The Chang­ing Nar­ra­tive of Land­scape

Symposium:


Session Title:
  • Crisis Narrative of Landscape: Future Inherent

Presentation Title:
  • The Chang­ing Nar­ra­tive of Land­scape

Presenter(s):


Venue(s):


Abstract:

  • Panel: Crisis Narrative of Landscape: Future Inherent

    Ex­treme el­e­ments of weather,  in on­go­ing in­ter­ac­tions with the en­vi­ron­ment, form a nar­ra­tive of the land­scape that Dr. Lisa An­der­son has ex­plored through ref­er­ences to past as­so­ci­a­tions of place.  It is a story cre­ated by cul­tural and weather in­ter­ac­tions. The shifts ex­plored de­tail past tales and magic, past weather events and fu­ture pos­si­bil­i­ties – the sto­ries of these events lead to the for­ma­tion of new ar­chi­tec­ture, iden­tity, cul­ture and land­forms. The pro­ject shinyshiny­cloud doc­u­ments, ques­tions and plays with our re­la­tion­ship to the en­vi­ron­ment and has formed the basis for sev­eral res­i­den­cies and in­ter­na­tional fel­low­ship/vis­it­ing artist pro­grams that Dr. Lisa An­der­son has un­der­taken.  Can a place change its story through the cur­rent se­ries of world crises of weather ex­tremes such as tsunami, floods, drought and tem­per­a­ture shifts? New tech­nol­ogy, old world sto­ries and a deeper un­der­stand­ing will be needed to ac­count for these ex­treme shifts and loss of iden­tity;  what will be needed to cre­ate new iden­ti­ties and new sto­ries on a global level must be de­rived from the past amal­ga­ma­tion of iden­tity, cul­ture, and ar­chi­tec­ture oth­er­wise there is the risk that the move­ment of peo­ple, be­cause of these events over time will slap back at many past colo­nial coun­tries.

    In 2007, Dr. An­der­son was the artist-in-res­i­dence on the Kap­i­tan Khleb­ni­cov, a work­ing Russ­ian ice­breaker on ex­pe­di­tion through the North­west Pas­sage and be­yond – to Inuit com­mu­ni­ties, sci­ence/weather sta­tions and the last point of con­tact for the High Arc­tic. Her film work, draw­ings, record­ings, paint­ings and a video in­stal­la­tion,  The Truth About Snodomes (in­cluded in sev­eral in­ter­na­tional cu­ra­to­r­ial pro­grams) push into our ideas about place and ex­treme en­vi­ron­ment shifts – caus­ing and shift­ing iden­tity.  Sev­eral of the sculp­tural forms, with in­laid texts and im­ages, were cre­ated using paper made with a group of artists work­ing out of the art/ac­tivist group Farm­lab lo­cated in Los An­ge­les. (Their pro­ject is to plant wild seeds in the cracks in the con­crete of the city to lit­er­ally break down the struc­ture of the city and re­turn to na­ture. The paper was made from these plant­i­ngs.) Fur­ther res­i­den­cies in Paris and Lon­don have al­lowed Dr. An­der­son to de­velop the idea of own­er­ship of space through the mark­ers cre­ated. The im­ages of the stat­ues in the Jardin des Tu­i­leries of Paris and the Elgin Mar­bles in the British Mu­seum push the sense of be­long­ing and story into the pa­tri­otic bound­aries set up by own­er­ship and po­lit­i­cal will over the en­vi­ron­ment.  The shinyshiny­cloud pro­ject trav­eled to Cen­tral Java to Borobudur, a UN­ESCO World Her­itage site, to cre­ate a nar­ra­tive of this site – a site con­tested by re­li­gions that is un­der­go­ing recla­ma­tion and ren­o­va­tion. (Borobudur has also re­cently ex­pe­ri­enced fur­ther changes as a re­sult of vol­canic erup­tions and fallen ash). The shinyshiny­cloud pro­ject has in­volved sev­eral res­i­den­cies with Redgate Stu­dios in Bei­jing to ex­plore is­sues of mod­ern­iza­tion in the move­ment of pop­u­la­tions in China, such as the col­lapse of the tra­di­tional hu­tong neigh­bor­hood in Bei­jing, in favor of dwellings that re­flect west­ern in­di­vid­u­al­ity (within a struc­ture that is con­stantly under pres­sure from the winds of dirt from the deserts that Bei­jing is built on).
    Fi­nally,  in the sand:bone:clay in­stal­la­tions and im­ages of the Aus­tralian out­back, the anec­dotes and per­sonal ges­tures of the local peo­ple are mixed with the stream of con­scious­ness of the iso­lated yet bur­geon­ing magic of these sites.  These works and other in­stal­la­tion works de­vel­oped with the shinyshiny­cloud pro­ject have been shown in in­ter­na­tional plat­forms; they will be dis­cussed within the con­tested no­tions of the nar­ra­tive cri­sis of en­vi­ron­ment and brought to­gether for an on­line gallery of video works/im­ages dur­ing the ISEA2011 con­fer­ence.

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