The Line in Midwest USA: Proposing the Linear Spatial Device for Studies of Region

THE LINE is a spatial device that connects disparate regions across the world and, due to its arbitrary angle to context, encourages examination of local areas it passes through. Linear research links remote places to each other by provoking comparison of the hyperlocal with the global condition. This invisible vector is a geospatial research method which encourages participants to walk a line and explore remoteness. From 2020 to 2022, architects and researchers embarked on nine walks along THE LINE in the Midwest. This essay presents findings from the publication Atlas of Remoteness: Midwest USA and proposes linear research as a method to gain understanding of the region.

The Institute for Linear Research (ILR) formed in 2017 to conduct research into the notion of remoteness. Drawn at first between two points, THE LINE now continues around the world, like a skewed line of longitude. ILR asserts that those who walk along it are guaranteed to cross thresholds of remoteness; remoteness is a condition most experienced when one is lost.¹ Researchers on THE LINE have a path to follow, albeit one that does not conform to typical paths of travel through any local logic. ILR is dedicated to investigating contemporary landscapes through the lens of remoteness and developing methods of linear research. THE LINE (which is distinct from more general lines) was drawn on a map from a mountain hotel in Liechtenstein, the origin of the ILR's first walk, to a palazzo in Venice, the location of THE LINE's first exhibition at the Liechtenstein Pavilion of the 2018 Venice Biennale.²

This walk is documented in Atlas of Remoteness: Liechtenstein. The authors identify remoteness as a condition that is shrinking in landscapes. As more of the world is known, islands of unknown areas are the last vestige of remoteness. The authors created ILR and developed linear research as a

Fig 1.

THE LINE projected on hemispheres of the globe. Map by author.

strategy to conduct research into the notion of remoteness. The publication and exhibitions surrounding the work deploy drawings, maps, photographs, interviews, conversations, built structures, and essays to depict the experience of walking THE LINE—an experience they describe as being immersed in the land in order to vanish the cartographic illusion of order.

The creators of THE LINE and many participants of ILR are engaged in the practice or study of architecture. Matilde Igual Capdevila wrote of the original segment of THE LINE that "the size of Liechtenstein allowed us to trace a complete cross-section of the territory both on paper and on foot." This articulation references scale and architectural drawing projections. Of their walk she wrote, "[t]he act of walking [was] drawing the ground with our feet, without shortcuts."³ Linear research thus engages the disciplines of architecture and the practice of walking. Through documentation and reflection, members of ILR inscribe traces of their walks, broadening the project to include geography, art, and references to interdisciplinary methods like psychogeography and slow looking.⁴ Linear research has interdisciplinary potential as the practice invites novel linkages along a vector that might otherwise be lost in attempts to focus on characteristics of a region more broadly. The arbitrary nature of THE LINE in the Midwest brought to the foreground ideas of settler colonialism, anthropogenic climate change, and territorial conventions. By illustrating the condition of the Midwest along THE LINE, authors of Atlas of Remoteness: Midwest USA present the region through the lens of remoteness.

The presence of THE LINE in the Midwest is an unintended consequence of the location of two initial points of connection. The ILR's investigation in the Midwest revealed characteristics and settlement patterns that constitute a region. The inquiry of THE LINE is not concerned with finding regional boundaries, but rather with contemporaneous comparison of disparate places along THE LINE. This aligns with Doreen Massey's conception of space in the 2005 book For Space. Massey writes about recognizing space as a product of interrelations across scales from tiny to global. For...