On Country: Emplaced Approaches to Collaborative Community Engagement [and] ((in) Through) Mapping Processes in ‘Workshop’ Mode

Abstract

This piece takes as a starting point, the conceptual shift from an understanding of landscape to that of Country, reflected upon in an earlier work in this edition, through a transformational shift facilitated through the Interpretive Wonderings* mapping workshop. This shift is attended by a simultaneous shift in practice from that of participation (a seeking or inviting of engagement in the framework of the inviter) to collaboration (finding engagement in the place of the invitee such that the inviter/invitee assignation is inverted). The implications of this shift will then be explored through the role of a collaborative, emergent approach to curation within the event itself – the role of the interstitial moment arising through attention to the conception of ‘curatorial free space’ in informing a place‐based approach to the practice of landscape architecture. In conclusion, the article will outline the move to a practice which rather than adopting a curatorial point of view, seeks to establish a contingent stand point – facilitating an emplaced practice of landscape. *Editorial note: The Interpretive Wonderings Portfolio comprises a set of interrelated writings that attempt to provide a distinctive, multi‐perspectival account of this creative research project. In addition to this research piece, other articles include: a co‐authored contextual overview which situates the project in theoretical and practical terms (Drake et al. 2019a, this issue)’, a compilation of short texts that offer reflective analyses from the different perspectives of the project’s principal researchers, Sophia Pearce, Campbell Drake, Jock Gilbert and Sven Mehzoud (Drake et al. 2019b, this issue), and an associated research‐led article by Mehzoud (2019, this issue). Read individually, each designated article presents a focused inquiry (depth); taken together as a curated series, they provide the reader with the opportunity to gain a comprehensive overview (breadth) and appreciation of the project’s guiding aspirations, objectives and outcomes that amounts to more than the sum of its discrete parts.

Collected Reflections

“…My interest lies in the medium of landscape and the way that is and has been constructed. As discussed in my accompanying article (Gilbert , this issue ) included in the Interpretive Wonderings Portfolio, broadly speaking, landscape architectural practice is underpinned by the conceptual and philosophical position that landscape is that which lies ‘over there’ and predicated on a distance between it and the human (practitioner). In order to apprehend this, a common approach to landscape architectural practice is to first map what it is that one considers to constitute the landscape under consideration: what the existing features are, the constraints of the site, the possibilities.…”

“…The process of the Interpretive Wonderings intercultural partnership and art project involved a workshop on Culpra Station – discussed in more detail in the contextual overview (Drake et al , this issue ) and the research article provided by Gilbert ( , this issue) ; both included as part of the Interpretive Wonderings Portfolio – which provided the opportunity for the participants to learn about Barkandji cultural practices and listen to and share stories about Barkandji country. In response to this three‐day experience, the creative practitioners generated works as spatial mappings that interpreted Culpra Station, its people, its place, and time.…”