Unromanticizing landscape
by Karin HarrasserI.
In this text, related to Rimini Protocol’s piece Shared LandscapeI want to discuss, whether and inhowfar it is possible to work with a notion of
landscape without romanticizing historically specific nature-cultures.
Landscape as a concept is deeply embedded with the dialectics of “modernity”. Landscape
refers to an idea of humanly inhabited nature (quite often human interventions
are visible in landscape-paintings) as something that can be consumed as an art
work and that is therefore aesthetically contained. Georg Simmel in the early
20th century already thought of landscape-painting as an exemplary
case of cultural production that he contrasted sharply with the entangled and
radically related dynamism of nature-without-human:
“By nature we mean the infinite interconnectedness of objects, the uninterrupted creation and destruction of forms, the flowing unity of an event that finds expression in the continuity of temporal and spatial existence. (…) To talk of ‘a piece of nature’ is in fact a selfcontradiction. Nature is not composed of pieces. It is the unity of a whole. The instant anything is parceled out from this wholeness, it is no longer nature pure and simple since this whole can be ‘nature’ only within that unbounded unity, only as a wave within that total flux. As far as landscape is concerned, however, a boundary, a way of being encompassed by a momentary or permanent field of vision, is quite essential.”[1]
“By nature we mean the infinite interconnectedness of objects, the uninterrupted creation and destruction of forms, the flowing unity of an event that finds expression in the continuity of temporal and spatial existence. (…) To talk of ‘a piece of nature’ is in fact a selfcontradiction. Nature is not composed of pieces. It is the unity of a whole. The instant anything is parceled out from this wholeness, it is no longer nature pure and simple since this whole can be ‘nature’ only within that unbounded unity, only as a wave within that total flux. As far as landscape is concerned, however, a boundary, a way of being encompassed by a momentary or permanent field of vision, is quite essential.”[1]
Landscape is definitely a romantic concept and landscape-painting
is an exemplary case of the selfcontradition Simmel talks about: It is literally
a “piece of nature”, it is “herausgestückt”, a neologism Simmel
uses to combine notions of packaging and punching out. That which is desired as
a whole in flux is “parceled out”, “herausgestückt”. The bourgeois mode
of reception towards “pieces of nature” routinely is “gawking romantically” (as
Bertolt Brecht famously mocked) instead of accepting the opaqueness of what is
going on beyond and underneath one’s own possibilities of perception. Landscape
paintings do not threaten or challenge human agency, nor do they tell interesting
stories about the reality of nature-cultural relations: about injustice of
property-ownership, about state regulations, about hard agricultural work, or about
the drama of the loss of the commons. Landscapes are – as additional obstacles
– connected with identitary politics, regionalism and the invention of
tourism and the idea of leisure. So, how is it possible to rework the
concept in a way that it supports the need to question euro- and
anthropocentric ideas of nature attuned to the current situation of multiple
crisis? Is it possible to twist the concept to such an extent that it allows
for more interesting, more nuanced, more historically grounded stories about
how humans and non-humans live and die together?[2]
Recently, Sigrid Adorf, Ines Kleesattel and Leonie Süess proposed a conceptual move from landscape as a noun to “landscaping oneself”[3], giving the multiple practices of “landscaping”[4] a decidedly situated twist, a twist I want to retrace and employ as I take walk in the woods and across meadows with Shared Landscape and by asking where and how it succeeds in unromanticizing the concept of landscape (and where it doesn’t).
Recently, Sigrid Adorf, Ines Kleesattel and Leonie Süess proposed a conceptual move from landscape as a noun to “landscaping oneself”[3], giving the multiple practices of “landscaping”[4] a decidedly situated twist, a twist I want to retrace and employ as I take walk in the woods and across meadows with Shared Landscape and by asking where and how it succeeds in unromanticizing the concept of landscape (and where it doesn’t).
II.
I want to start with something that cannot be experienced by the
audience: the production process that faces all the challenges that are notcovered by the concept of landscape. A landscape suggests it is simply there.
