Whether we like to admit it or not our lives are being interpreted right now by future generations. They will archive our histories and look at the roles we played and the lives we lived. Most importantly they will know our values by what we attempted to preserve and what we built. For many people interpreting the environment is not a conscious act. We kinda just wake up and live by a set of prescribed functions and limits set by society. In theory, this is what art partially exists for. Art interprets environment in a way that provokes thought and depending on the artist is either for preservation purposes or evocative purposes. Furthermore, much of an individual persons heritage data is locked behind academia. The monopoly on public knowledge is held by historians, archivists, and academics who spend more time talking to each other than to the public.
If you check out where you live you are most likely surrounded by institutions that purport to interpret the history and importance of where you are. The central branch of your library generally contains the bulk of this with its archives of government records, insurance charts, maps, genealogical collections, etc. Across the street the society of fiber arts probably maintains some kind of archive of weavers and crochet arts from your neighborhood. On a macro level, most cities have one or more organizations that label themselves some sort of historical society. There’s one major issue with these places: they often don’t go to you. Librarians don’t regularly patrol neighborhoods looking for people to inform. And so, the perception of a persons environmental history is shrouded behind various ivory towers.
This is important because how we interpret our environments determines how we proceed in politics and thought for the future. Not performing the critical work necessary to make collective decisions about how we want our worlds to serve us is how that old theater becomes an office building, how your favorite restaurant gets purchased by a venture capital fund, and how that open lot remains stagnant rather than being converted to a community garden. Not knowing your place history leaves it open to other people to interpret. People who live in places experiencing rampant gentrification understand best, not knowing what color your house is means other people will paint it. Entire communities have been displaced or destroyed by people who claim that an area had deficient culture, no culture, or just wasn’t worth preserving.
Psychometry is the parapsychological concept of touching an object and gleaming information from that interaction. As described to me by someone who was so learned it is to touch and to know. This person owned a restaurant and likened it to tasting food, an unconscious sensory perception we generally take for granted. Utilizing different senses and applying critical thought is a type of psychometry exercise. For the purpose of this detail we will consider psychometry to mean critical thought and the engagement of senses in exploratory use.
What I generally mean by conducting psychometric exercise is utilizing unused sensory perception in interactions with your environment. To walk outside and stand or enter a building and sit without engaging the senses is like eating a new food while holding your breath. You get the aesthetics; the visual, the touch sensation, but none of the flavor. Being human, a majority of the sensory information we have access to must be consciously engaged because it won’t come naturally. A lot of it requires significant practice and education. We can’t all be social theorists with expertise in political history, architecture, art history, and civics. It is not natural to enter a room and immediately begin to question why it was built.
In my own practice I keep a journal of walks I take either for artistic purposes or other reasons. I document these walks by drawing the path I take, noting addresses, buildings, colors. There are many ways of practicing. Photographic walks help as they provide immediate visual record of the environment I travel through. Tours allow deep explanation of a particular place with detail plus they can be done with or without other people. You can write letters to your local historic society asking them to assist you with research on something you’re curious about.
If we are to understand the importance of our communities and how their roles affect a larger community we have to start by carefully examining where we are and what these places mean. Then we have to do the work to make these connections to things we can’t see and places we can’t be. An understanding of place helps us make better informed decisions for what is best for our communities.
Way Past Policy 