Unfreezing the Landscape 

Welcome to the eighth issue of Matter Out of Place 

A few months ago we sent a version of the following brief to authors: 

“ This issue of MOOP takes its theme from the late philosopher Bruno Latour’s final work After Lockdown: A Metamorphosis. As glaciers thaw, and ecosystems buckle, so too do ‘modern’ notions of landscape. No longer is it the stable base from which we, as superior humans, can rise and take flight. 

This thinking imbues modernity; we see it manifested in skyscrapers, in billionaires shooting themselves into space, in politicians preaching gospels of infinite growth. However, the earth is not an infinite expanse from which we can ‘take off’ but is terrifyingly small – a thin crust, only a few kilometres thick, consisting of all known life in the universe. This shell did not come ready-made – it is the unique collective work of countless organisms, from atmosphere-creating bacteria and nitrogen-fixing plants, to sea-fertilising whales. 

This is a landscape unfrozen: a collection of living things all impressing on each other and working in such a way that maintains liveability. We want you to explore what an ‘unfrozen landscape’ might look like, feel like, sound like, even smell like. 

“In describing your interdependencies, for the others and through the others, it’s as if the ground rose up from under your feet and knocked you over. Territory is not what you occupy, it’s what defines you.” (Latour) “

It’s been a dizzying experience editing the articles, stories and poems we’ve received in response. At the MOOP, we’ve left emails unopened, forgotten what day it is, and become oblivious to current events, as we’ve become lost in some of the strangest and most wonderful writing we’ve had the pleasure of featuring in the magazine. With this in mind, I thought it might be useful to sketch a sort of virtual map through this literary territory. A map which, like the medieval mappae mundi Grace Crabtree explores in her article (pp. 6-7), is more a way to navigate ideas and beliefs than a means to get from A to B. 

So, let’s begin this navigation on pages 20-21, on the thawed plains of Doggerland in the year 10,500 BC. In this fascinating article about a lost world which once joined Britain to mainland Europe, Thomas Bachrach wonders how the Doggerlanders might have processed the climatic change altering the land around them. These ruminations might lead us to Jon Lever’s poem (p. 13), where the elements seem similarly wild and out of sync. Such inclement conditions might make us seek shelter across the page where an inviting woodland structure appears to offer relief (pp. 10-12). But alas, the only entrance is deep below the water, guarded by a pair of strange creatures from Britain’s past. And so we wander on, damp and cold, until drawn to a small candle-lit abode on a Hebridean island (pp. 18-19). Here, we glimpse the life of maverick activist Roc Sandford. But Roc soon takes us away from this island refuge and at once we are trapped in central London. We try to escape, turning over the pages, only to find ourselves in Stefan Matthew’s story (pp. 14-15) where we become further confined in the fragmented mind of an art collector. And so we keep turning, all the way to page 22, where we’re met with haunting visions in Jack Wightman’s examination of the body horror genre. 

These nightmares of bodies fusing with technology have not provided the comfort we sought and so we look around, desperate – we need to get out! Luckily, we turn to Beci Carver’s wonderfully digressive essay which takes Latour to task on his grand injunction that we must dispense with our notions of escape and flight (pp. 8-9). Ideas of exits, ends, cupio dissolvi, can hold great comfort, a comfort provided by the otherworldly lyrics of our featured artist – poet-singer Aidan Simpson (p. 23). These songs take us higher, until the only land that remains is the vast Cretan Omalos plateau, enigmatically evoked in a poem by Tom Beed (p. 16). 

But though the air is clear up here, it feels thin, something is calling us back, back to our earthly entanglements; we hear a “booming volcanic drum” below. It leads us down the green road of Bryony Moores O’Sullivan’s poem (p. 15) and all the way to Philip Webb Gregg’s story (pp. 4-5). And now we find ourselves in the same geographic spot where we began. It’s quieter now; instead of mammoths and rhinos, all we hear is the steady lapping of waves. And this is where, out in the North Sea, I leave you to turn the page… 

Fred Warren