Phenomenology of Space and Place

What can dancers teach us about different ways of knowing? Is there a special
kind of knowledge that the moving body holds, and can we call that knowledge
‘knowing’? What can this knowledge tell us about our relationship with the
environment? How can we make sense of our bodily knowledge? Can we ‘know’
anything through somatic awareness?

These questions are addressed throughout this paper originally presented at the 'One World Anthropology' masterclass with Tim Ingold held at the University of Tübingen in Sept 2019 (in co-operation with Martin Porr and Niels Weidtmann).

The presentation was completemented by a three-part somatic exercise designed by my specifically for this occasion and a partial viewing of Itay Yatuv's video on  contact improvisation at TEDxBGU.

The paper first looks at relevant concepts emerging from dance theories, such
as pre-reflexivity and the primacy of movement. I then discuss somatic awareness and
its role in being and moving in the world. I am drawing on the work of anthropologists
and dance scholars such as Maxine Sheets-Johnston and Andrée Grau as well as on
learning from contemporary dance, contact improvisation, and indigenous dance
practices.

The Hamra neighbourhood of Lebanon’s capital Beirut has historically been a hub of modern Arab cosmopolitanism and political experimentation. During the civil war of 1975-90, it was repeatedly bombarded, occupied and cantonised. Postwar reconstruction tore down many historic buildings, and later gentrification transformed ambiguously. Two intersections in Hamra’s west appear, at first, relatively untouched by these events. Even here, though, the ordinary is at turns surprising and discomfiting, and the day-to-day is open to disruption. I give a sense of the atmosphere of these crossed streets in Hamra – their ordinariness, immediacies, temporal and embodied rhythms, as well as those moments that cut across the everyday. Intermittently peripheral and central to the wider neighbourhood’s imaginaries, what takes place on these streets undercuts those imaginaries and, sometimes, brings into relief aspects of the neighbourhood’s reality that fit far less well.

Awareness of climate change is mounting in seriousness, but what is less well explored is how climate change is provoking a profound critique on some of our philosophical traditions. The planet could shift into an epoch with conditions far too harsh for human habitation. In due course this is bound to happen, as a result of changes in our orbit, the polarity of the magnetic poles, the position of land mass in relation to the poles, and the lifetime of the sun. However, the rapid change in climate that is occurring at present has little or nothing to do with these larger cosmic forces. It is almost entirely due to feedbacks introduced by the inadvertent pollution from modern consumer industrialisation. How did we get to this impasse? The question is technological, cultural, and philosophical. It probes at the essence of modernity and at specific fault lines in the tradition of philosophy. Drawing from the history of philosophical ideas and the very modern concerns with climate change, this paper examines Heidegger's concern with the threshold of nihilism as a regenerative force in conceptualisation and our relationship with beings. Heidegger has a strong critique of modernity which takes up the finitude posed by nuclear devastation. More recently, and with even fuller dimensions, the looming boundary of climate change point to the nihilism inherent in modern thought. Somewhat surprisingly, Heidegger's approach to the zone that threatens to draw modern culture to an untimely close, is not entirely pessimistic. He regards the 'line' or boundary of the planetary conditions for human life as generating a new 'beginning.' That beginning (or the contemplation of the ending) generates the conditions for rethinking what it is to be meaningful human beings. So, it exemplifies the openness required to fully care and integrate the relationship between our planet and ourselves.

