Talking about notions of space

M.C. Escher: Sky and Water 1, Gayle Thomas, provided by the National Film Board of Canada

I recently had the opportunity to speak to Les Roberts (Reader in Cultural and Media studies at Liverpool University) and Hazel Andrews (professor of Culture, Tourism & Society at Liverpool John Moores University) who wrote a paper about Hilbre Island ‘Tracing lines in the Hilbre sands: a spatial anthropology of islandness and other fictions’ which I found very inspiring in terms of the concepts used to talk about place and negative space.

A negative space in relation to the paper the academics have written, relates to how the island is defined by what is not literally there. An example of this are the myths created around the island, the legends as well as the history.

Some inspiring concepts emerged during the conversation which I aim to keep exploring: islandness, spatial anthropology, notions of access, liminality, mapping, poetics of space.