Visualising...

Description

A conference exploring the meaning of home
within contemporary society as seen through
photography – 13th-14th July 2017
University of Cumbria Institute of the Arts

Confirmed speakers:
Clare Gallagher, Photographer and Course Director of BA
(Hons) Photography, University of Belfast School of Art
Katrin Joost, Philosopher and Programme Leader of MA
Photography, University of Cumbria Institute of the Arts

What does home mean to us today?
How can we depict the intimacy of homes as personal and private spaces as well as
expressing the public and political dimensions of home? How does photography
shape our visual understanding of our home?
We all know our homes; yet, home is one of the most elusive of concepts. There are
many people who have no homes and it can certainly be considered a privilege (and
conversely a burden) to be a homeowner. Houses that are dwellings are more than
mere bricks and mortar. Home as a sense of belonging is familiar to everyone, yet
so difficult to describe. Images of houses and domestic spaces often serve as
symbols, but rarely convey the intimate and individual sensibility of home.
How then are we to articulate and visualise the aesthetics of home? The homely
cosiness of the familiar has become idealised and easily recognised within collective
consciousness to the extent that it has become a major marketing tool. The
connotations and visual clues of home are universal and particular, personal and
corporate. In a broader sense, how does photography operate in the aesthetics of
home?
Photographs of loved ones; family occasions, and places familiar to us constitute a
major component of the aesthetics of home. Yet, we often only recognise our home
once we leave or lose it. Hence, the innumerable melancholy songs about lost
homes and memories of hometowns. The pain of homesickness and the anguish of
exile expose the importance of home to us.
More than the personal sensibility of home as private and domestic space, home
can also be seen on a larger, public scale. Here, home gains a political dimension.
National, ethnic and cultural senses of belonging and ownership relate to land,
government and language. What does homeland mean? Does it belong to us to be
shaped by us or do we belong to it to be shaped by it. The current refugee crisis
brings to our consciousness the fundamental questions of home, politically and
individually. More so, maybe, the Brexit referendum shows the passions of
belonging and ownership and how governance is grounded in a sensibility of home.
Home is an emotive concept; there are myriad dimensions to reflect on. Below are a
number of conceptualisations (which is by no means conclusive) to consider.
• Where is home? Space, place, houses?
• What is home? Language, people, space?
• When is home? Memory, childhood, formative years or building a future?
• What does home look like? Visibility, demonstrability, aesthetics?
Domestic space
• Retreat, safe space
• Personal space, privacy & intimacy
• Female realm, homemaking
• Habits and habitats
• Familiar, ordinary and mundane
Ownership of home
• Belonging – place, class, culture
etc.
• Family history, heritage
• Domestic pride
• Defence of home
Imagination of home
• Sentimentality and idealisation of
home as a purely positive place
• Nostalgia, yearning for a time that
never was
• Memory and memento of home
Absence, loss and denial of
home
• Refugees, exile
• Invasion of home
• Political oppression
• Homelessness and poverty
• Homesickness - Heimweh
Negative home
• Trapped in the home (domestic
limitations and pressures or
emigrate forbade??)
• Imposed home (imprisonment,
house arrest)
• Domestic violence
• Wanderlust - Fernweh
Aesthetics of home
• Pictures of homeliness, cosiness
and longing
• Discrepancies of comfort and/or
belonging
• Photographs within the home
• Pressures of aesthetics and
consumerism of home as opposed
to the individual personal space
Structural / essential aspects of
home
• Only apparent when absent
(invisible when one has never left
home)
• Fractured reality of home:
comforts of home as well as
boredom / conflict etc. of home
• Home as origin
• Story of home (becoming and
ceasing to be)
• Home as a space to just be (not
for others, not performing – or
performing to the ideal of home)
Philosophical
• Husserl on Lebenswelt - home
world, alien world, lifeworld (Held)
• Heidegger on dwelling,
pathmaking etc.
• Arendt on human activity in view
of the distinction between the
private and public realm
• Freud on heimlich (homely) &
unheimlich (uncanny)
• Foucault on spaces and power
• Bachelard on the lived experience
of space

Period	2013 → 2017
Event type	Academic conference
Conference number	3
Location	Carlisle, United KingdomShow on map