Ideas of Landscape and Film

Landscape is a notoriously vague term but architect Carl Sauer’s description of the material landscape as „an iconographic index of the mind“ seems a good starting point in many respects: It defines landscape as an expression of ideas, ideologies, cultural values and actions inscribed in a place.

Der Weltraum als reale und spekulative Landschaft

The course will explore space (as in “outer”) in relation to the exploration of its physcial reality, its impact on the public’s imagination in popular culture and visual art, as well as rather earthly political, social and economic implications.

Oh, you are so full of references!

Through the lense of landscape and place we will explore various theoretic, essayistic and poetic texts  (among them Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze/Félix Guattari, Chris Kraus, Anna Mitgutsch, George Perec, Robert Smithson, Rebecca Solnit, etc. …) and how they approach these contested topics.

Some places on earth obviously don’t offer comfortable milieus to live in: the pole regions, deserts, windswept high plateaus and mountains, swamps etc. Nevertheless mankind has developed a large variety of strategies to cope even with the most unpleasant environments.