It lures into being contemplated on, it might play with the sublime, or – quite
the opposite – it tames that which cannot be mastered by way of shrinking the
dimensions. In contrast, when it comes to producing a live show in the forest
and in the fields, nothing is readily available for consumption. The aim of
producing an ecologically attuned piece of art enters conflictual
constellations that are related to landownership and competing ideas of
land-use. In the St. Pölten/Pyrha case the selected place, the Probstwald,
proofed to not be identical with it being “a” landscape: It turned out, that 38
parties owned the land, 50 additional persons were integrated in the water
pipeline cooperative. The water pipeline runs through the territory an
guarantees water for the city of Vienna. Bringing these stakeholders to an
agreement for the usage was hard enough, but then another group took the stage:
The association of hunters that invests into leases and conceives of itselve as
playing a central role in maintaining the ecological equilibrium by shooting
old (male) animals and by otherwise protecting the deer population. While the
landowners agreed to allow the usage of their lands for relatively little
money, the hunter’s demand for compensation was that of whole years lease. They
argued that the fragile equilibrium of the deer population would be massively
disrupted as the show was scheduled for the time of birthgiving and hunting. I
don’t want question the pecuniary adequacy of the demand here, I am interested
in the structure of their argument. Other than the artist’s that come to
“parcel out” a piece of nature for temporary use, they claim to be the
custodians of a whole: the life-cycle of deer, related to the well-being of the
forest. Although for urban dwellers it might come as a surprise that those
dedicated to killing animals present themselves as part of nature, their
argument is not totally of: Indeed, a theater-performance as part of a festivalis an invasion; it is a humble one, done with utmost carefulness, but
still: it transforms a nature-cultural-constellation in a landscape for a
while. It is performing landscape in the strictest of all senses: By using the
territory (and the airspace) as a theatre, they are literally made a
landscape, ready to be presented to an art audience.
But let’s take a walk now. In Pyrha, the piece
starts with high-tech cows. The first sight offered is an insight into animal
husbandry of the 21st century: A large barn full with hundreds of
cows and up-to-date technology, tailored to both animal-well-being and
productiveness. Entering the forest it is clear that this is a heavily used and
cultivated environment: traces of silviculture (of planting and harvesting
wood) are visible in abundance. When the first piece starts, I am already
attuned to the forest and the voices in my ear, that invite me to meditate
about the many aspects of the meaning of a forest, are very welcome: it’s
usefulness, it’s beauty, it’s vulnerability, it’s symbolic layers. And then the
sound of the wind instruments, a first time, a second time, a third time, a
fourth time – it opens my ear and my imagination for the polyvocality of humans
in relation with this territory. When I am asked to co-perform a drama of loss
of attachment to the woods I get angry. I am not in need of origin stories of
mankind and of nostalgia, I am in need of a new idea of landscape. I am moved
emotionally and cognitively by a story of space-travel and longing, taking
place in front of a romantic coulisse hung between the trees. VR makes me
stomach-sick, but the story of how political borders are drawn by economic
interests is important, especially as we are in a straight aisle in the woods
that houses Vienna’s water pipeline. I learn about the drama of EU agricultural
politics as out of an amazing tractor an amazing performer emerges. She
perfectly embodies joy and sorrow of a contemporary agricultural
business-woman, so many paradoxes live in this person, as many as in anyone of
us. When Gaia starts complaining and her accusations, I turn my ears and eyes
inward. If she wanted to speak to humans, she wouldn’t do it this way, this I
am sure about; and I find myself – instead of listening/watching – wondering
about neo-romantic tendencies in New Materialism, including the use of tropes
of the sublime. There is a tendency, also in the Anthropocene discourse, to get
lost or stuck in tropes of the non-graspable, the too big or too small
dimensionality of objects and dynamics, in timespans, that are beyond human
perspectives. All to often, cosmological narratives are combined with
somatic-experiments that promise a re-connection with the world-beyond-humans.
That’s very romantic.
III.