Ulaanbaatar, the isolated, insulated and mysterious capital city of Mongolia, is undergoing a remarkable urban transformation caused by dramatic pressures, shifting expectations, and unanticipated growth. Escalating migration to the city by traditional pastoral nomadic herders has translated into ballooning informal settlements, known as 'Ger districts', on the outskirts and within Ulaanbaatar (UB). Uncertainties + challenges, together with possibilities + opportunities, created a dynamic & demanding milieu in need of sound planning + innovative design (Sinclair 2008). The Ger, or round tent, of nomadic herdsmen-a building type used over thousands of years-plays a key role in the minds, lives and cosmology of the Mongolian people. Its shape is not an arbitrary architectural structure, rather it is a building perfectly adapted to a very specific climate and well-suited to wandering over the countryside. The Ger encapsulates values and meaning within a micro-cosmos mirroring the greater cosmos of its immediate environment and the universe beyond. It is intensely woven into Mongolian culture, richly connected to deep spiritual rituals, and representative of a rich history characterized by independence and sustainability. As it shifts from its traditional habitat in the vast countryside to dense and often problematic districts within city boundaries, the Ger confronts unprecedented challenges. Ger districts face a myriad of serious problems including severe air, water and ground pollution, high crime rates and endemic unemployment. The Gers existence as an appropriate housing form is being questioned, eroded and in some instances reinvented. As a modern capital striving towards westernization, Ulaanbaatar's municipal government has recently formulated an ambitious urban master plan. Wisdom is warranted and caution urged. Examples of resettlement of indigenous people in Canada suggest that pathways eliminating traditional dwellings in favour of modern residential development, however well-intentioned, usher in a wealth of problems. There is a vital occasion at the present moment to critically examine the situation and sensitively consider next steps. This paper explores pressing questions around the future of the Ger and Ger districts in Ulaanbaatar. The authors critically examine the significance of the Ger within contemporary Mongolia, exploring its value and role in creating more sustainable communities and more livable neighbourhoods. In considering the extraordinary story of Mongolia, we postulate the design and planning inspirations (that may arise) through exercising respect of culture, history, spirituality and traditions. Conversely, the authors highlight potential risks accompanying the deprivation of the nation's unique cultural, architectural and spiritual identity. This research is pioneering in its critical and constructive investigation of the possible roles the Ger plays in leading Mongolia towards a more sustainable urban future. Ulaanbaatar, in particular

If an objective of public higher education is to engage with a diversity of communities,
then coursework should be less insulated within classrooms. This work describes and
analyzes a university course design that supports undergraduate students to experience
learning as relational and transformational via Site Visits within various communities.
We focus on “technological assemblages” as a way to understand students’ reorientation
to the process and purpose of learning (and teaching). We analyze experiences within
the course as moments of disorientation, reassembly and stabilization in which students
use their mobile devices, bodies and interactions-in-place to understand familiar
locations as socially and historically contingent sites of learning (and teaching). We
argue that this instructional model does important work of putting students at the
nexus of building relationships between the university and other community settings
around the city.

Resumen: La nueva estética digital interactiva ha reemplazado la tradicional relación < <públ ico-obra>, por una nueva visión conceptual «usuario-obra» donde la participación de este último se vuel ve importante. La presencia de la luz como recurso estético configura espacios híbridos, perfonnativos, participativo..,, des-temporalizados y disruptivos que requieren de una reflexión profunda como objeto de estudio a la hora de plantear un prototipo alternativo de catalogación mediante RV Palabras cla,•e: Realidad Virtual. Museografia de Vanguardia. Instalación Artística de luz, catálogo, faté-tica Contemporánea Abstract: Thc new interactive digital aesthetic has n:placed the traditional "public-piece" relationshi p with a ncw conceptual vision "user-piece" where the participation of this diffuses the hierarchical limits between artist. medium and spectator. The light as an aesthetic resource configures hybrid, performative, participa-tory, de-temporalized and disruptive spaces which requires deep reflection like an obj ect of study to carry out the approach of an altemative prototype of cataloging with RV l. HIPÓTESIS Es interesante como la luz es capaz de construir entornos tridimensionales comportándose como un agente activo en las experimentaciones estético-plásticas y, como esta, mediante su cualidad inmateria l e incorpórea. tiene la capacidad de estimular a un espectador que se sitúa simultáneamente sobre la obra que ella misma configura de manera fenomenológica. Un material plástico con gran significación cuyos efectos permiten al sujeto involucrado acceder a una esfera de comunicación a través de la acción corporal y de fa atracción intelectual, donde el concepto significante se revela desmaterializado y verificado en tiempo como acontecimiento. Ese umbral conceptual donde se pierde el interés por la fisicidad del objeto, es la base de las experiencias sensoriales que permiten una conexión obra-espectador y un cambio de roles, donde este últi-mo. deja de ser un elemento pasivo en la relación con el hecho artístico para configurarse como ca-creador de la obra en cuestión. La luz ha sido objeto de uso estético en diversos periodos de la Historia del Arte a la hora de crear es-pacios experimentables por parte del sujeto espectador. Estas configuraciones plásticas han planteado retos arquitectónicos que han modificado la fisicidad espacial supeditando todo dispositivo estructural al fom ento 1 Este texto forma parte Je los rt.-sultados de inves11gac1on del proyecto del Plan Naciona l Catálogos arti~uco,: Gno,-cología, cpi~iemo lugía,) rede, Je comicarn,ento. Análisis crit1co y cornputac1onal: HA R2ú 14-5 19 15-P en d cual, se enmarca c~ta Tes,, Doctoral.

