Date of Submission

Spring 2024

Academic Program

Environmental and Urban Studies

Project Advisor 1

Adriane Colburn

Abstract/Artist's Statement

Abstract

While practices of land conservation are inherently linked to colonization, public parks offer opportunities for interspecies community, care, and solidarity. Perception and embodiment of the viewshed is complicated by structural understandings of ecological restoration, historical preservation, and our understandings of how space and place manifest. Concepts like haunting, attunement, bodily understanding, the epistemological-ontological divide, and having a critical spatial understanding of phenomenology have the ability to impact our spatial understanding of those places which are most tender to us. In this essay, I will discuss the aforesaid concepts by examining how a viewshed is informed by art, writing, map making, theory, and policy. These examinations are place based in public viewsheds at Blithewood at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, and at Skalkaho Bend Park in Hamilton, MT. I chose these places because I have lived and grown up looking at these views, because I have love for them, and because I have curiosity for why they are the way they are. The arguments I make here are also part of more nuanced conversations, and offer points of view from specific forms of research.

This Sproj also has two accompanying physical components (as seen above). The art book holds my experience of walking, attuning, loving, and being within the landscape. And the postcards are an opportunity for correspondence and connection with each other – an open-ended gesture.

Open Access Agreement

On-Campus only

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License

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