Visuality/Materiality This page has been left blank intentionally Visuality/Materiality images, Objects and Practices edited by Gillian rOse The Open University, UK DiVya P. tOlia-Kelly University of Durham, UK © Gillian rose and Divya P. tolia-Kelly 2012 all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Gillian rose and Divya P. tolia-Kelly have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work. Published by ashgate Publishing limited ashgate Publishing Company Wey Court east suite 420 union road 101 Cherry street Farnham Burlington surrey, Gu9 7Pt Vt 05401-4405 england usa www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Visuality/materiality : images, objects and practices. 1. Visual communication. 2. Visual literacy. 3. Geographical perception. 4. Human ecology. i. rose, Gillian, 1962- ii. tolia-Kelly, Divya Praful. 304.2-dc23 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Visuality/ materiality : images, objects and practices / by Gillian rose and Divya P. tolia-Kelly., [editors]. p. cm. includes bibliographical references and index. isBn 9781409412229 (hardback) -- isBn 9781409412236 (ebook) 1. Material culture. 2. Visual perception. 3. Visual communicaiton. i. rose, Gillian. ii. tolia-Kelly, Divya Praful. Gn406.V57 2012 302.2ꞌ3--dc23 isBn 9781409412229 (hbk) 2011037642 isBn 9781409412236 (ebk) III Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group, uK. Contents List of Figures vii About the Contributors ix Acknowledgements xiii 1 Visuality/Materiality: introducing a Manifesto for Practice 1 Gillian Rose and Divya P. Tolia-Kelly 2 Metallic Modernities in the space age: Visualizing the Caribbean, Materializing the Modern 13 Mimi Sheller 3 Visuality, “China Commodity City”, and the Force of things 39 Mark Jackson 4 Tristes Entropique: steel, ships and time images for late Modernity 59 Mike Crang 5 Citizen and Denizen space: if Walls Could speak 75 Nirmal Puwar 6 seeing air 85 Caren Yglesias 7 intra-actions in loweswater, Cumbria: new Collectives, Blue-Green algae, and the Visualisation of invisible Presences through sound and science 109 Judith Tsouvalis, Claire Waterton and Ian J. Winfield 8 Materialising Vision: Performing a High-rise View 133 Jane M. Jacobs, Stephen Cairns and Ignaz Strebel 9 Melancholic Memorialisation: the ethical Demands of Grievable lives 153 Karen Wells vi Visuality/Materiality 10 indifferent looks: Visual inattention and the Composition of strangers 171 Paul Frosh Index 191 list of Figures 2.1 alcoa advertisement, 1930s 18 2.2 Boris artzybasheff, alcoa steamship Co. advertisement, Holiday magazine, 1948 25 2.3 James r. Bingham, alcoa steamship Co. advertisement, Holiday magazine, 1954–55 28 2.4 tavares strachan, still from “orthostatic tolerance: it might not be such a bad idea if i never went home” 33 2.5 Jamaican recycler 35 3.1 Old woman and the promise of things 41 3.2 Old sock market, now disused 45 4.1 absent witness 63 4.2 Hidden worlds of wasting large enough to be seen from space 64 4.3 the afterlives of steel: ships cable becomes reinforcing rod for buildings 66 4.4 the labour of reduction 68 4.5 a parade of ships becoming steel 70 4.6 toxic tropics: tropes of exotic toxicity 72 5.1 Monkeys 77 5.2 st stephen’s Hall, Westminster 79 5.3 Mark Wallinger, State Britain 81 5.4 anish Kapoor, Shooting into the Corner 82 6.1 From imitation to expression 87 6.2 an imaginative Material Projection 90 6.3 literal and selectively literal 93 6.4 emotional representation: an uneasy feeling 96 6.5 Paul Cézanne, Montagne sainte-Victoire 99 6.6 total activity 102 7.1 the twelve transects followed during the echo-sounding surveys of loweswater 122 7.2 Photo of boat on the lake. First echo-sounding survey of loweswater 123 viii Visuality/Materiality 7.3 example echograms recorded during the daytime and night- time echo-sounding surveys of loweswater 124 7.4 a Chaoborus larva of approximately 10 mm in length 126 8.1 the red road estate, Glasgow 133 8.2 le Corbusier’s unclad high-rise apartment block, showing the enlarged eye and the diminished human occupant 137 8.3 William ross, then secretary of state for scotland, and his wife, at a red road window on the occasion of the estate’s official opening 138 8.4 red road resident explaining how to clean her window 143 8.5 Red Road resident explaining her first experience of her view 143 9.1 Memorial to Jean Charles de Menezes 157 9.2 Billy Cox’s street name ‘remer’ on his estate in the days after his death 157 9.3 a stencil painting of Billy Cox’s portrait on the walkways of his estate 159 9.4 The final memorial to Billy Cox 159 about the Contributors Editors Gillian Rose is a Professor in Cultural Geography at the Open university. she is a significant author within the field of visual culture. Her particular interest is in considering visuality as a kind of practice, done by human subjects in collaboration with different kinds of objects and technologies. Her current research includes working with architects on uK research Council funded project Architectural Atmospheres which follows from the research project Urban Aesthetics. she is the author of Visual Methodologies (Palgrave, 2001) and Doing Family Photography: The Domestic, the Public and the Politics of Sentiment (ashgate, 2010). Divya P. Tolia-Kelly is a reader in Geography at Durham university, uK. Her research has focused on visual cultures, material cultures, landscape and race-memory. in collaborations with landscape artists Melanie Carvalho and Graham lowe and through ethnographic investigation she has co-curated several exhibitions including An Archaeology of Race, Nurturing Ecologies and Describe a Landscape … . Her recent research monograph is entitled Landscape, Race and Memory (ashgate, 2010). she is currently collaborating with artists on research entitled An Archaeology of Race at the Museum. Here she critically engages with the universalizing, imperial accounts of the theories of art and material culture from a postcolonial perspective. Chapters Caren Yglesias is a Professor in landscape architecture at the university of Maryland. she has expertise in landscape architecture design and practice. Her most recent monograph (2012) is entitled The Complete House and Grounds: Learning from A.J. Downing’s Domestic Architecture. Caren is currently holder of an American Association of University Women (aauW) fellowship (2012–13). She is also a significant contributor to contemporary dialogues on architectures for living via her blog: www.homesforliving.blogspot.com. Claire Waterton is a senior lecturer in sociology at lancaster university, uK. Her research interests include: investigating the making and politics of scientific knowledge on nature and the environment; public perceptions of environmental issues and environmental risks; the relationship of scientific knowledge to