This Week I read an extract from the book The Lure of the Local by Lucy Lippard. Although this was an assigned reading, I quite enjoyed the piece and it made me begin to question and think about what a space really is and what it’s constructed of.
In this piece, Lippard questions the meaning behind space and place and the labels we give to describe them. “Around here,” she writes, provoking the question of what is meant by this. I get a sense that “Around here” describes the familiarity of a place to its inhabitant; a place of common use. “Around here” is familiar whereas “Out there” is the unknown.
When Lippard writes about how a “place can be peopled by ghosts more real than living inhabitants,” I feel that she is describing how the atmosphere and feeling that is given off by a place is not necessarily due to the people that inhabit it, but that the memories and history of the place can often create a stronger, more noticeable presence. This is one of my favourite lines in this piece because its not only poetic but is also thought provoking and carries a lot of meaning with it.
A question is brought up by Lippard, writing “if place is defined by memory, but no one who remembers is left to bring these memories to the surface, does a place become noplace, or only a landscape?” This interests me because it creates the idea that a place is created by its own memories and history, not the memories of those who inhabit it. This made me realise that a place’s memories can often be a defining factor in the atmosphere of a place.
I enjoyed this reading because it made me question how we, as humans, look at space in a visual way and made me realise how much more there is to spaces and how many factors there are to a space without us consciously knowing it. I like how this piece made me question myself and created a realisation for me that now allows me to look at spaces in different ways. I can now see how the atmosphere of a space plays a massive part and how this is created through familiarity, memories and history of both the inhabitants and the place itself. I now have a better understanding of what makes a space a space.
Spatial Design by Ciara 