1-day workshops 2011

Excursion 3rd April 2011

As I went a week before with the Lerandoneur (Walking group from Leran) on a very enjoyable walk from Bastide sur l'Hers to St Colombe sur l'Hers via Miraval I thought to repeat this with my group.
In Bastide Amanda told us the story behind a historic building. Inside this building is a stairway build in a peculiar way so that the owner could go to his rooms upstairs (bedroom?) by horse!
Anyway we went along the old railway and then along a fairly steep footpath direction Miraval.

Valley with old railway track

On the way we could see the valley below and we shared what were the first impressions.
Again they were for each very different, but together we formed a more coherent picture.
Also we collected each a plant on the way and when we were at the top we had a drawing session and a coffee.
We found peculiar roundish beads and we discovered they were seeds from Purple Gromwell.
They are fairly local here, you see them everywhere in partly shaded places.

We continued our walk through Miraval with splendid views on the area around Lac Montbel to the north and facing south to the high mountains still covered with snow.

Path

Miraval

Then we continued on a very nice path aligned with mainly oak trees, along the edge of the hill, to a place called St Hugo, a very nice place to have our lunch. St Hugo is the patron saint of the hunters.

Path

St Hugo

On the way back we found a place so we could draw the area around Lac Montbel.

Lac Montbel

 But it began to rain a bit and as we had to walk back a fair way, we packed our bags and left.

Excursion 8 May 2011  Confronting a mystery in a landscape and revealed on the same day!

This time I had the idea to show people a piece of landscape with a mystery attached.

We live near Sautel and there is an  area where you find small huts and small to very small areas of land, parcelled of by walls. Also small terraces and we always asked ourselves what has taken place here.

Near Sautel

Near Sautel

So I positioned the people so that there back was turned towards that area and we discussed the landscape we saw and we came to that in that landscape there were no mysteries, although we might be nosy to what is behind the hill or to other areas in the landscape we could not see.

Then I asked them to turn around and straight away they asked: what is this?

We wandered around and came up with all kinds of ideas. Sheep gathering, pig enclosures or Self-sufficient community with gardens and animal enclosures?

Small terraces

So we wandered around for a time and then sat down to do some drawing and having coffee!

Drawing the huts

Then we drove to Lieurac, from where we walked to a picnic table with excellent view on Lieurac and surroundings so a good spot to have an observation exercise and drawing session and lunch.
The owner of the piece of land was around and so my wife started to have a conversation with him and in the mean time we had a discussion about the various dimensions of landscape (vertical, horizontal, seasonal and historical dimensions)
Then my wife returned with the exiting news that the place we saw in Sautal had been a leper settlement and that there is another one near St Girons, also in the Ariege.
We are talking about the time of 1800.
Now somehow it all maked sense. Not that we knew everything, but a certain mystery was revealed.
And other things also became connected; Does this have to do that there are two churches, one in the village itself and one high above the village, where we find also some houses.
Sautel is also popular because of its water fountains.

Peter

Peter's drawing of Lieurac

After lunch we had a drawing session, shared our experiences and drawings and had a nice walk through village of Lieurac itself (visit the cemetery with some very old architectural features) and then end up with an easy walk back to Sautel.
Altogether it was a very exciting and beautiful day.

Landscape perception workshop 10-17 july 2010 (short version)

 This report was written by me and then edited and published by Bud Young from 'Landscape Research'

LANDSCAPE PERCEPTION WORKSHOP AT THE FOOTHILLS OF THE FRENCH PYRENEES

Lac Montbel

At Lac du Montbel , the first day, facing south towards high mountains, a varied group of European landscape enthusiasts examined what it was they saw. Using drawing it was evident that everyone noticed the lake, the hill with its village, an intrusive water-tower and fields. Behind that they recorded a hill-ridge covered with trees and still beyond, the high mountains. Notably each person had a different take on the scene.  One looked at geological features, one just at colour, another majored on agricultural features and the other noticed the mood/atmosphere including the sounds. Predictable perhaps, interesting certainly. The 'Legible Landscape' manual, which is widely used in Holland to engage people in landscape and its development, was issued to offer guidance for the following days.

Recognizing that landscapes contain many different factors, both large and small, the next day the group concentrated on plant observation by walking through a deep gorge to a high mountain plateau. The main task was to observe the many different manifestations of plant growth (forms, colours etc.) in relation to their distinctive sites.

