Each participant must select and apply for one of the six themes that we present below:
1. VULNERABILITIES, WEAKNESSES AND CONFLICTS.
It seems inevitable to talk about landscape and not place the climate emergency and the set of conflicts and excesses (extractive and productive) generated by humans as an emerging issue. Landscape has cultural outlines and is defined from specific territories; however, the problem cannot be approached on a case-by-case basis, as it affects global aspects. Fires, floods or thaws are just a few signs that force us to redefine a new position on the Planet. ©Rebeca Blanco-Rotea: Original photography of Minas da Boralha, Salto, Montalegre (Portugal, 2021). 2. TRANSDISCIPLINARY OR (IN)DISCIPLINARY When we talk about Landscape, multiple knowledge is called up to approach the term in a different but complementary way. We are interested in maintaining this diversity and considering the epistemological limits of each one of them, in order to find amongst their borders overlaps and rotations, some alternatives for a more robust cultural construction. ©Sílvia Maciel: Photography taken at the final Landscape Workshop organised by Lab2PT that originated the launch of this Internacional Congress. 3. MATERIALS, INSTRUMENTS AND TRANSFORMATIONS Landscape only exists through a reciprocal relationship between the interpretation and transformation of the natural physical environment. These transformations are always associated with instruments and materials, and translate into direct interventions on the territory, which may involve the extraction of raw materials (soil, stone, water, wind, plant elements, etc.) or the addition of new ones (roads, bridges, terraces, buildings). We shape the territory until it responds to our economic, social or cultural purposes. Throughout this process, changes always generate an impact on the environment that is not always positive and never neutral. But are we assessing its consequences for the future? How to look and how to deconstruct from a new integrated knowledge perspective, and with new instruments would those allow the anticipation and simulation of almost anything © Rebeca Blanco-Rotea: Photography of São Salvador da Bahía (Brasil, 2022). 4. NARRATIVES FOR NEW HISTORY & STORIES. REVEALING INVISIBILITIES. Faced with the instability of the cultural principles that supported the culture from out-dated or even obsolete imaginaries, the landscape can offer open alternatives that allow embracing the complexity of our territories. We are interested in new positions that allow us to change the point of view of history and reveal invisible, uncomfortable and hidden landscapes. Thus, this topic aims to explore different ways of deconstructing the imaginaries of an official landscape. ©Rebeca Blanco-Rotea: Archaeological dig at the Monte da Anta, Arcos de Valdevez (Portugal, 2021). 5. A COMMON CONSTRUCTION. POLICIES AND ACTIONS. There are policies for landscape enhancement, landscape protection and even for landscapes made invisible by political decisions. It is true that the relationship between landscape and politics is not new and has been increasingly used to build a set of consensual imaginaries. But there are also non-consensual decisions with which the collectives that inhabit these landscapes disagree, but which affect their radically modified ways of life. How can the landscape reveal new forms of power? And power new forms of landscape? How to use the landscape as a political critique? How to redirect politics from the participatory governance of cultural landscapes? Is this possible? ©Rebeca Blanco-Rotea: Photograph of Santiago de Compostela during the religious celebrations of the Ascension (Spain, 2022) 6. WALKING AND MIGRATING - MOVEMENT AS LANDSCAPE CONSTRUCTION. The built environment supports a wide range of actions, but it is also the space through which human groups move, appropriating it to an extent, joining points along the way or fixating on a point. It is also where ideas are in motion, mixing with others, being modified and generating new meanings and interactions; and also where, ultimately, culture expands, and builds new places from different symbolic and cognitive patterns. Landscape supports the mobility of people and their ideas, societies and cultures through time and space. Landscape as a dynamic support of human mobility, allows the reassessment of interactions and impacts, summoning reasons as different as tourism and work, the condition of the displaced and the human expectation of new futures. The landscape is also constructed from the displacement of human groups in a transtemporal way. ©Rebeca Blanco-Rotea: Photography of a working group of the Foro Transruralismo e arte organised by the Fundación María José José Jove, Consello da Cultura Galega e casa Quindós. Vilela (Ancares, Galiza, Spain, 2022). |