Resumen : Las instalaciones artísticas de luz actuales se haya en un momento de profundas transformacio-nes en cuanto a procedimientos y herramientas, pudiéndose hablar de nuevas configuraciones espaciales, temporales, conceptuales y tecnológicas que superan los límites formales de las prácticas artísticas. Esto influye de manera importante en el nuevo concepto de musco, donde la Realidad Virtual como herramienta, nos puede presentar retos de simulación estética. Abstract: The current artistic lights instillations have been in a moment of deep transformations in terms of procedures and too Is, being able to speak of new spatial, temporal, conceptual and technological configurations that exceed the formal limits of artistic practices. This has an important influence on the new concept of museum, a space that stands as a scenary of connectivity and experimentation of pleasure and joy in the face of artistic action, where the Keywords: Virtual Reality; New Technologies: Vanguard Museography; Environments; Aesthetic Simulation l. INTRODUCCIÓN Es interesante atender al impacto que causan las nuevas tecnologías, desde los afios 60-70 del siglo XX hasta la actualidad, en la construcción de espacios visuales, polisensoriales y estéticos que pueden ser experimentados por el espectador desde un punto de vista experiencia! y cognitivo. En este ámbito se produce una nueva relación de intercambio en torno a la espacialidad de la propia obra donde éste modifica su rol pasivo tradicional para convertirse en sujeto activo co-creador del hecho artístico 2. Las imágenes penniten que construyamos el mundo y la realidad a través de la memoria y compren-damos mediante la conciencia, el fenómeno visual de la cultura. Gracias a las tecnologías digitales, estas imáge~es entran a fonnar parte de nuestro repertorio experiencia! permitiendo no sólo que contemplemos una imagen, sino que formemos parte de ella a través de la acción. Este hecho se adapta muy bien a algunas 1 Este texto forma parte de los resultados de investigación dd proyecto del Plan Nacional Catálogos artístico,: Gnoseología. epístcmologias : redes de conocimiento. Aná lisis crítico y computacional: !-IAR20 14-5 19 15-P en el cual, se enmarca la Tesis Doctoral Uso r pn•spnrn 1 ,.¡., la 111-en /vs pnice.rn.,· de 1'l!ct!pciú11 estética cnntl'mporánea Aunque no dellcmos de olvidar los antecedentes del planteamiento de la participación del espectador de la obra y la pérdida de objctuahdad que veremos después y situarlos en Marccl Duchamp con sus ReaJy-Made. Yvcs Klein o Joseph Beuy~.

19-20 güz I fsmvü mimarlık anabilim dalı mimarlık lisansüstü programı mim595 çarşamba 14.00-17.00 haliç yerleşkesi D303 duyular ve mekan okumaları doç. dr. emine köseoğlu

Dönem boyunca: Seçilen bir romanda, algısal mekanın, mekana algısal yaklaşımlar; algıya mekânsal yaklaşımlar ve algısal mekan bileşenleri bağlamında okunması.

o k u m a l a r I t a r t ı ş m a l a r I s u n u m l a r

M e k a n a A l g ı s a l Y a k l a ş ı m l a r
A l g ı y a M e k a n s a l Y a k l a ş ı m l a r
A l g ı s a l M e k a n B i l e ş e n l e r i

Parler des souterrains fait peur et pour raison: le souterrain est profond, sale ,sombre, enterré dans l'imaginaire collectif. C'est le lieu des égouts, de ce que la société repousse.
C'est un univers inconnu, dangereux, où l'homme n'a ni sa place, ni ses repères. Mais cette frayeur d'aborder le souterrain, n'est-elle pas avant tout la crainte de braver ce qui est sacré?

Visitor Encounters with the Great Barrier Reef explores how visitor encounters have shaped the history and heritage of the Reef. Moving beyond the visual aesthetic significance, the book highlights the importance of multi-sensuous experiences in understanding the region as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, the book describes how visitors have experienced the Great Barrier Reef through personal embodied encounters and the mechanisms they have used to understand, access and share these experiences with others. Illustrating how such experiences contribute to a knowledge of place, Pocock also explores the vital role of reproduction and photography in sharing experiences with those who have never been there. The second part of the book analyses visitor experiences and demonstrates how they underpin three key frames through which the Reef is understood and valued: the islands as paradise, the underwater coral gardens, and the singular Great Barrier Reef. Acknowledging that these constructs are increasingly removed from human experience, Pocock demonstrates that they are nevertheless integral to recognition of the region as a World Heritage Site.

