Landscape and the moving image

As a reference to my moving image piece I looked into some video pieces that deal with landscape. The representation of landscape, including water, started to be challenged by video artists in the 1960s and 1970s, creating experimental pieces under the influence of writers such as John Berger (author of ‘Ways of Seeing’). A representation of this tendency can be seen in the work of William Raban where the action of the elements on the capturing technology was central to the work. Technology being central to the art work is an occurrence that is quite common with digital artists. In my own project the production process is crucial to the construction of the overall narrative of my work, mixing digital and analogue technologies to create an output that is informed by different layers of photographic processes and theories.

William Raban, Thames Barrier, 1977, 8 minutes (using 3  synchronised cameras to capture and shown on 3 synchronised 16mm projectors)

More recently, contemporary technologies have allowed artists to use new strategies that allows us to contemplate the unnatural world of the landscape, compressing and expanding the time and space relationship.

Genevive Staines through her digital video piece Ruins in Reverse: Selective Landscape Painting, explores the blurring of the past, present and future by systematicaly erasing the architecture from her chosen landscape.

Ruins in Reverse: Selective Landscape Painting
Genevieve Staines, 2005, 5 min

Emily Richardson’s work looks at the architecture of the Scottish oil industry. This landscape has been documented as a time lapse piece using long exposures. There is a documentary intention in this work and an emotional response to the landscape as this kind of industry is closing down and disappearing. The photographic nature of this work creates an alternative perspective creating impossible experiences of the environment.

Emily Richardson,  Petrolia, 2004, 7 min

I am interested in these video artists because of their approach to the landscape. Digital technologies have allowed us to create impressions of our surroundings that refresh our perceptions. Staines work is very interesting as with its simplicity it subverts linear narratives and encapsulates time. It makes us think about how we respond to landscape and the changing environment. In some ways, this line of questioning is what activates the archival desire for the purpose of memory. These two concepts, encapsulation of time and archival desire are central to my work.

As with Richardsons’s film, my project deals with industrialism, it shares a certain de-familiarisation with the mechanical structures and machinery that still exist in our landscape. This feeling was also present in the industrial revolution when these structures where created, which creates a parallel between these two times. Petrolia has an eerie beauty that appeals to my own sense of aesthetics, it is an account of the ‘life’ of the structures from a distant and detached position which could make reference to the style of the New Objectivity movement that has also influenced my approach.