Feeling is believing, or landscape as a way of being in the world

Abstract

This article is work-in-progress, an orientation of thought towards possibilities for individual human beings to diminish the distance between outer and inner landscapes imposed by cultural norms and happenstances such as exile. The dominance of visual landscapes and visual perceptions is seen as a pivotal problem, to be solved by the engagement of all the senses in landscape discourse and formation. All the senses are engaged in earliest childhood, as they have been in 'primitive' societies. While returning to either a state of childhood or primitivism is an impossible dream, it is possible to edge closer to human nature by engaging and honing all the senses, especially the 'earth-bound senses' of feel, smell and taste. Cultivating those senses and developing discourse about them, and incorporating them into landscape formation and enjoyment, is much more difficult than having a discourse about sight and hearing, for which there is a rich and well-developed symbolic language and which can be shared through various types of media. The way towards a deeper discourse about the earth-bound senses, and the way out of the tyranny of the visual, is to be found in stories, as several thinkers suggest.The story told is autobiographical and literary -a mode of geographic writing that I developed in a 2004 book (Bunk∑e 2004a), in which the complex dilemmas of home and road were explored. This article shows how in the early 1970s I defined the individual's landscape as 'a unity in one's surroundings perceived through all the senses', with imagination as the key human faculty. And I tell the story of how through complex circumstances, a visually and emotionally repugnant landscape became emotionally and intellectually attractive, with a scent, not a picture or image causing the initial attraction. The external and internal landscapes are thus unified, resulting in a sense of timelessness and placelessness of deep existential significance for the person.

Autocommunication and Perceptual Markers in Landscape: Japanese Examples

“…Rhythmical movements like daily work patterns and their material realisations in a landscape, traffic flows, walkways and even wind are strong identity markers as stable objects. As Edmunds Bunkše shows (Bunkše 2004;Bunkše 2007), it is the perceived difference or similarity in such rhythms more than in the visible part that can create a feeling of semiotic uprootedness or rootedness in a landscape. Figure 3 depicts the everyday life patterns of fishing in Ainu villages in Hokkaido, where the habitual practice of fishing and preserving the catch has formed a visible, albeit ephemeral rhythm in the landscape in the shape of drying salmons, which for the inhabitants (or Ainu activists) is almost emblematic of the whole culture and symbolises Ainu cultural virtues.…”

Actually existing tomatoes

“…Many who feared deportation to Siberia fled Latvia, ended up in displaced person camps, and, unable to return home, were relocated to countries in the West accepting exiles. Like the immigrants described by Nazarea, many of these people tried to recreate Latvian landscapes through planting familiar trees and vegetation (Bunkše 2007). And thus it is equally symbolic that after so many years abroad, many people from the diaspora did not return to Latvia, but some sent seeds from their gardens to the farm's collection, to make the journey for them.…”

Traer el bosque a sus domicilios. Transformaciones de los modos de significar el espacio habitado

“…This enables the identification of different forms of integration between spaces and people ARTÍCULO:Traer el bosque a sus domicilios. Transformaciones de los modos de significar el espacio habitado/Juan Carlos Skewes Vodanovic, Felipe Trujillo Bilbao y Debbie Guerra Maldonado la materialidad de la que son parte (Bunkše, 2007). De este modo se visibilizan formas de integración entre espacios y personas que no se reducen exclusivamente a relaciones de contemplación o de admiración estética, sino que incorporan sistemas de interconexión con el mundo de los seres no humanos y de las cosas (Conradson y McKay, 2007).…”

“…(Basso, 1996). The relationship is made flesh in the forms of residence used by individuals, who need to creatively coexist with the material dimension in which they are immersed (Bunkše, 2007). This enables the identification of different forms of integration between spaces and people ARTÍCULO:Traer el bosque a sus domicilios.…”