Demonstrating how experiences of the Reef have changed over time, Visitor Encounters with the Great Barrier Reef should be of interest to academics and students working in the fields of heritage studies, history and tourism. It should also be of interest to heritage practitioners working around the globe.

The dissertation consists of an introductory essay and six chapters, that together form an integrated narrative arc that begins with a critical phase (“Introductory Essay”, chapter one), that is succeeded by a programmatic phase (chapters two, three, four) and ends with a case-oriented phase (chapters five and six).
The introduction sets the stage for the rest of the work by giving a brief account of the relationship of the general project to, on the one hand, the anthropology of ethics and morality and, on the other hand, philosophical anthropology and existential phenomenology. After this, the introduction undertakes a preparatory, yet thorough critique of the anti-Durkheimian discourse that played a major role in the inauguration of anthropology of ethics. Through a close reading of Durkheim and Kant coupled with a discussion of notably Laidlaw’s arguments for going beyond anthropology as a Durkheimesque “science of unfreedom”, it is pointed out that the problematics of freedom that anthropology of ethics struggle with are grounded in an existential problem of transcendence, that is not explicated in the theoretical debates—this lack in conceptual clarity leads to several conceptual impasses in anthropology of ethics that must be overcome.
The first chapter: “Value, Virtue, Dwelling: Critique of the Guiding Concepts in Anthropology of Ethics” takes off where the exposition of the problem of transcendence ended. Guided by this problem, the task in this article is to submit to critical scrutiny three concepts—value, virtue and dwelling—that each in their distinct ways mark the investigations of the ethical in anthropology of ethics. First, the critique of the concept of cultural values explores the existential undercurrents that sustain our posturing toward values and that make us susceptible to the demands they put to us. Secondly, the anthropological variations of virtue ethics are critiqued with respect to their focus on the role of reflectivity in ethics. While reflectivity is granted some importance, it is concluded that taking reflectivity as the conditio sine qua non of ethics leaves in the shadows those existential dynamics of transcendence by which ethical actors come to find themselves emplaced in certain places calling for action. Thirdly, the critique turns explicitly toward the question of how ethical processes are themselves engaged in providing place for human existence. Here notions of dwelling are subjected to scrutiny. These critical procedures finally indicate a tentative definition of ethics as an existential quest-for-place that unfolds in processes by which human beings take place qua singular human beings in places of communitary dwelling. Concluding on the findings in the three critical vignettes, the article expands on the three problematic perspectives that respectively calls for the dissolution of the dichotomous schemata of ordinary/extraordinary, individual/collective, passivity/activity by foregrounding (i) the liminal character of ethics and the places of the ethical, (ii) that ethics always takes place under singular circumstances because ethical actors are singular, finite beings, and (iii) that the definition of what counts as ethical phenomena must be expanded from the merely active and reflective to count also such phenomena as pathos and postures.
The second chapter: “The Ēthos of Responsive Existence: Outline of a Philosophical Anthropology of Ethics” endeavors to put forward a programmatic, philosophical anthropological framework for the investigation of the ethical that pursues the notion of ethics as quest-for-place under the guidance of the existential characteristics (liminality, singularity, the emplacing registers of transcendence; pathos/postures) identified through the critical procedures in the first article. The second article assumes the philosophico-anthropological hypothesis that the human being is a responsive being and that the processes of human responsiveness come to the fore especially saliently in ethics and ethical experience. In order to appreciate the richness and depths of these existential registers of ethics a reevaluation of the notion of ethics is called for. After a short discussion of the analytical resources of traditional moral philosophy in light of the notion of responsiveness, the archaic topological meaning of the word ēthos is reintegrated in the notion of ethics. Now ēthos is no longer taken to mean psychological “character”, but rather existential abode, and the meaning of ethics shifts accordingly from having to do primarily with the formation of settled psychological dispositions on the basis of cultural contexts, to denoting instead communitary practices pertaining to the re-settlement of ontologically enabling human abodes. Ethics in this sense of quest-for-place qua repetitious re-settlement can be spelled out further in terms of grounding processes of ēthical delimitation that originarily draw the limits which bring forth the fundamental differences (wise/imprudent, good/evil etc.) within which alone ordinary ethical practices and deliberation can navigate.
The following chapters spell out this program in more detail as regards its ontological and methodological implications and work through several concrete case studies.