In the evening they were introduced to Merleau Ponty through a work by David Seamon  and discussed how we experience and are engaged in the world. The main idea is that it is through our perceptional experiences that our body-subject learns/knows  how to interact with the world and it is only partly through cognitive (conscious) endeavours that we experience the unlearned.

The group went out for a day to practise a ‘Legible Landscape’ session on the edge of a large flat valley facing Puivert Castle.

Puivert

In the evening through a work by G Maier the group was introduced to Aesthetics as a new way to acquire knowledge, based on sense-perception and experience and not on logic or abstract thoughts. What came to the fore was that any appearance is a combination of many factors and elements (they can even be in a certain way, outside our vision e.g sun in case of shadows or plant growth) many of which we miss due to our original intentions. The main aim was to bring across how the many factors: light, weather and even personal attitudes, play a crucial role in how we ‘meet the appearance’ or ‘how we experience the event’ and the more conscious we are of these relationships and the more numerous they are, the richer the aesthetic experience. The group seemed to have taken this in and the theoretical parts became more a discussion group around a few central thoughts, readings or texts, rather than a course instructor’s presentation.

near Lac Soulcem

The next morning, they visited  the 'End of the World, a valley deep in the high mountains bearing the imprint of human presence; the water reservoir, the shepherds huts and cheese making rooms and the grazing cattle. What the group asked itself here was, what would it look like without such signs. Here the combination of sheer vastness of it all, the feeling of the pre-historical ---geology) and understandable history (the shepherding activity), the silence and their own small presence, constituted an experience of the sublime.

Plateau du Sault

Subsequently on the Plateau du Sault, a remote high place between the mountains, the group explored together a landscape which has not yet been spoiled by adverse developments. There, a 'Legible Landscape' walk and the act of drawing architectural features in the village  revealed the bones of an archetypal mediaeval landscape: the church in the middle, houses all around and beyond these the intensive vegetable and fruit gardens  and the further fields with a mixture of variable arable crops and intensive meadows, all encircled by more extensive grass fields; beyond this the forest.  It was an experience that the landscape here was a cohesive unity and had a strong identity as if everything grew ‘out of the ground’  Was it because it was so isolated? Certainly it was not easy to get there!

The group's experience of how the landscape reflected  mediaeval Occitan society was deepened by visiting the medieval centre of 'La Cite' in Carcassonne and  a village where the houses were situated in an accurate circle around the church. From Fanjaux, a hill-fort village and important historical site they had a marvellous view of the large broad valley below,  situated between Bordeaux (Atlantic) and Narbonne (Mediterranean), with  its harmonious patterns of fields, hedges, and villages, and across in the far distance the Montagne Noire (Haute Lanquedoc). A true example of the working together of nature and culture through time.

View from Fanjaux

Editor’s note
This appears to have been a thoroughly European event. The group comprised one Welshman, one Latvian, one Dutch lady living in Finland and a man and woman from Spain. Days in the field were accompanied by evening discussions and a presentation.

Workshop 10-17 july 2010 (Longer Version)

This workshop took place in Bastide sur l'Hers in a beautiful house from friends of us, and we had a wonderful space to work in and each had a bedroom for his/her own.

Jon, an old friend of us from England, arrived a few days earlier and so helped to set everything up (Thank you!) Ricardo and Isabel from Spain arrived at around 16.00, but Vladimir (Latvia)) and Karin (Dutch, but living in Finland) only arrived at around 19.00.
However Tee, my daughter in law, had prepared an excellent Thai meal.
After dinner we introduced each other and went through some practicalities (rota for making supper etc)

Sunday; Lac Montbel

Morning session
    1.    Made drawing of 'our landscape', where we grew up or where we lived or what landscape impressed us
    2.    Introduced some pictures/drawings in order to become conscious how we see or look at things.


Lac Montbel
Outdoor session; We first went to the north side of the lake and focused on the view facing south towards the high mountains. Some of us also took the opportunity to go for a swim.

Then, after coffee(!) we went to the other side of the lake and this time we went our separate ways, but generally faced north. Afterwards had picnic lunch and shared our experiences.


We soon realised that we all looked at different aspects, not only because we have different interests, but also because of our knowledge (geology, agriculture e.g) or experience (to have lived there) but once we shared our experiences each came to a more complete and comprehensive picture.
Some of our observations;
The yellow between water and islands looked like sand, but it was clay.
How would the landscape look like if there was not a village, from where  people had created the fields and cultivated several different crops? Boring?
There was a ridge of hills from east to west with a gap in it. This ridge is not only a physical boundary but also a cultural boundary between mountain culture and the lowland culture.
The further you looked the colours become more hazy. Mountains are  more or less greyish blue.

