Here, There, Elsewhere. Dialogues on Location and Mobility

We live in an age of increased mobility. At the time research for this collection of essays was undertaken, post-colonial discourses tended to focus on the impact of mobility on those at the receiving end, rather than on the growing populations that now enjoy the freedom to travel worldwide. The circulation of people, culture and commodities forms the hub of our globalized culture, but where does this freedom of movement take us? In Here, There, Elsewhere, artists and writers investigate ideas surrounding the presumed benefits of mobility and address the role, impact and implications of travel for both the visitor and the visited. Through art works, photo essays, autobiography and cultural theory, contributors question the pleasure of travel and the desire to move, relocate, or adopt new identities and lifestyles. In examining how travel both defines and erodes identity, this collection addresses two key questions: when does freedom from location become dislocation and when does the ability to escape become an inability to belong?

In Here, There, Elsewhere David Blamey has very carefully placed a wide range of different pieces side-by-side. There are academic essays, reflective pieces by academics and artists, photo-essays,
e-mails, lists, encounters, travelogues and more. Intriguingly, Blamey’s positioning of these various ‘pieces’ within the book offers exactly the dialogue that the subtitle of the book claims. You have to read between the essays to really build up a picture of places and mobility. One essay, for example, talks of how the residents of a Hong Kong suburb seek to live a Californian version of the American Dream. This essay is immediately followed by one in which a poet describes his search for a life beyond the American Dream, in some ways by producing a different dream of California. These two sets of experiences of place are subtly connected and contrasted simply by being placed together: spatial stories are illuminated by crumpling the map. This collection works on many different levels, in many ways it will engage intellectually and inspire new projects, but this is also about the mundane and the ordinary aspects of living in a world in which mobility is common-place and places are commonly extraordinary... this book is personally engaging, eye-catching and always thought-provoking. Placing artists’ work side by side with the work of critics changes and accentuates both, giving us a book that is far greater than the sum of its parts. It's a book worth having.