Deanya Lattimore's List: public space exhibitions

The Paris-based collective castillo/corrales, working as Section 7 books, has organized several forums to discuss publication, in the course of which some theoretical frameworks have been developed. One is the following definition, which I proposed last Fall when Section 7 convened a 3-day colloquium on publishing and distribution (at Montehermoso in Vitoria, Spain).

"Publication is not the production of books but the production of a public for whom those books have meaning. There is no pre-existing public. The public is created through deliberate, willful acts: the circulation of texts, discussions and gatherings in physical space, and the maintenance of a related digital commons. These construct a common space of conversation, a public space, which beckons a public into being. This is publication in its fullest sense." (podcast of that session here.)

Rhetoric and Materiality in the Museum Park at the North Carolina Museum of Art
Authors: Kenneth S. Zagacki - Kenneth S. Zagacki is Professor in the Department of Communication at North Carolina State University; Victoria J. Gallagher - Victoria J. Gallagher is Professor in the Department of Communication at North Carolina State University
DOI: 10.1080/00335630902842087
Publication Frequency: 4 issues per year
Published in: journal Quarterly Journal of Speech, Volume 95, Issue 2 May 2009 , pages 171 - 191
Subjects: Communication Studies; Language & Communication

Abstract
The material rhetoric of physical locations like the Museum Park at the North Carolina Museum of Art creates “spaces of attention” wherein visitors are invited to experience the landscape around them as a series of enactments that identify the inside/outside components of sub/urban existence, as well as the regenerative/transformative possibilities of such existence. Such rhetorical enactments create innovative opportunities for individuals to attend to the human/nature interface. These rhetorical enactments also create and contain tensions that come to the fore when they are employed as authentic mediations of nature, when they function as tropes to promote development of natural space, and/or when they are translated into discursive environmental argument.
Keywords: Material Rhetoric; Spaces of Attention; Multi-Modal Experience; Environmental Sculpture; Landscape Design