You will probably know that I’ve been publishing postcards since 1987…… well, last winter I had an inquiry from a Ms. Ceri Price who is doing a Doctorate on “The Postcard” at the School of Geographical Sciences, Bristol University. She seemed a pleasant enough person, and I’m always pleased when someone shows an interest in my work, so I helped her out to the best of my ability. The following, however, is her own summary of her doctoral thesis-
….. I use the scenic picture postcard, that ephemeral yet enduring, disposable yet often preserved, widely circulating, material memento, as a vehicle to posit the existence of a Third Place, neither here nor there, comprising the un-place of the postcard image and the third time and space of the postcard practices.
I see this Third Place as the centre of a network anchoring human and non human actants in a fluid assemblage of relationships, and the postcard as an agent in unquestioned unreflective tourist practices. A programme of creative and experimental fieldwork projects will enable an engagement with the materialities and non materialities of the postcard, through which I shall link iconographic and performative approaches to create and examine the multi layered relational ontology of this new space. In doing so, I shall address issues of the making of place, the gifting of experience and the embodiment of the self within a non material entity.
She said she would send me a copy of her results, but I doubt if I would understand them.
