Evoking 'Lureland': Site-marking the pioneer bungalows of Peacehaven. (1st March 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Winckler, Julia
• Is Part Of: Journal of writing in creative practice. Volume 8:Number 1(2015)
• Page Start: 63
• Page End: 84
• Publication Date: 2015-03-01
• Subjects: Writing in art -- Periodicals; Composition (Language arts) -- Periodicals; Creative writing -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; Technical writing -- Periodicals; Art and literature -- Periodicals; 808.06605
• DOI: 10.1386/jwcp.8.1.63_1
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1753-5190

Abstract

This article explores place as subject matter and proposes to read the town of Peacehaven itself as archive. Two distinct photographic strategies are mobilized, each exploring the intersections of place, memory and archive.Firstly, I show how surviving traces of the town's original vision are mapped and recorded through documentary photographs. Photography is used in its forensic or detective mode to create a photographic record for the future. This methodology of site-marking is informed by the technique of site-writing, a term coined by architectural historian Jane Rendell, who has used the process of writing as a form of spatial construction. This is complemented by a second visual approach that takes the shape of a commemorative site-specific intervention performed as a public outdoor event. As part of this intervention, lost landmarks are temporarily conjured through the projection of archival photographs onto bare chalk cliffs below Peacehaven's iconic Meridian Monument. Through this intervention, new, layered photographs emerge and are recorded. Whilst representing what has been lost, the photographs also seek to reinterpret the archival images in a new context. A space emerges within which lost landmarks of Peacehaven are made visible in the present.