Late afternoon session

What aspects do we see in the landscape?
Introduced Landscape conceptional models from the work of Jan Diek van Mansvelt and Benedetta Castiglioni (see Landscape page)
Main ideas; Landscape is a combination of natural and cultural factors.
What we see as image is the result of these factors, but what we notice is determined by our interests/intentions.
Also introduced the European Landscape Convention (see ELC)

Supper; This was prepared by Adriaan and Jon and soon realised that we were short of time. So for the next days we added half an hour for preparation of the meals.

Evening session
Introduces the work 'Legible Landscape',  a dutch manual for landscape character assessment, based on the thesis by Karina Hendriks and Dirk Jan Stobbelaar, which is often used for landscape walks or projects in Holland to enhance participation in landscape development.
Adriaan had translated this work, but had also prepared a key-note presentation.
We went through the manual, but this did not work out so well as he thought. The key-note presentation might have worked out better. Ah... well, next time!
However we all understood that we can look at the landscape from different perspectives and the next few days during our walks we concentrated on the vertical(why do these plants grow there), horizontal(paths, roads, watercourses), seasonal(what time of year are we?) and historical (what has taken place here?) dimensions of the landscape.
Karin soon came to realise however that sounds were absent in the manual and of course this is a very important item in landscape experience.

Monday Gorges de la Frau

After a short introduction to the theme of day (Plant observation in the Gorges  and Legible Landscape session in Pays d'Aillou), we went of to the starting point of our fairly long walk!
After a very short introduction about plant growth we walked up the Gorges with the task of not talking (!) and observing the many different forms plant can create and we were to choose to draw one plant.

 When we came out of the Gorges we still had a fair way to go to enjoy a cup of coffee at a very nice place in Comus.


Then we walked through beautiful hayfields with a great variety of flowers direction Montaillou, but we stopped half way and found a good picnic spot from where we could see Prades, but from Montaillou only the castle ruin.  Some of us walked a little bit further and we could just see the church below Montaillou.

Walked to and had picnic lunch on top of the little hill in the middle of the photo.

Terraced?

View from our picnic place

We were rather tired from the walk, some of us are getting on a bit, and so we did not manage to do a 'Legible Landscape' session.

On the way back we had another coffee and shared our plant drawings.
Then on our way back we had the wonderful experience of clouds appearing over the mountains and later out of the Gorges.

View back to direction Comus

Afternoon session
Introduction to plant metamorphosis mainly with help of the work done by Jochen Bockemuhl
and in relation to tree growth on resp south and north facing slopes.
However because most of us were already partly acquainted with it, we didn't spend much time over it.

Supper; A delightful and exotic meal prepared by Ricardo and Isabel. Thank you!

Evening Session
Introducing the work of David Seamon (Geography of the Life World) and Tim Ingold ('Stop, look and listen' from the book 'Perception of the Environment')
We spend most of the time on David Seamon and read an extract about the body-subject and its
This was at the same time a good introduction to the work of Merleau-Ponty.
At the end of the evening I gave two papers, one with exercises in relation to the senses and my Goethean Essay (see My Articles), what is actually also an exercise in relation to the senses.

Tuesday Puivert

Morning session
Introducing the senses; We did the exercise in relation to the senses, which is based on the work of Richard Box 'Drawing; a course for the fearful or terrified”! and then elaborated on by Adriaan.
We became aware, especially in relation to sound, that we don't have to hear sounds in our ears, but there where the sounds are coming from! Is this not the same we can do (intend) when we see things?
In reality we can zoom in on certain areas and then we see things more clearly.
Also we became aware that we don't see 'things', but only shades of colour but because we move our eyes along edges we become aware of form. The rest we add, partly because of other sense-perceptions of past experiences (touch etc), but mostly we add concepts (tree, rocks, houses etc).
Another question came up; are airwaves  the same as sound and are electromagnetic waves the same as colour?
I hope I managed to show that this is not the case!
We realised that we could go on for a long time but we decided to leave it at that for tonight!
So off to Puivert and concentrate on a 'Legible Landscape' session.

