The Reading Landscape research group is led by Susan Brind and Dr Nicky Bird. Devised by Brind and Bird, the originality of PRACTICING LANDSCAPE: Land, Histories & Transformation – Symposium and Exhibition was the public staging of contemporary artworks within a framework of practice-led and real world research, and theoretical ideas, that contributed directly to debates in landscape research from physical, experiential, land-based work to complex political readings of space and territory.
In the same way that selected Symposium contributions were double peer reviewed by Susan Brind, Nicky Bird, Jenny Brownrigg, Frances Robertson and Gina Wall, contributions to the exhibition were rigorously considered by a Curatorial Working Group, comprising: Christine McBride, Shauna McMullan, Lesley Punton, Prof Ross Sinclair, and Jenny Brownrigg.
The Online Symposium was structured and delivered as follows:
Session 1 – Friday 6 November 2020:
Keynote – Ingrid Pollard
Respondent – Tiffany Boyle
Session 2: Wild Places – Friday 13 November 2020
Elizabeth Hodson, ‘The Post-human Sublime: The Art Practice of Katie Paterson’
Nalini Paul ‘Embodying Language in Wild Spaces: Place, Memory and Transformation’
Sam Nightingale, Salt: a crystal image of time’
Respondent: Justin Carter
Session 3: Histories – Friday 20 November 2020
Sean Laoide-Kemp, Landscape as Witness: Aftermath Photography, Oral History, and Ethnography in Representing the Public Works Scheme of the Great Irish Famine
Joe Crowdy, ‘Writing Rack Fen: 1583-1606 and 2019-20’
Dr Frances Robertson, ‘Alien Introductions: trees, memory and landscape history’
Respondent: Michail Mersinis
Session 4 – Friday 27 November 2020:
Keynote – Dr Louise Purbrick
Respondent – Dr Marianne Greated
Session 5: People & Place – Friday 4 December 2020
Dr Nicky Bird, ‘Raging’
Jordan Whitewood-Neale, ‘Epistemological Hinterlands: Non-Normative Embodiment and Sublime Perceptions of Landscape’
Dr Jo Vergunst, ‘Exploring landscape decision-making with the arts: agency, scale and temporality’
Respondent: Dr Frances Robertson
Session 6: Contentious Landscapes – Friday 11 December 2020
Jane Brettle, ‘Mine – walking’
Jasper Coppes, ‘Mud’
Prof Minty Donald, ‘Erratic Drift: approaching human geological performance’
Respondent: Susan Brind
As Director of Exhibitions, Jenny Brownrigg also had an over-arching view of this project as part of her reflexive curatorial approach to the dissemination of creative practices and worked closely with Brind and Bird in the realisation of the Symposium and related Exhibition at The Lighthouse, Glasgow. Technical support for the delivery of the Symposium was provided by Rebecca Oliva and support for the transcription of subtitles and uploading of recordings by Cat Weir.
Symposium: 814 total attendees.
Visitor numbers for Exhibition: 12,517 visitors.