[Zurück]

E. Wall:
"Post-landscape or the potential of other relations with the land";
in: "Landscape and Agency", E. Wall, T. Waterman (Hrg.); herausgegeben von: Routledge; Routledge, Londen/New York, 2017, ISBN: 9781138125568, S. 144 - 163.

Have we reached a post-landscape condition? Have prevailing visual relations between people and land, exemplified by English traditions of pictorial settings, individual perspectives and enclosed properties, reached a conclusion? Has a particular frame of landscape, which Denis Cosgrove describes as a `way of seeing´ (1985:45), come to a close? Conceptions of landscape, which emerged in fifteenth and sixteenth century England and that have continued to be reinforced through contemporary architectural representations and designed transformations, package landscapes as scenic backgrounds and frame tracts of land as spatial products. While referring to these dominant relationships with the land, Barbara Bender reminds us that there are many other ways of conceiving of landscapes: `when the word `landscape´ was coined and used to its most powerful effect, there were, at the same time and the same place, other ways of understanding and relating to the land - other landscapes´ (1993:2). What she describes as contrasting, and often contradictory, constructs of landscape, defined through individual and societal relations with our environments, have grown and receded in relevance. Landscapes are defined through specific economic, social and spatial contexts. So while dominant pictorial ideas of landscape may endure for some people in countries influenced by Anglo-Saxon traditions, other landscapes are configured through material, ecological, cultural and symbolic relationships with land. In this chapter I accept Bender´s assertion of a plurality of landscapes. I also question a continuation of English landscape traditions that embrace: predominantly visual approaches; scenes considered from static positions; and singular perspectives framed as representations and urban spaces, enclosed and transformed through design.