semi-updated ponderings on proposal

I'm 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 of the New World.  “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’” (Nash, 49). Centuries have past since the general conception of European nature has been tied to the taming and cultivation of the land.  In the Swiss alps, the last bear is recorded as having been killed in 1792 above Kleine Scheidegg by three hunters from Grindelwald (Shoumatoff, 101 via Wikipedia).

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 beautiful, the picturesque and the sublime.  In the tradition of The Grand Tour, with an American/ Thoreauvian walking twist, I propose to travel to Europe in search of the Wild.  What are the European intellectual precedents for the Wild.... there are of course the Romantic landscape ideals "The Beautiful"  "The Picturesque" and "The Sublime" lying on a linear continuum going somewhere from pastoral to craggy to awe-inspiring scenery.  The key here is the image, the imaging, and the viewing.  While these images all inspire a type of emotive reaction, they are constitutionally framed, visual experiences and representations.  However they require a movement, a travel, a change between places, views, and experiences.

What type of imaging might be inspired by a contemporary search for the European wild?  Moving from image to image, construct to construct, famous/influential/popular landscapes and gardens, historic landscapes that carry the Romantic notions of B, P+S (possibly those included on the traditional tours) as well as identified contemporary projects that hold the potential for a new reconfiguration of the Wild.  These landscapes have all been depicted and represented in some form, broadcast to a large public audience through photographs, written accounts and theoretical ponderings, drawings, etc. But I have never experienced them beyond the page or the screen or the explanation. I will visit these sites with an eye for the wild. (Wild keeping an open mind to what that may be).

The working idea is to travel to these places in a linear/circular sequence.  Image to image is planned: Bomarzo, Stowe, Igualada Cemetery, Parc Henri Matisse, etc. These projects will be documented, photographed, drawn, written, recorded, walked through, toured, possibly I will spend the day there.  Where are these projects positioned in regards to the wild, in regards to the garden?  How do they embody a European or Romantic notion of wild, of B, P+S?  The wandering, the Thoreauvian approach will take place in the journey to and between these places. The wild of this trip in the methodological sense will happen in the process of the journey: the walk, the train ride, the drive, the flight.  In plotting a route, where will I go, what will I find. Will the experience of the city, the suburbs, the rural be inflected with a sense of wander in the everyday, a de Certeau(ian) experience to be reproduced and mapped- collaged, drawn, annotated, instructed, photographed, written, intervened upon, as a means to open up the potentials and future for the exploration of the Wild, the unknowable, the designable. Keeping this in mind, I will move through the city, the country, the continent with an eye for the wild in the approach of the wild... ie: maintaining a divergent/ ecological unfolding and potentiality in my wandering and imaging.

How do I maintain an open mind in regards to searching for the wild.  Maybe I start with a preliminary definition gathered from the readings of great American and European landscape writers and designers: Thoreau, Cronon, Corner, Nash, Snyder, Clement etc.  This preliminary definition will hopefully evolve over the course of my travels in an attempt to experience, travel, and discover the unknowable of the wild.  This is were discoveries will be made in the everyday landscape and city.