I have been thinking about systems, and ways of processing information about place; how to weave together the collected narratives, images, films and other data, some of which document the vanished, the mysterious, and the occult. Maybe I watch too many crime dramas, but I thought it would be useful to create a kind of site plan/pinboard/mapping of the project, which can include both the present, traces of the past, the fictional and the real. I have started drawing the site on my studio wall and adding stills from the films and other images I’ve collected.
I found that Origination had been listed on a website called Mythogeography.com (http://www.mythogeography.com/2009/11/blog-
The definition of Mythogeography is explained thus:
“Mythogeography describes a way of thinking about and visiting places where multiple meanings have been squeezed into a single and restricted meaning (for example, heritage, tourist or leisure sites tend to be presented as just that, when they may also have been homes, jam factories, battlegrounds, lovers’ lanes, farms,
cemeteries and madhouses). Mythogeography emphasises the multiple nature of places and suggests multiple ways of celebrating, expressing and weaving those places and their multiple meanings.
Mythogeography also draws upon what Charles Fort* might have described as ‘the procession of damned data’. So, occulted and anomalous narratives are among those available to
mythogeography, not as ends in themselves, but as means and metaphors to explain, engage and disrupt.”
This seems to be a good definition of my field of enquiry, and it’s an interesting and suggestive approach to try and unfurl the multiple meanings of place, and think about what kind of design/intervention this could generate.
* Charles Fort was an American researcher and writer on ‘Anomalous Phenomena’, hence Fortean Times etc. etc. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Fort)
Salted Earth 