While rethinking this experience I remember Édouard Glissants list of relations[5]that he sketches for the colonial situation. Can we use them to rethink the nature-culture of forests and fields? Let’s give it a try:
Relationships of domination
For example: building a dirt-road or fence in the forest, keeping out artists, using chemical fertilizers to increase production but ruin the soil
For example: building a dirt-road or fence in the forest, keeping out artists, using chemical fertilizers to increase production but ruin the soil
Relationships of fascination
For example: the rhythms of becoming, wondering about age and ages, watching the industriousness of the ants
Relationships of multiplicity or contagion
For example: sympoetic relations of funghi, soil and animals including humans collecting mushrooms, bitten by a tick again, the bite becomes inflamed, a close look to the forest’s floor
For example: sympoetic relations of funghi, soil and animals including humans collecting mushrooms, bitten by a tick again, the bite becomes inflamed, a close look to the forest’s floor
Relationships of polite subservience or mockery
For example: the hunter’s camouflage, the hunter’s dogs, birds imitating tractors and machines
For example: the hunter’s camouflage, the hunter’s dogs, birds imitating tractors and machines
Relationships of tangency
For example: music in the woods, the techno-cow-barn adjacent to the forest, Caspar-David-Friedrich hung in the trees
For example: music in the woods, the techno-cow-barn adjacent to the forest, Caspar-David-Friedrich hung in the trees
Relationships of subversion
For example: This is what art always claims it does. I leave it to You whether You buy it.
For example: This is what art always claims it does. I leave it to You whether You buy it.
Relationships of intolerance
For example: the hunters don’t want the theatre to happen, the birds flee the music, my skin (unfortunately) does not like too much sun
For example: the hunters don’t want the theatre to happen, the birds flee the music, my skin (unfortunately) does not like too much sun
Can we imagine an artwork that “landscapes” and provokes the one
perceiving “to landscape him/herself” a new? That talks about the often
contradictory layerdness and historicity of relationships within the territory?
To address the already shaped landscape as part of the activity of landscaping
is a first step for sure, to not use it as a backdrop (only) is the necessary
second. The third is probably to give up on the idea of mastery and control. It
is a hard one, given that art-making is embedded in structures that afford art
to “work”: to attract an audience, to be interesting (for humans), to be
written and talked about. Let’s talk about the fourth and fifth step, after
having made this one. For sure Bertolt Brecht was dead serious with his aim of overcoming
the theatre as dispositive that produces an “romantically gawking” audience, as
serious as many artists today are with the desire to overcome
human-centeredness in art-making. But this quite often successfully fails
because a certain extent of mastery and control is the prerequisite of
commodification, of an income, of a place in the art-world. No art without pracitices
of herausstücken. Successful failure is all we get right now,
unromanticized art is still to come.
Reference
[1]Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Landscape, trans. by Josef Bleicher, in: Theory, Culture & Society 2007, 24:7-8, 20-29, here: 21.
[2] It is not hard to guess, that my reflections are inspired by Donna Haraways book: Staying with the trouble. Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Duke University Press, Durham 2016.
[3]Sigrid Adorf, Ines Kleesattel, Léoni Süess, Landscaping Oneself—In Relational Practices, Insert, Editorial #5, 2024. https://insert.art/ausgaben/sich-verlandschaften/editorial/
[4]Landscaping as a verb was already proposed in William J. Thomas Mitchell, Landscape and Power, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2002.
[5] Éduard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, trans. by Betsy Wing, University of Michigan Press, Minnesota, 1997, p. 104-05.
[1]Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Landscape, trans. by Josef Bleicher, in: Theory, Culture & Society 2007, 24:7-8, 20-29, here: 21.
[2] It is not hard to guess, that my reflections are inspired by Donna Haraways book: Staying with the trouble. Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Duke University Press, Durham 2016.
[3]Sigrid Adorf, Ines Kleesattel, Léoni Süess, Landscaping Oneself—In Relational Practices, Insert, Editorial #5, 2024. https://insert.art/ausgaben/sich-verlandschaften/editorial/
[4]Landscaping as a verb was already proposed in William J. Thomas Mitchell, Landscape and Power, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2002.
[5] Éduard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, trans. by Betsy Wing, University of Michigan Press, Minnesota, 1997, p. 104-05.