"This boundary stream, that
mound, the scattered vestigial enclaves and their speech forms, the lime-washed
sacral enclosures; so far by means as fragile, vulnerable and scarcely
tangible, these the elusive things of the world have, in a tattered fragmentary
sort of way, been tabernacled for us."
- David Jones,1959,The Dying
Gaul + Other Writings
"The
mystery of memory is in its loss, the process of oblivion, which brings a flood
of recriminations and a multitude of second memories: screens of memory, shows
of memory. But the dirt, the ashes and the air of memory still lie around the
city. The language of every fragment must be collated with its imagery, with
its noise - the components stripped down, with utter brevity, as raw material
for identity."
- Stephen
Barber, 1995, Fragments of a European City
I
and my family have had the pleasure of living in Milledgeville for almost five
months in conjunction with my Newell Scholar Residency at Georgia College. On
my third day in town I met Elizabeth Wylie on her third day in town. It was
kismet. I learned about the beauty and historical fabric that is Andalusia and
discovered her approach to engagement and improvisation is like mine. Wham! a
collaboration was born. It has yielded an astonishing array of convivial
activities from farm-to-table dinners to an exhibition by my seminarians to
launch Andalusia's new exhibition and program space. In my seminar "Taken
Aback" we engaged place and collective memory. We began by binding a 16th
century journal – a field dossier. Our work then involved inventing cartographic
translations of remembering, reclamation, and resistance. We traversed the
uncanny, and the unknown, regarding place. We looked for fractures, niches and
recesses in the continuity of the fabric of our lives, as temporal inhabitants
of place; sought the unexpected evidence of histories amber-trapped all around
us. We identified intervals, incongruities and ruptures as portals. We laid
claim to memories on which we had no moral purchase and then fought for their
legitimacy. The seminar involved field research
across our town, the study of ecological patches, relearning tools,
philosophical readings and discussions, community meals in our portable
kitchen, and the printing and binding of our investigations. The prototyping of
a book, to eventually send our ideas back out into the world, launched the
seminar. In our concluding exhibition at Andalusia, we welcome you to
taste the ideas and possibilities we brought to ground to celebrate our urban
entanglements and our material archive.
In the exhibition, in collaboration with Elizabeth Wylie and Andalusia,
we now present data from our walks, journeys, dreams, and investigations over
the last 15 weeks. It is our hope that we have conjured a chorus of voices,
situated somewhere between the claims of the past and the needs of the
future. No solutions, just clues.
-
Leon Johnson
Georgia College Martha Daniel Newell Distinguished Scholar 2014
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