Disrupting the Picturesque: Performing Dorothy Wordsworth's 1803 Tour Through Scotland

Drawing on Jean-Francois Lyotard's theory of 'desolate landscape' and Jean-Luc Nancy's 'groundless image', this project will perform key moments from Dorothy Wordsworth's tour of Scotland (1803). In particular I am concerned with how aesthetics and perspective in the picturesque movement of the eighteenth century continue to delineate the boundaries of land and power. Developing new performative strategies and theoretical frameworks rooted in walking and re-enactment, I will populate Wordsworth's 'landscape' with 'sublime' figures to problematise the values of the picturesque; creating alternative, intersectional ways of perceiving and relating to landscape in order to offer different futures.