Puivert

From where we were went, we could see Puivert in the distance (in the gap between the 2 hills) and just on the right you can just see Puivert Castle. More on the right (not on photo) is the village where we went to see the farmer and he showed us his barn and shed in the middle of the village, where he keeps his cows and sheep.
Jon and Vladimir (on a haybale) are drawing while I made the coffee! This time the task was 'Legible Landscape' so we looked at the vertical dimension (why do certain plants grow on this spot) horizontal dimension (outlay of roads, watercourses, hedges), seasonal dimension (which time of year are we) and the historical dimension (what features are there from what time)

 View facing west (by Vladimir)

                 
Afterwards we had a peaceful lunch (and a swim!) at the lake on the edge of Puivert and after lunch we went to visit the castle, which at the same time gave us opportunity to have excellent views of the surroundings.
Driving through the village on the way to the castle, we noticed 'old' toilets on the middle of the bridge.                                                                             

Puivert; Main entrance 

Music room

In the morning we were just on the other side, at the foot of the mountains

Puivert village and lake

On the way back we talked about the troubadours and the general cultural situation around medieval times.

Afternoon session
After shopping we had a game session;
    1)    Putting about 12 photos of the same landscape in chronological order.(and not only of over one year period!)
    2)    Putting pictures of branches in the right position. How do we know in which position they grew on the tree?

Supper; Another excellent supper prepared by Karen and Vladimir

Evening Session
Introduced the work of Georg Maier  and his colleagues by reading first the introduction 'Two smiles" of the book  'Matter and Mind' (new title 'Marriage of Sense and Thought') (see Goethean Science)
Then introduced the work 'Being on Earth, Tending the Appearances' specially the chapters in relation to Aesthetics and Baumgarten.
However I soon trailed off to the idea that what we see depends not only on our intentions, but even  on our organism, and that can easily lead to the opinion that the world we see is our own creation and sounds and colours are not existing independently of us. (neither matter!)
Karen put her foot in this and Jon supported her, but Ricardo partly supported my idea.
However we all agreed that we were partly both right, but we needed to workout upon on what aspects we were talking about. Ricardo and me realised that there is indeed something added to the world
when we are focussing on an appearrance, first the experience, secondly we meet the object with
a general concept to meet the unique appearance with its specific, inherent concept.
(I will come back to this problem sometime as I have occupied my self with this since)
So we jumped from Aesthetics straight to the subject of the next day and we read Owen Barfield's first chapter of “Saving the Appearances” called 'Rainbow' (see Post nov 2010) before we went to bed.
However I think the idea came over that in daily life we first have an aesthetic experience (experiencing the whole) where from we can select certain aspects, but then we should not forget to put it back into the whole and realise we can look at different aspects another time.
Also I felt that from this evening onwards all of us became more engaged and made the workshop successful.

Wednesday Lac Soulcem

Morning Session
Read Owen Barfield's "Rainbow” article and the next chapter (not helpful I think) and this was supplemented by a short part of Georg Maier's writing in relation that we can't have it both ways. (Cat and mouse)
Colour and matter are both objectively present, but we experience them in our way (that is as human beings) that is through the senses (resp colour and resistance) and through thought (natural laws)
But our thoughts are not coming by themselves, we have to be actively involved. But we can also leave it and walk past. Also we experience the world through feelings, each landscape has a certain atmosphere. What is it out there what resonates in us. It is not only visual, but something elemental?

Lac Soulcem; The way we came from     

Where we have to go through

Next stage; Where we came from

                                                       

Where we go to (walking this time!)

                                                         

Shepherd's huts on the way

Where are the cows and horses?

End of the world?

Jon facing the hight mountains

Ricardo and Isabel facing to and away from the mountains

       


Supper; A reasonable supper prepared by our host Betsy and Adriaan.

Evening session

Can't remember exactly but we continued our discussion from the morning, and it was to explore what is our connection with nature, which expresses itself in all kinds of forms, shapes and sizes etc.
We feel there is a connection between us and them (plants, animals landscape)  and I brought the image that during world=man's evolution plant and animals separated to early/incarnated to early (from a certain point of view!), but they were part of our humanity. Is this why we feel connected with them. Same roots?

Suggested reading before going to bed; Owen Barfield's chapter how people in mediaeval times experienced the world in comparison with how we experience it. (from 'Saving the appearances', see Evolution of Consciousness)


Thursday Plateau du Sault

Morning session
Introduction to the phenomena that during the Middle Ages, arable farming, animal husbandry, vegetable and fruit growing were for the first time integrated into a unity and the main cultural impulse in the west was Christianity which radiated from the centre of the village(church) for many years to come.
These landscapes we now observe as the aesthetic harmonious landscapes all over Europe. Around the village the fruit and vegetable growing then further out the animals and then the arable fields and then further afield(!) other fields (hay) and then at the border of the communities the forests.
Only recently landscapes have became fragmented.

