An American Search for the European Wild

Updated writeup...

I've been thinking about the origins of the Wild from the perspective of an American visiting Europe.  While a term so deeply embedded in the American imagination, the Wild owes its ideation to its European descendants, particularly in their conception and travel to the New World.  Centuries have passed since the general conception of European nature has been tied to the taming and cultivation of the land, even in its remotest and pristine locations.  In the Swiss Alps, the last bear is recorded as having been killed in 1792 above Kleine Scheidegg by three hunters from Grindelwald.   Europeans have been on the search for the Wild for centuries, visiting the New World and traveling their own continent in hopes of experiencing the profound experiences offered by the Romantic notions of nature: the Beautiful, the Picturesque and the Sublime. “Among the first of these visitors was Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand, who spent 5 months of the winter of 1791-92 in the US. Traveling in the wilderness of northern New York, he reported that ‘a sort of delirium’ seized him when, to his delight, he found an absence of roads, towns, laws, and kings... "in vain does the imagination try to roam at large midst [Europe’s] cultivated plains... but in this deserted region the soul delights to bury and lose itself amidst boundless forests... to mix and confound... with the wild sublimities of Nature''”.

In the tradition of The Grand Tour and European quests for Picturesque and Sublime natures, I propose to travel to Europe in search of a reconfiguration of the Wild.  The journey will be organized into a single transect moving through three urban to rural conditions: from the post-Franco wild of Barcelona’s contemporary architectural works, to the post-industrial wild of Lille, France, to the archipelagic wild of the Scottish islands.  The travel will be anchored in these three general locations, providing a temporary habitation for 1-2 weeks in order to provide me with the opportunity for Thoreauvian experience of walking and experiencing the wild through the ongoing process of open wandering from an anchored location.  Each day will start with a walk.  The destinations will be arranged on a gradient from the highly structured to the wonderously divergent wild.  In Barcelona I will start with multiple destinations in mind, structuring my movement in an orderly manner from image to image, design to design, garden to garden.  In Lille, my travel will be structured around a single destination, Parc Henri Matisse, (where a 4 acre section of the park is partitioned off from the public to the wild development of flora and fauna.  Everyday will start with a departure from my domus and an arrival at the park, providing me with the opportunity to wander the city in a different manner each day.  In the Scottish Isles my travel will be open-ended, based on word of mouth with travelers and residents, local maps and advertised destinations, and chance encounters with opportunities for movement.  The travel here will be open-ended and divergent, starting and ending in the same location, but completely open to the events of the day in its movements and destinations.

Throughout the journey I will be keeping a pre-plannned and consistent representational technique documenting the difference of each wild through a consistent approach in imaging.  This technique will be based in photographic collage and annotation which will be completed en route.  Additionally, each location will call for its own unique response and representation: this will at times be based on found material, temporary installation, collaging of maps and postcards, drawings and sketches, timelines and writings.