Nomad Space (A Thousand Plateaus)

Deluze and Guattari (A Thousand Plateaus) suggest that spaces of great expanse such as the desert, the arctic, and the high sea elicit an overwhelming sensation of detachment on the part of the viewer. It is a natural response to orient oneself by taking in, gauging and analyzing all aspects of a spatial encounter. To grapple with the endlessness of direction one must distinguish relationships between the sand, the bushes, the rushing of the wind and the location of rock. We struggle to gain our bearings in the incomprehensible void. Under these conditions one becomes acutely aware of elements such as the wind, and instinct takes over. As we "listen to direction," or these multiple voices ("poly-vocality") of space, we become aware of the fact that in realty we do not occupy a mere place within a region; rather, we "exist through the whole region." In effect we become nomadic.

"I, as nomad--live and move on the steppe. I exist through the whole region, here/there in all of it, not just in art of it. Localization undeniably exists: at any given moment. I am somewhere but drifting nowhere (as non-nomads who have never lived on the desert or steppe, or been at sea, doubtless fear). But my being somewhere is not restricted to being in a single locality: The ship is always moving on, the caravan continues, the dog team careens over the ice. I am distended everywhere within the region: I am potentially at any place within it. The region is the place that I am in. Thus the absolute has become the local, rather than the reverse. For place itself is everywhere- everywhere in, indeed as, the region." (A Thousand Plateaus, 494)