Practicing Landscape: Land, Histories and Transformation Online Symposium was curated to complement the exhibition Practicing Landscape: Land, Histories & Transformation that comprised practice-led research held at the Lighthouse, Glasgow (25 Jan-22 March 2020). The exhibition utilised the gallery as a dynamic space where reflexive curatorial, creative and theoretical practices relating to current debates in landscape research were investigated by the artists and explored with a wider public over the exhibition period, creating an important framework for new practice-led and applied research to be disseminated to diverse audiences. For the Practicing Landscape: Land, Histories and Transformation Online Symposium, academic papers, selected through a double peer review process, were chosen to complement and extend themes addressed in the exhibition through practice.

The Symposium was to have taken place on 19-20 March 2020, as the closing event for the exhibition at The Lighthouse, Glasgow. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the symposium transferred online and ran on a weekly basis, over a period of 6 weeks, from 6 November to 11 December 2020.

The format of the Symposium included two invited Keynote speakers – Ingrid Pollard and Dr Louise Purbrick – and also included four thematic sessions, each comprising three speakers, chaired by a respondent from the Reading Landscape Group. Presentations contributing to the Symposium drew upon the exhibition, furthering discussion of the key themes of interest:
– Histories (including land ownership, commons, cultural perspectives, border territories, heritage and preservation);
– Wild spaces (including peripheral territories, deserts, forests or ideas of remoteness);
– People and Place (including alternative voices and experiences of landscape including embodiment and auto-ethnographic practices);
– Contentious Landscapes (including sustainability, interventions, conservation and ecology).

For further information on the Symposium see: https://readingthelandscapesite.wordpress.com/2020/03/12/practising-landscape-land-histories-and-transformation-symposium-19-and-22-march-2020/

The Reading Landscape research group is led by Susan Brind and Dr Nicky Bird. Devised by Brind and Bird, the originality of PRACTICING LANDSCAPE: Land, Histories & Transformation – Symposium and Exhibition was the public staging of contemporary artworks within a framework of practice-led and real world research, and theoretical ideas, that contributed directly to debates in landscape research from physical, experiential, land-based work to complex political readings of space and territory.

In the same way that selected Symposium contributions were double peer reviewed by Susan Brind, Nicky Bird, Jenny Brownrigg, Frances Robertson and Gina Wall, contributions to the exhibition were rigorously considered by a Curatorial Working Group, comprising: Christine McBride, Shauna McMullan, Lesley Punton, Prof Ross Sinclair, and Jenny Brownrigg.

The Online Symposium was structured and delivered as follows:

Session 1 – Friday 6 November 2020:
Keynote – Ingrid Pollard
Respondent – Tiffany Boyle

Session 2: Wild Places – Friday 13 November 2020
Elizabeth Hodson, ‘The Post-human Sublime: The Art Practice of Katie Paterson’
Nalini Paul ‘Embodying Language in Wild Spaces: Place, Memory and Transformation’
Sam Nightingale, Salt: a crystal image of time’
Respondent: Justin Carter

Session 3: Histories – Friday 20 November 2020
Sean Laoide-Kemp, Landscape as Witness: Aftermath Photography, Oral History, and Ethnography in Representing the Public Works Scheme of the Great Irish Famine
Joe Crowdy, ‘Writing Rack Fen: 1583-1606 and 2019-20’
Dr Frances Robertson, ‘Alien Introductions: trees, memory and landscape history’
Respondent: Michail Mersinis

Session 4 – Friday 27 November 2020:
Keynote – Dr Louise Purbrick
Respondent – Dr Marianne Greated

Session 5: People & Place – Friday 4 December 2020
Dr Nicky Bird, ‘Raging’
Jordan Whitewood-Neale, ‘Epistemological Hinterlands: Non-Normative Embodiment and Sublime Perceptions of Landscape’
Dr Jo Vergunst, ‘Exploring landscape decision-making with the arts: agency, scale and temporality’
Respondent: Dr Frances Robertson

Session 6: Contentious Landscapes – Friday 11 December 2020
Jane Brettle, ‘Mine – walking’
Jasper Coppes, ‘Mud’
Prof Minty Donald, ‘Erratic Drift: approaching human geological performance’
Respondent: Susan Brind

As Director of Exhibitions, Jenny Brownrigg also had an over-arching view of this project as part of her reflexive curatorial approach to the dissemination of creative practices and worked closely with Brind and Bird in the realisation of the Symposium and related Exhibition at The Lighthouse, Glasgow. Technical support for the delivery of the Symposium was provided by Rebecca Oliva and support for the transcription of subtitles and uploading of recordings by Cat Weir.

Symposium: 814 total attendees.
Visitor numbers for Exhibition: 12,517 visitors.

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