Plateau du Sault
We went to the village Rodome and from there did a 'legible landscape' walk, that is we looked from several different perspectives. We saw some kind of cereal which was a cross between rye and wheat.
This time we also wanted to explore architectural features so at the end of our walk we went into the village and made some drawings.

On the way out of the village (field with oats)

Notice the many small but well looked after fields

                          

South facing slope with beehives

During our walk we came to the conclusion that this was a highly 'Legible Landscape' as nearly all features came out of the landscape itself with nearly no foreign elements present.

Cows at last!

We met a farmer and he explained this was not wheat, neither rye but a cross between them and was used for breadmaking. Vladimir brought to our attention that one can just look at shadows and notice that they can tell us a lot about time of day, year and where we are on earth (south or north etc)

Vladimir brought to our attention that one can just look at shadows and notice that they can tell us a lot about time of day, year and where we are on earth (south or north etc)

Shadows! Why do you make the arch Gothic, Vladimir?

Lunch

Valley behind, towards the Gorges d'Aude

Valley behind towards the Gorges the Aude, which is just behind the end of the field, but about several hundred meters down! At the end of this field we found this stone; on one side the languedoc cross and on the other side the lily.                         

Back home and this time Karin and Vladimir prepared the main meal and Ricardo and Isabel a fantastic cold soup.

Evening session

A key-note presentation of the history of Landscape Painting from the middle ages to around the beginning of the last century. This was  also attended by our host and family of Adriaan.

Main features of History of Art

•    Painting was 2 dimensional and depicted spiritual subjects

    •    First landscape around 1400 and then from that time onwards the Flemish and Dutch artist eyes opened their eyes to the sense-perceptible world around us. And depicted the world as we see it now (Vermeer) including daily life and people.

Small detail of Flemish religious painting

    •    Later the reverence to the Gods was replaced by reverence to Nature (Romanticism; Friedrich)

    •    With Impressionism people became aware of the momentary dimension (Aesthetic) of our perceptions (Monet) and experimented with colour to express the impression it made on them or to express the essentials of a landscape.(Cezanne, van Gogh)

    •    And this led to Expressionism with many diverse forms, but one characteristic is that it led again to 2 dimensional painting. And that is what a painting is!  Frans Marc, Picasso,  Kadinsky, Klee, Munch etc

    •    At that same time photography came up and here it becomes very clear that photos depict a highly 'aesthetic' picture as it depicts a scene at one particular moment (1 second?)

Friday Carcassonne
Morning session
Brief introduction  to medieval history; development of fortified villages and cities.

Carcassonne
Went to Carcassonne via the backroad
Walked around, mainly between the inner and outer wall, had coffee and then each went his own way to do a drawing/observation exercise.
Castle within La Cite
Where are the tourists?

Castle within La Cite

Where are the tourists?

After a good lunch we drove back but on the way we drove through La Force, where the houses were build in a circle and then we stopped at to fields to see Jon's sunflowers
and then we stopped at Fanjaux where we had spectacular views of the landscape with many clear pattern. We could have spend there a long-time.

View from Fanjaux

When we arrived home Karen prepared another substantial meal and in between we shared our drawings and read in our own time an extract from Tim Ingold's article 'Stop, look and listen' (see Phenomenology page) which was another good introduction to the work of Merleau-Ponty.

Evening session
Introduced some of the work done by others in relation to how people in the past (but partly also present day hunters and gatherers) lived within the landscape, for example Gurevich, Goff and Richter.
How the landscapes are a product of that time and that in a certain way through the christianising of the landscape we are now able  to see the world in all it's glory.
In future harmonious landscapes can only come about if we learn to see the world in all its different aspects, that is not only through ones own eyes, but also other people. We not only need a multi-disciplinary approach, but also an 'inhabitated' (experiental?) approach.
Then we had a review of the week and to make this possible I offered some self-critique, where in I expressed that I was not happy with my theoretical parts in the beginning of the week, but through the input of the participants we came to some lively and engaged discussions and this made it possible for me to offer relevant material to pursue the questions we came up with.
And that was and is just the whole idea and purpose of the workshop.

Saturday Farewell and Monsegur
Morningsession
We invited Betsy in order to say thank you and managed partly to reiterate where we spoke off in last evening's session (the influence of christian culture in the landscapes of  Europe)
Packed up and as bonus we went to visit Monsegur, which was totally in the clouds.

However we managed to get up there and after our last coffee together, Ricardo and Isabel left for Spain and the others were taken to the Toulouse to find their train or airplane to take them to their next destination.

The End