Potteiger. M and Purinton. J (1998). Landscape narratives-in: Theory in Landscape architecture : a reader. Ed by Simon Swaffield. Philadelphia . University of Pennsylvania Press. 2002. pp136-44
This essay explores the idea of the landscape as a spatial narrative, shaped by ongoing processes and multiple authors.
The author's theory defines 3 realms in which the narratives take place:
1. The Story Realm
- where the story is told (narration)
- contains units of story (event, sequence, place, character, point of view)
- strong link between landscape and language
- narrative is the language of time, within the landscape time can be accelerated (installation of mature vegetation), frozen (preservation) and modulated.
"we can enter the various spaces and times of stories - myth, natural history, magic realism.. only to the extent that we let their convention determine what we look for and do in them" - closure and control of meaning.
- contingent on a reader who participates
2. Contextual/Intertextual Realm
- stories contain references and traces of many other stories and authors despite authors attempts at 'closure'
- different contexts and points of view that cross boundaries between the story and sites outside it
- story is then open to multiple readings
- control of meaning shifts from authors intentions to readers own cultural context
- representations of larger context incorporated into the story space
"Every text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations, every text is absorption and transformation of another text." - Cited in N. Ellin, Postmodern Urbanism.
3. Discourse Realm
- narratives are a discursive realm for negotiating and structuring values, beliefs and ideologies.
- discourse is more than a moral "social framework of itelligibility"
- these discourses are not rigid, fields where ideas are "communicated, negotiated or challenged"
- often, dominant groups tell their story in the landscape, controlling interpretations as well as presenting others from making history - below this horizon of critical awareness some ideologies are 'naturalised' - seeming "as innocent and unchangeable as nature itself" Eagleton.
- sites where original conjuction of meaning is taken for natural
These 3 realms provide a framework for understanding narrative qualities and production of places.
- fundamental practices e.g. framing, naming, sequencing, revealing, erasing, gathering
- also cultural practices that reach beyond those of professional design e.g. vernacular, rituals of daily life, journeys, memories.
- places serve as a means of gathering collective experience and memory
-----> 'places' are intelligent.
Closed narratives
- theme parks, gated communities
- controlled and scripted by certain authorities
- erase layers of history and complexity
- draw boundaries between living and changing places
Open narratives
- encourage multiple authorship, multiple stories
- complex sequences
- choices, chance events, recombinations
- gaps, disjunctions, ambiguities as intentional aspects of design
In open narratives, the productions of meaning shifts from the author to the reader.
- active engagement of the reader
- bringing multiple and alternate meanings
---> using intelligence of the reader as opposed to the author, all readers have a different 'intelligence' derived from social/cultural context.
Martha Swartz, Splice Garden.
- "unmasking and denaturalising hegemonic discourse"
- open to alternate reading and counternarratives
- what appears to convincing and natural can be challenged
-----> links back to the relationship between the anthropocentric and the biocentric. Relationship changes between designer, story, reader, community and landscape.
"In effect it engages the practices of how people make places and stories a constitute part of their own experience, interpretation and memory".
