Exploring taskscapes: an introduction

Abstract

In his 1993 essay ‘The temporality of the landscape’, Tim Ingold argued that landscape develops through processes of temporality, that is time as it emerges in the unfolding of life through action. This association between temporality and landscape was expressed by the term ‘taskscape’. In our introduction to this section, we return to the concept of taskscape to assess its usefulness in light of a number of developments in the understanding of human–environment relations. These include the changing conceptualisation of ‘landscape’ and the emergence of new approaches for understanding relations across species. We explain the ways that the three authors in this section use taskscape to think through political tensions and to explore how landscapes are achieved through inter‐relating actions of humans and other beings. We conclude by emphasising the heuristic value of taskscape as a means of thinking through the implications of the Anthropocene. Both taskscape and Anthropocene are concepts that draw together human history and the shaping of the world and, as such, the taskscape offers a novel means to explore and understand the dynamics of Anthropocene environmental relations.

Jogging during the Lockdown: Changes in the Regimes of Kinesthetic Morality and Urban Emotional Geography in NW Italy

“…Following Tuan [53], the concept of emotional geography describes the understanding of the environment emerging from its emotional and bodily experience. The pre-pandemic urban emotional geography of joggers derived from the bodily selfawareness as well as the deeper understanding of the urban space this physical practice produces [54]. It was linked with the idea of freedom that coupled with the belief of doing something able to make them achieve their personal well-being.…”

Street art, heritage and affective atmospheres

“…The temporal aesthetic heritage experience of the sculptures and place was not aligned with rational clock time, but 'rather about the "ongoingness" of time: it is a process that emerges alongside the activities of dwelling'. 69 Time thus emerged through the unfolding of (my) life -in my actions of walking, sensing, photographing and interacting with the sculptures and the entire urban and material atmosphere.…”

Weaving Lines of Inquiry: Promoting Transdisciplinarity as a Distinctive Way of Undertaking Sport Science Research

“…In other words, transdisciplinary research is characterised by a common trend to transcend disciplinary landscape boundaries, bringing continuity (and perhaps unity) to inquiry and knowledge [26,28]. There is an important point to briefly highlight here regarding the word 'landscape', which is that conventional connotations of this word view the suffice 'scape' as 'scopic', meaning 'land-to-be-looked-at' [29]. Olwig [30], however, reminds us of its etymology (Germanic), landshaft, meaning 'land-being-shaped'.…”