Mapping the Sea on Scotland’s Peripheries

Panneels Panneels

doi:10.3390/arts8040123

Abstract

This paper examines the use of mapping methodologies in some recent examples of contemporary art that chart the layered seascapes of the remote coastlines on North West Scotland as seen through the lens of visual culture in the Anthropocene. The art projects interrogate conflicting perspectives on landscape and nature in the North. The case studies demonstrate, both directly and indirectly, the political and cultural tensions made evident by the mapping of the micro and macro undercurrents at work in the region, and examine how mapping has been used as a methodology to visualise those intractable material relationships, often using the map as a trope to do so. These mappings make visible the enmeshments of these remote locations into a global ecosystem. The concept of the Anthropocene provides a useful framework to describe the contemporary context of climate change, ecological decline, biodiversity loss and recent discourses on land use within which the artworks by two artists, Julia Barton and Stephen Hurrel, will be discussed. The significance of Kester’s concept of Littoral Art were explored through the eponymous art project by Barton, which maps the human debris brought by the northern sea currents to the shores of the Western and Northern coasts, and Stephen Hurrel’s cultural mapping of the island of Barra on the West Coast. These projects were further considered in the context of Timothy Morton and Tim Ingold’s meshwork theory and the concept of the 19th century Scottish town planner and environmentalist Patrick Geddes, whose urging to ‘think global, act local’ is implicit in the multi-layered understanding of the Anthropocene.

Highlights

The current climate change emergency demands a deeper understanding of the entanglement of climate and culture as a prerequisite to climate action
This article examines the ways in which recent artists’ projects in Scotland have employed the map and mapping to chart environmental changes. It makes the link between these mapping practices as legacy of the 20th century avant-garde artist and ecological pioneer Joseph Beuys’ radical concept of Social Sculpture and the concept of ‘think global, act local’, attributed to the 19th century Scottish biologist, sociologist and town-planner Patrick Geddes (Stephen et al 2004)
Patrick Geddes was a planner and ecologist and an art activist and a pioneer of community-based town planning who argued for the symbiotic sustaining of both the environment and culture, which makes his legacy relevant in relation to the activist mapping discussed here

Summary

Introduction

The current climate change emergency demands a deeper understanding of the entanglement of climate and culture as a prerequisite to climate action. This article examines the ways in which recent artists’ projects in Scotland have employed the map and mapping to chart environmental changes It makes the link between these mapping practices as legacy of the 20th century avant-garde artist and ecological pioneer Joseph Beuys’ radical concept of Social Sculpture and the concept of ‘think global, act local’, attributed to the 19th century Scottish biologist, sociologist and town-planner Patrick Geddes (Stephen et al 2004). 21st century cultural mapping practices in recent decades, defined as critical cartography, radical cartography or experimental geography, understood in the context of Cultural Ecosystems Services, a framework that outlines the these mapping practices have a concomitant focus on action and activism and define certain collaborative enmeshment of culture and nature and demonstrates the non-material benefits of nature. Experimental geographies explored in the mapping practices of the artists discussed in this article are spatial practices of culture and

Littoral

Mapping the Sea

Photographs

23 Image used with permission form

24 This nine-minute split screen film interweaves the recitation of fisherman

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