Representing Pasts – Visioning Futures

Abstract

This presentation outlines my art-based PhD investigation into liminality at Oxford Brookes University. In my digital documentation of liminal locations (bridges, flyovers, piers, sea defences, tunnels, and underpasses) I wish to create the psycho-physical manifestation of a liminal state. The talk introduces my premise of defamilarisation in a series of photographic grids. By using camera angle, exposure, and movement I am exploring liminal space. Mirroring Minimalist abstraction, disorientation, and reiteration I am investigating the ‘endless possibilities’ of consciousness. Fracturing, compressing, constructing, and deconstructing space-time in the grids I am myself, being and becoming. By utilising ‘pano,’ control, chance, rhythm, and repetition I am pursuing the liminal. Here, the status quo dissolves and the present shapes new dialogues. This permeable boundary is spatial, temporal, and processual. My images oscillate between the virtual and physical where the past, present and future blend in ‘real and imagined spatiality.’ Through digital ‘liminal affective technology’ I circumnavigate the unknown, the gulf between intentions and outcomes. I am focusing on sense of place, a genius loci. Relph (2009) refers to the ‘placelessness’ of liminal spaces. Marc Auge (1995) sees these anonymous areas as ‘non-places’ and ‘… neglects or marginalises a range of significant transit experiences and understandings.’ Experience engenders aura. The increasing mobility of modernity makes this in-between space corporal and meaningful. Just because experiences are transitory does not result in non-meaning. Place is made through involved perception. The presentation closes by summarising participant responses to the representation of non-place.