academic research still remained unclear. As a PhD researcher about to embark on my third year at the University of Brighton, my fieldwork had been suspended and walking tours with participants around the heritage sites that were my case-studies seemed like a memory of an alternate reality. Although it was frustrating to have to take a step back from the physical and embodied experience of these sites, it also created a space to think about what it really means to be, through my contrasting disconnection from the animate and inanimate materiality of my social environment.

The emails between David and I therefore became a generative space for me to think through the physical sense of detachment from ‘reality’ imposed by lockdown. Our conversation was contextualised by the mass media broadcasting rolling images of restriction and protest, those yearning for space and escape and the critical inequality that defines the varied everyday experiences of bodies in a global pandemic. The conceptual space created gave us the opportunity to stop, think and reflect, generating a certain cadence of communication between us. In the same way that two beings can find a rhythm when travelling side-by-side, so I found myself falling into the rhythm of David’s rich and impressionistic forms of thinking and writing.

Roll Up! For the Magical Mystery Tour: An Examination of Beatles Fandom, Pilgrimage and Identity

Rebecca Young — 2022-02-15

By examining ethnographic data collected at Beatles tourist sites such as Strawberry Fields, The Cavern, 20 Forthlin Road, Mendips, the Casbah Coffee Club, St Peter's Church, and Penny Lane, this project explores the connection between place and identity. Claiming that for Beatles fans, visiting sites associated with the band they love constitutes an act of pilgrimage, giving the individual a way to interact with a place that is important to them. In examining this action of pilgrimage, the author argues that this process links place and identity, as a fans ability to contextualise the site is based on knowledge gained from their fandom. This act of site contextualisation based on fandom not only gives meaning to the site, but also allows the individual to reinforce their identity as a Beatles fan.

“Home Away from Home”: Migration, Place and the Experience of Home-Making. The Case of Tuvaluan Migrants in New Zealand.

Amina Ghezal — 2022-02-15

Post-migration, migrants go through the reconfiguration of place meaning and the reconstruction of home in the host-place. This paper explores migrants’ experiences of home-making, focusing on Tuvaluan migrants in New Zealand. Through interviews with Tuvaluan migrants, it is inferred that New Zealand becomes the new home and the vessel of the Tuvaluan community in which the journey of home-making begins from within the community cocoon to gradual independence and expansion of self and roots in the host-place. Adaptation, acceptance of the new place, hard-work to thrive and intercultural interaction are pivotal to understand and master the system of the host-place, bolster the sense of home and preserve its constancy. Home-making in the host-place, therefore, is a malleable, relational, personalised, translocal and transnational experience in a new environment to achieve emotional, interpersonal and cultural connection as well as ontological security and continuity in the new place.

‘You could see the marks all over’: Locating abject masculinities in Nico Walker’s Cherry and Roy Scranton’s War Porn

Sarah Collier — 2022-02-15

The veteran ‘hero’ is ubiquitous in the American cultural imaginary and goes largely unchallenged in dominant political and cultural discourse. This article examines the place occupied by the veteran in the cultural imaginary in relation to Nico Walker’s Cherry and Roy Scranton’s War Porn, which work to displace this narrative trope from a civilian readership’s engagement with war. Employing Claire Sisco-King’s notion of ‘abject hegemony’, I argue that these narratives succeed in this task of displacement by constructing ‘abject’ masculinities, affirming the emplacement of an ideology of hegemonic white masculinity. The logics of this ideology deny space to other voices, maintaining the primacy of the white male subject position in criticism of war. A critique of imperialism and civilian engagement with war must therefore take account of the place not only of the mythologised veteran hero, but also of the broader workings of hegemonic masculinity underpinning war and its representation.

Editorial Introduction

Harriet Parry — 2022-02-15

This special issue features nine contributions from postgraduate and early career scholars who responded to a call for papers on the theme of Mediating Place for the 2020 MeCCSA PGR conference at the University of Brighton, which sadly had to be postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. I would like to take a moment here to thank and acknowledge the hard work of the authors in writing their articles at a time when we were all struggling with its ongoing impacts. I would also like to thank and acknowledge those that were not able to complete their papers for the multiple reasons that the social and political fallout of the pandemic has caused.

The diversity of ways in which this issue’s theme ‘Mediating Place’ can be considered and applied is reflected in the range of responses and disciplines from which its contributors are working. This is also reflected in the differing styles of their papers and the methods that they have used for their enquiries. What is common to all is that concepts of ‘place’ and ‘space’ have remained rooted in subjective human perception.