Enthusiastically Up, On and Under the Rocks: reporting on Exploring #2 and 3, Sheffield Hallam University Space & Place Group’s online sessions, October & November 2023.

“We can never expect to encounter culture ‘on the ground’, instead what we find are people whose lives take them on a journey through space and time in environments which seem to them to be full of significance, who use both words and material artefacts to get things done and to communicate with others, and who in their talk, endlessly spin metaphors so as to weave labyrinthine and ever-expanding networks of symbolic equivalence.”

Tim Ingold (1994) ‘Introduction to culture’ in Companion Encyclopaedia of Anthropology: Humanity, Culture and Social Life (Routledge, London 329–49): 330.

The above quote says it all really: the aim of the Sheffield Hallam University Space & Place Group’s 2023 series, and its theme of ‘Exploring’, has been to show how enthusiastic explorers of seemingly ‘blank’ spaces choose to enchant those places by co-opting them into their meaning-making practices.

We started our journey through this theme back in July with In Ruins. Here our presenters introduced us to the lure (to them) of ruins, and how they seek to activate those broken places, and why. That session has been written up here. And the session recording is available here.

Our second session Going Underground, in October 2023, presented four speakers giving insight into the siren’s call that summons them into the dank dark depths of caves, sewers, catacombs and abandoned mines. Along the way we heard the infectious enthusiasm of mine explorer (and photographer) Denzil Watson, learned from Kevin Bingham about his new book Exploring the Natural Underground: A New Sociology of Caving (Routledge, 2023), followed anthropologist and cultural geographer Maria Perez on her journeys to study the cultures of caving practices across the karst landscapes of Venezuela, Cuba and Puerto Rico, and lastly we got an enticing glimpse of the motivations and frictions around the origins of sewer exploration in St Pauls / Minneapolis from Greg Brick. You can watch the session here:

Our third session, On the Rocks (November 2023) saw us hanging out online with rock climbers and quarry lurkers, examining their chosen relationships with the stone, mud and lichen to be found (and embraced) within natural and human-formed rockscapes. This session featured Victoria Lucas outlining her intimate lone engagement with an abandoned hard rock quarry, poet, climber and sound artist Mark Goodwin presented an enigmatic audio-visual performance engaging with the Dinorwig Quarries in North Wales, and Canadian Sociologist Jennifer Wigglesworth examined the rising critique of misogynist (and other exclusionary) route namings by first ascenders, drawing the link to colonialism. Finally, artists Sarah Bowden and Jean Boyd pressed into focus the glutinous mud of an operational blue lias clay extraction site in Gloucestershire, drawing out from the prosaic (and aesthetically null) vista relations working across vast spans of time and space.  You can watch the session here:

We have our final session in the ‘Exploring’ theme on 7 December (7-9.30PM online). This time we will follow mountain bikers as they hurtle down mountain tracks. Once again we will seek to understand – by giving these enthusiasts time to speak – Why would anyone want to do that? How do they do it? And what are the implications of them doing it?’. You can find further details for that event here and register for places there.

Image Credit: Denzil Watson