MOUNTAINS USED TO BE UGLY

In her book Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory, Marjorie Hope Nicolson describes how for most of western cultural and intellectual history, mountains were considered to be blemishes on the landscape, barren and threatening protuberances that were, in short, ugly.  The book explores the factors that influenced this view and the shift in thinking that took place from 1850-1900. Of course, it’s now common to experience mountains as majestic and awe-inspiring, and unquestionably so. I certainly did.

A friend recommended Nicholson’s text as I was preparing to leave for Banff in the summer of 2018, where the presence of the mountains outside my window made it difficult to sleep. MOUNTAINS USED TO BE UGLY is a video, about 37 minutes in length, of people in front of various mountain vistas in Banff. I asked each person two questions:  What do you think about the mountains…how do they make you feel?, and Did you know that mountains used to be ugly? (Followed by some version of the explanation above.) 

Like TOTALITY the responses were varied. Many rejected the idea that mountains could be ugly, or our view of them a product of the context in which we live. People who grew up around or had a close relationship with mountains seemed more likely to be unsurprised by the social history of mountains and could sense their potential threat. Some lingered and talked with me for a while.  Others were eager to leave and seek out a bar, some solitude, the next vista, the summit, or were called by their wedding party.

MOUNTAINS USED TO BE UGLY was screened as part of London Ontario Media Arts Association’s Broad Topics: A Matrilineage of Media series, in partnership with The Museum for Future Fossils.  MOVING MOUNTAINS, is an accompanying conversation-in-text with Ruth Skinner about this video, mountains, and access. An open text document version is available here and a PDF, here.