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THE GEOCULTURAL SPACE OF THE ARCTIC: LANDSCAPE VISUALIZATION AND ONTOLOGICAL MODELS OF IMAGINATION // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 1 (27). P. 48-94

The geocultural space of any region is formed as a result of the interaction of two weakly separable elements – geocultures developing in the given territory and cultural landscapes. The full development of a geocultural space involves the formation of a unique ontology of imagination, which creates a cognitive “foundation” for the construction of appropriate models. Ontological models of imagination characterize the possibilities of an expanded representation and interpretation of the cultural landscapes of a region. The visuality of a cultural landscape is a complex formation in which visual reactions and reflections are the result of multiple imaginations – both personal and group. The geocultural space of the Arctic, in its visual-discursive dimension, is complex, since the tradition of the “colonial view”, coupled with the tendencies to analyze postcolonial practices and to decolonize various Arctic discourses, creates an ambivalent discursive field of relevant visual practices and policies. The existential situation of post-exoticism, typologically characteristic of the Arctic regions, is a field of ontologization of multiple visual practices that consolidate rhizomatic procedures of geocultural distinctions. As a result of a field study of the coastal territories of North-Eastern Chukotka, the most visually intensive key landscape assemblages have been identified: 1) sea hunting, 2) traditional holidays of sea hunters, 3) “pristine” nature. Landscape assemblages are represented by various visual dispositives. Visual dispositives are understood as consistently reproducing and phenomenologically fixed visual landscape (geocultural) images that characterize the specifics of certain landscape assemblages. As a result of the study, five key visual dispositives have been identified that determine the specific forms of the reproduction and development of both geo-cultures themselves and the corresponding cultural landscapes of these territories: 1) the dispositive of sea hunters, the most borderline and fractal; 2) the dispositive of holidays of the traditional culture of sea hunters; 3) the dispositive of destruction and ruin associated with both the extreme natural conditions of the region and the era of the Soviet and post-Soviet development; 4) the dispositive of the “natural”, “pristine” space associated with the low development of the territory, and 5) the dispositive of multi-naturalism, manifested in the features of the visual environments of Chukchi settlements (villages, urban-type settlements, small towns). These dispositives, intertwining and interacting, create multiple, constantly transforming landscape assemblages. Within the framework of the presented visual dispositives, the phenomena of Arctic post-exoticism and internal exoticism are formed, which fix the impossibility of returning to the pre-colonial “landscape optics”.

Keywords: geocultural space, Arctic, geoculture, cultural landscape, landscape visualization, ontological models of imagination, landscape assemblage, visual dispositive, post-exoticism