About the seminar:
The Western landscape tradition and the mediation of landscapes have been evolving around the static image. Arising from the tradition of landscape painting, the term landscape has been synonymous with idyllic and beautiful framings of nature. Over the last twenty years Landscape Urbanism has included urban landscapes to the landscape category, and over the past years, industrial landscapes, empty terrains and waste scapes of various kinds have been reconfigured as an aesthetic category. Even landscapes that are defined by patterns of mobility still seems to be visually represented in images that are statically framed and that strives to convey a sense of beauty.
This talk focuses on current landscapes of mobility and the representation of them. In “The margins of Vision” Christophe Girot argues that “our aesthetic detachment from the landscapes of the present in tremendous and […] requires a re-education of the eye of the observer”, implying a profound critique of the two dimensional representation. The text is based on the ongoing work at ETH to explore video as a tool for landscape representation, one that is able to convey our contemporary experiences of speed, movement and of ordinary roadsides.
Alessandra Ponte is working on territories that have never been traditionally represented as landscapes; they have not been framed, beautified and represented neither as ‘nature’ nor as landscapes until they were appropriated by the energy producing industry and mediated as landscapes of energy. Supported by Marshall McLuhan’s work on the de-centralization force of eletricity, she reads the productive and specifically Canadian re-thinking of space in terms of media, leaving behind the obsolete and inadequate category of perspectivized landscape
Janike Kampevold Larsen is working on the experiences of moving landscapes and on ways of describing these in terms of older architectural principles that does not rely on static imagery.
As contemporary representations of landscapes are arguable still concerned about mediating them as beautiful within a photographic documentary aesthetics, this talk starts with the question of how to represent and still maintain what is essential to various landscapes of mobility? What terminology could be introduced into the discourse on both territories and contemporary uses and modulations or urban and rural environments?
Contributors:
Alessandra Ponte is professeure agrégée, École d’architecture, Université de Montréal, since 2006 and Adjunct Professor, School of Design of Built Environment and Engineering, Queensland University of Technology (Australia), 2009-2012. She has taught history and theory of architecture and landscape at Pratt Institute (New York), Princeton University, Cornell University, the Instituto Universitario di Architettura (Venice), and ETH (Zurich).
She has written articles and essays in numerous international publications, published a volume on Richard Payne Knight and the Eighteenth century Picturesque (Paris, 2000) and co-edited, with Antoine Picon, a collection of papers on architecture and the sciences (New York 2003). For the last three years she has been responsible for the conception and organization of the Phyllis Lambert Seminar, a series colloquia on contemporary architectural topics. She has recently organized the exhibition Total Environment: Montreal 1965-1975 (Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, March- August 2009). She is currently completing a series of investigations about the North American landscapes and preparing a show and catalogue on François Dallegret (AA School, London, Fall 2011).
Christophe Girot is Full Professor and Chair of the Landscape Architecture at ETH Zürich since 2001, after having chaired the Landscape Design Department at École Nationale Supérieure du Paysage, Versailles 1990 – 2000. He holds a double masters degree in architect and landscape architecture, and is a consistent mediator between practice and theory and an inventive contributor to the theoretical field in landscape urbanism. Emphasis lies on new media in landscape analysis and perception, recent history and theory of landscape design – as well as contemporary large-scale urban landscapes. Girot practices landscape architecture in Zürich.
His built projects include Invaliden Park in Berlin, as well as several projects in and around Paris. His current projects include the 1000 hectare Landscape Study of Quartu Sant’Elena in Sardinia , a 34 hectare Deposito di Sigirino for AlpTransit in Tessin and a landscape park in Rorschach for the Würth headquarters on Lake Constance with Gigon-Guyer architects.
Publications include Landscape Video from Zürich, Cadrages II: Blicklandschaften ZH, (with Zabine Wolf), ETH, 2010, and contributions to numerous international publications such as Landscape Urbanism, A Reader, Charles Waldheim (ed.) and Future Cities – Kerb 16.
Janike Kampevold Larsen is a postdoctoral fellow at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design on the project Routes, Roads and Landscapes, aesthetic Practices en Route 1750 – 2015, researching the Norwegian Tourist Route Project [Oslo: Gyldendal Forlag, 2008]. She also researches experiences of contemporary landscapes with a particular focus on landscapes of mobility as well as working on descriptions of architecture and landscapes. She holds a Dr Art in Literature. Publications include Være vann i vannet, forestilling og virkelighet i Tor Ulvens forfatterskap, as well as recent articles on the Tourist Route Project.