The “critical” in critical topography is a method of elaboration and iteration as argued within and about a place. It allows us to raise questions as to how place matters in political, historical, aesthetic and social contexts. More than an object of study, landscape is conceived as a dynamic human investment that points beyond itself, and challenges researchers to find new terms to investigate locales imbued with social meaning, identity and site-specific subjectivity.
The symposium provided an opportunity to define and ‘workshop’ foundational concepts in the study of this emergent approach to the subject of landscape, which was explored in a series of panel segments and related keynote presentations on the following six topics:
- Visual and Literary Landscapes
- Landscape in Motion: Ecology, Climate, Carbon
- The Memnopolis through the Commons
- Forensic Landscape and the Nuclear Paradigm
- Paradigms of Critical Topography
Conference Program is available here: brochureCT11
Some of the Critical Topography conference participants.