Places
My interest in place is very much linked to my fascination with the past and, in particular, my desire to witness the past. By bearing witness to its existence, I might understand better its relationship with the present and perhaps, consequently, my own relationship with the future. I have always seen archaeology (something in which I'm particularly interested) as the study of the future - of our own mortality - as much as the study of life (lthe living) in times long since gone.
But what is Place and what is the Past?
The Past
It would seem obvious that the past is time that has, well, passed. But is it that simple, after all, where does one draw the line? When does what is now become what has been? The philosopher Henri Bergson said the following:
"There will no longer be any more reason to say that the past effaces itself as soon as it's perceived, than there is to suppose that individual objects cease to exist when we cease to perceive them."
Could it be then, that the past is never truly passed, that somehow, like an object, it's ever present but sometimes out of sight?
Place
And what of Place? Isn't it just that; a place - a geographic location?
"The question, what is place? presents many difficulties. An examination of all the relevant facts seems to lead to different conclusions. Moreover, we have inherited nothing from previous thinkers, whether in the way of a statement of difficulties or a solution."
Aristotle, Book IV, The Physics
In an attempt to understand what place is, I have decided to investigate a number of places which are either known to me, unknown to me (relatively speaking), intimate, expansive, infamous or obscure.
In particular, I am interested in the effects of time on a place, in the memories of a place; not simply our memories of a given physical environment, but rather, a place's memory of itself.
As James Joyce wrote in his preface to Ulysses, "Places remember events."
Our memories of a place (the Past) are key to understanding what place is. To belong to a place, is to...
"...know all about those invisble ones of the days gone by, whose feet have traversed the fields;... what bygone domestic dramas of love, jealousy or revenge, or disappointment have been enacted in the cottages, the mansion, the street or the green. The spot may have beauty, grandeur, salubrity, convenience; but if it lacks memories it will ultimately pall upon him who settles there without opportunity of intercourse with his kind."
Thomas Hardy, The Woodlanders
Italo Calvino also discusses memory and its relationship to a place in his book Invisible Cities. The city he says, consists of:
"...relationships between the measurements of its space and the events of its past; the height of a lamppost and the distance from the ground of a hanged usurper's swaying feet; the line strung from the lamppost to the railing opposite and the festoons that decorate the course of the queen's nuptial procession; the height of that railing and the leap of the adulterer who climbed over it at dawn; the tilt of a guttering and a cat's progress along it as he slips into the same window; the firing range of a gunboat which has suddenly appeared beyond the cape and the bomb that destroys the guttering; the rips in the fish net and the three old men seated on the dock mending nets and telling each other for the hundredth time the story of the gunboat of the usurper, who some say was the queen's illegitimate son, abandoned in his swaddling clothes there on the dock.
As this wave of memories flows in, the city soaks it up like a sponge and expands. A description of Zaira as it is today should contain all Zaira's past. The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls."
As we can see, Places are not defined simply through their geography, but through memory; both collective and individual. Place and memory are interlinked just as people are linked with memories and memories with objects. Objects in turn can define places; those places which have longs since disappeared might only be known through the objects left behind. And likewise, objects can often define people; whether individuals or entire civilizations.
An investigation of Place will therefore require an investigation into People, Objects and Memory and likewise all four categories wil be seen to rely upon one another for their own individual existence.
Will an understanding of all these things, enable me to witness the past? That remains to be seen.