Book: Site Specificity: The Ethnographic Turn edited by Alex Coles, Black Dog Publishing Ltd 2000
James Meyer discusses in this book what he calls ‘motion in order’ – the new direction towards a mobile audience where travel becomes the fundamental common theme. A culture of itinerancy. He says that there are two types of nomadicy:
1. Lyrical nomadism – “Random and poetic interaction with objects and spaces of everyday life.”
2. Critical nomadism – “Locating travel itself within a historical and institutional framework.”
Lyrical nomadism is personalised. It involves the body’s circulation as a series of phenomenological encounters in real time. It is the material condition in which this occurs. He then goes on to discuss exaggerated alienation – an otherworldliness. He references Edward Said saying that the traveller projects onto the place of his destination perceived notions he has already heard or read. His view is mediated by preconceptions and representations. The traveller’s view of his own culture is equally mediated.
This idea of alienation/mediation between the body and a space is a direct result of a nomadic society where home, belonging, routed-ness etc are all obsolete concepts. The art world is reacting to this special flux accordingly.
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