Letters to the Void - Spooky Geographies

Abstract

Perceptions of landscape are determined by our geographic place in the world, formed through historical, social and cultural contexts. Our experience of landscape is predominantly led by vision, learned instincts, for many often seeking the desirable view. The restrictions of 2020 created a need to re-evaluate our terms of engagement with the world, the physical spaces we could explore became smaller. With normal boundaries and time suspended, new interactions enabled the potential to explore as never before.

Letters to the void is a conversation about relationships, conversations to speak directly to the imperceptible energies, which underscore human experience but, which often exceed our ability to capture or represent them. It is a conversation with subterranean landscapes, the invisible shaping the visible. Here the void is understood as a tension of Presence through Absence, sitting invisibly under the North West landscape. Invisible energy flowing below the surface, carving out ever-changing topographies of salt and water.

‘Imagine if there could be a geography of displacement. A geography that’s not predicated on the fiction of a fixed point. You could even call it, not necessarily a relational geography, but a relativistic geography’. Fred Moten

Letters to the Void is the beginning a conversation with the unseen.