Our Living Book section, on ‘marginal worlds’ represents the traditionally binary concepts of Nature and culture as indeterminate, inextricably related elements , a state of suspension that is captured by the eco-driven neologism; 'natureculture'.
When first discussing the topic of ‘marginal worlds’, we all found that we were initially attracted to it because it seemed to be connected in some way with the notion of ‘between-ness’. 'Between-ness' was about eliminating binaries. Under a ‘between-ness’ model of thinking, a thing can be described with two seemingly mutually exclusive adjectives without this description necessarily being a contradiction or a flaw or a mistake. It is a way of thinking or reading or viewing the world that is a departure from, as Timothy Clark claims in The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment, the “technical, mathematically formalizable and objectifying modes of knowledge” that had been “the basic sense of things since Greece.” Often when we describe the world in certain terms relating to this technical, mathematical approach, such a description seems to fall flat, as though something escaped or changed in the process of describing it. Marginal worlds sounded to us like an interesting subject that might encourage a ‘between-ness’ way of thinking as opposed to a technical one.
Many of the e-concepts introduced during the course were closely related to the ideas of marginal worlds and between-ness. New Materialism, for example, inasmuch as it is about our interconnected, mesh-like existence with the world, seems to encourage a shift away from language that contains and understands the world, to a language more quiet, abstract and open. Such a shift is closely connected to notions of ‘between-ness’ and ‘becoming’. The concept, however, that we explored in most detail in our living book section was the neologism ‘natureculture’. ‘Natureculture’ seemed to us to be a concept that seeks to emphasise the arbitrariness of the distinction between what we call ‘nature’ and ‘culture’. It seemed to highlight the usefulness in representing these two supposedly binary concepts as indeterminate, inextricably related elements.
Robert Frost’s poem “A Brook in the City”describes the process by which a ‘natural’ space becomes violently transformed into an ‘urban’ one. Frost’s poem interested us because, while at first it portrayed nature and culture to be in opposition, it later subverted this theme by suggesting a circular relation between the two. It is not clear, in this poem, where nature ends and culture begins. The farmhouse, for example, seems to be suspended in a sort of middle ground, while the brook seems to ‘live on’ in some way in the urban space despite being buried deep underground. Frost’s poem generated questions for us: what does it mean to ‘cover up’ a natural setting? Must such covering up necessarily be seen as a human/corrupting force? What sort of marginal worlds exist underground?
Our photo essay draws on the ideas generated by the poem, by investigating the notion of 'marginal worlds' in relation to 'subterranean worlds'; envisioning marginal worlds as 'worlds beneath'. 'Subterranean' refers to something existing, occurring or done under the earth's surface: Secret; concealed. Subterranean worlds are controlled environments; receiving limited supplies compared to the 'mainstream' world with its abundance of light, exposure to elements, and varied ecosystems. It is for these reasons that such worlds can be described as 'marginal', for they exist 'on the margins'. The strangely mystic, indefinite appeal of worlds at the margins is described in Rachel Carson’s ‘The Marginal World’ where she states: ‘Always the edge of the sea remains an elusive and indefinable boundary’ As illustrated in the photo story, marginal spaces can be transformed with human, artistic intervention; exemplifying their sonic qualities to instrumental effect, as is evident in the ‘Great Stalacpipe Organ’, even shaping the way light is directed into their enclosed chambers to create monumental cameras (James Terrel’s ‘Roden Crater’). Their isolation from the "main" world also sees the cultivation of fascinating, deviant species, or the growth of spectacular abnormalities away from human sight or intervention, such as the Mexican Giant Crystal Caves. This spectacular growth was permitted by extreme heat conditions over a crystallisation process spanning many thousands of years. According to Rachel Carson, in ‘Marginal Worlds’, ‘only the most hardy and adaptable can survive in a region so mutable, yet the area between the tide lines is crowded with plants and animals…where the casual observer would say there is no life, it lies deep in the sand, in burrows and tubes and passageways”
The initial inspiration for the short film was the concept of drawing parallels between the natural and human made world as is seen in the section of the video where footage of a forest transitions into footage of power poles and smokestacks and where footage of birds transitions to a plane taking off. These ideas of parallel became the branching off point to explore the concept that there are many areas of permeability in the natureculture divide that we encounter every day and yet struggle to internalise. The idea of how close we are to the natural world and how intertwined we are with it challenges the continued march towards distancing human life and achievement from nature. One of the ways that we observed this was in the fact that nature is more often appreciated through our screens than by experiencing it directly, this led to the idea to mimic a video one might see on Facebook of beautiful vistas and stock footage actors and replace the motivational quotes or wanderlust travel tips with a confrontation of the falsehoods within the natureculture divide. There is a whole field that has developed around Environmental communication and in recent years this communication has moved away from simply encouraging green behaviours or displaying statistics about rising temperatures or how long coffee cups take to break down and is instead moving towards breaking down the natureculture divide. It is clear that many people’s experience of nature through the lens of online video claims nature as a right or otherwise separates its viewer from it. However, social media is also being used as a tool to combat this division, for example using the hashtag ‘pollinators’ to encourage the viewing of beautiful images of birds and bumblebees not just as ‘nature’ but also as necessary. It was this movement towards using the power and influence that online media already has to confront the divide between people and the world around them that inspired our short film.