Street hierarchy, as a way of presenting intended information, conforms to social rules that underlay architectural and urban designs to create public, semi-public, and semi-private. These social rules have the responsibility to convey necessary information about place to outsiders as well as to insiders. This research looks at urban spaces as physical structures that represent foci of attention of users and that are collectively a part of the social pattern framework. The argument of this study is that connectivity and forms of streets house certain social rules that intended to serve users, so that any changes in the street layout lead to changes in its social rules. As a case study, the complexity of a walled Arab neighborhood was examined through Sur Lawatyia, located in Muscat Governorate, Oman. By replacing the curvilinear and broken streets of this neighborhood with straight ones; a simplified street layout was derived. Then, a comparison of both street layouts was carried out through mapping, tabulation, charts, correlation test, and with reliance on the method of measurement of street control values introduced by Hillier and Hanson in 1984. The result was that the simple form is far short to be the representation of the space syntax of the traditional street layout.

I am honored to write a preface for this Korean edition of Life Takes Place, sponsored by the Academy of Mobility Humanities at Seoul's Konkuk University. I wish to express my thanks to Professor Shangyi Zhou for recognizing the potential conceptual and practical value of my book. I thank philosopher Il-Man Choi for a skillful translation. I argue in Life Takes Place that, even in our current time of geographical mobility, digital technologies, and global interconnectedness, real-world places and place experiences remain integral to human life and human well-being. Drawing on recent phenomenologies of place written by environmental thinkers Edward Casey, Jeff Malpas, and Edward Relph, I consider how places and lived emplacement are an essential part of human experience, and how human being is always already human-being-in-place. As Casey declares, "To be is to be in place." In this sense, human life is impossible without place, even in our mobile, hypermodern world. In Life Takes Place, I draw on examples of specific places and place experiences to understand place more broadly. Advocating for a holistic way of understanding that I call synergistic relationality, I consider place, place experience, and lived emplacement from three complementary perspectives: first, holistically; second, dialectically; and, third, generatively. I argue that each of these three perspectives points to a spectrum of complementary experiences, situations, actions, and meanings that remain faithful to the range of place types and place experiences. I suggest that each of these three perspectives offers a contrasting but complementary way for understanding places conceptually and for making places practically. I contend that the quality of human life is inescapably related to robust places and creative, actualized place making.

During archaeological fieldwork at Tregarrick Farm, Roche, a group of ten pits were recorded to the north of Roche Rock. The pits were found to contain structured deposits of Neolithic date, which included pottery, flints, a small saddle quern and charred hazelnuts.
A series of radiocarbon determinations ranging over the period 3790-3370 cal BC were obtained from six of the pits, indicating that the site was in use over several centuries. Analysis of charred environmental material indicated that oak and hazel woodland with some clearings existed nearby.
It is suggested that the pits were the result of ritualized activity associated with seasonal gatherings close to the base of a prominent landscape feature. The investigation has given a rare insight into Early Neolithic activity in lowland Cornwall and confirms the significance of Roche Rock as an important place in the landscape several millennia before the construction of the iconic fifteenth-century chapel.

http://www.cornisharchaeology.org.uk/index_htm_files/Cornish%20Archaeology%2041-42-opt.pdf

The specifically “human” should be explored not in terms of an a priori boundary between human and animal, but rather in terms of a responsivity to certain experiential unsettlements and disturbances that occur at and mark the thresholds of what comes to counts as the domain of “the human”. Hence, we should speak not of the static anthropological difference, but of a multitude of anthropological interruptions. Following this hypothesis, the chapter makes three claims: (1) the exploration of “the human” should take place in the experiential borderland of such ontologically generative interruptions; (2) the experiences of ethical life provides phenomenologically privileged avenues for such explorations; and (3) in ethical praxis human beings partake in the ontological events in which worlds are delineated and take place, and in which the phenomenon of “the human” itself comes into its own. In conversation with Heidegger, Aristotle, German philosophische Anthropologie and sociocultural anthropology, the chapter pursues these claims in an experience-near fashion, in order to propose the fundamental tenets of a philosophical anthropological research program that traces the birthplaces of ethics and the human at those thresholds where life ends and begins.