A place is, I believe, is what you make it, it’s what you believe it to be. A person created it, a person label it, and it only holds meaning to that person. A place, by definition, is an area with indefinite or definite boundaries: a portion of space. Which means, it can have limits or it can no limits, a place is just space. What can a place be? What does it represent or stand for? The meanings of a place hold something different for many artists. To some artists, a place can have spiritual meaning which should be protected. “In the case of attempts to protect natural places, some artists subscribe to a pantheistic view of nature, a belief in wilderness as a source of spiritual energy” (pg 163). For this place of spiritual energy could represent nature. And in nature, to some, is where life began. Places can have deep and spiritual meanings.A place can also represent our environment. To some artists, our environment is a place of valve. “Maya Lin is addressing environmental issues by translating geological features, such as underground rivers, hills, and undersea formations, into large-scale installations of aluminum tubing that visitors can walk under and though, with the goal of enhancing their sensitivity to the natural world” (pg 165). This environment is the place, and the meaning of the place is its valve it holds. This valve of environemnt needs to be protected and appreciated. Places can be examples of appreciation and valve to some.These are just examples of what places can mean to certain people. Places have no limits on meaning. What a place is and can be has infinite possibilities. Places are want you want them to be and the meaning of a place it left up to you.
Robertson, Jean, and Craig McDaniel. Themes of Contemporary Art: Visual Art after 1980. Second Edition. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
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I think your statement of place, "a person created it, a person labeled it, and it only holds meaning to that person", can be held true but can also be disputed. I agree with it in the sense that a person or people have the power to discover and create and label a "place". For example the Europeans conquered and created "places" through their own perspective. However, it is doesn't just hold meaning for them. That Western perspective now holds meaning for many. That "place" also held meaning for the conquered. And like you said, "a place, by definition, is an area of indefinite or definite boundaries". For natives of certain places, the boundaries of their place and its meaning may have been indefinite. However in the European's view the place could have had distinct boundaries.
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