Landscape and Power

Landscape and Power Theses on Landscape Landscape is not a genre of art but a medium. Landscape is a medium of exchange between the human and the natural, the self and the other. As such, it is like money: good for nothing in itself, but expressive of a potentially limitless reserve of value. Like money, landscape is a social hieroglyph that conceals the actual basis of its value. It does so by naturalizing its conventions and conventionalizing its nature. Landscape is a natural scene mediated by culture. It is both a represented and presented space, both a signifier and a signified, both a frame and what a frame contains, both a real place and its simulacrum, both a package and the commodity inside the package. Landscape is a medium found in all cultures. Landscape is a particular historical fonnation associated with European imperialism. Theses 5 and 6 do not contradict one another. Landscape is an exhausted medium, no longer viable as a mode of artistic expression. Like life, landscape is boring; we must not say so. The landscape referned to in Thesis 8 is the same as that of Thesis 6. –W. J. T. Mitchell June 8, 2014 by Adam Simms