INVENTION OF THE PAST: LANDSCAPE AS A WAY OF IDENTITY CONSTRUCTING

Abstract

Human life is defined in coordinates of time and space. What time we belong to, what historical events our biography contains, what places and cities become significant milestones of our life and where key meetings with others take place, what life path we go through – it all affects who we are, our identity as a whole. However, if the relentless march of time and its changes are to us mostly obvious, then interaction with the space around us often occurs in an unconscious mode, almost automatically. Space, in contrast to the changeable, flowing through the fingers time, seems to us constant and unchangeable. A person is “rooted” in space from the very beginning of its life and with each step on the earth acquires more and more spatial experience, which is interwoven into the foundation of its personality. By exploring the world and expanding its horizons – in the spatial sense – we also expand the boundaries of our worldview and build our own identity.

This article responds to the current situation when a person feels more and more clearly that within the framework of increasing mobility and “compression” of space in the global world, the usual rootedness is replaced by nomadism. There are no more white spots on the map and inaccessible edges of the world, and the pace of modern life dictates not only increased speed (time intensification), but also increased mobility (space intensification), forcing us to change one biographical landscape after another. Spatial identity, which was previously built up virtually “by itself”, implicitly, within the framework of everyday experience and tradition, now needs additional assistance from the person. Therefore, questions are relevant about what spatial experience is in general, how it is experienced by a person, how spatial experience unites people into certain groups and is relayed in a time perspective, what opportunities and threats the situation of global nomadism brings. What is a “sense of place”? What role do places and landscapes play in our biography? Moreover, what model of spatial experience is relevant now?