A Landscape Device
2023, UHD-Video, loop ca. 10 min, wooden hut
«A Landscape Device» is the first manifestation of a short film that examines the Dutch landscape and the media, through which the landscape is presented or created. On the occasion of the graduation exhibition of the Studio for Immediate Spaces the film has been screened inside the bird observation hut that appears as a prop in the film.
Not all land is referred to as landscape. The attribute “landscape” entails a value judgement, it singles out natural environments that are valuable to a certain person or group and disregards places that are seen as deficient. So to change a landscape does not mean moving rock, earth and plants but to foreground and alter the modes of landscape perception. The work “A Landscape Device” looks at two specific instruments that have the capability to construct landscapes: The bird observation hut and the film camera. They are configurations of the same basic architectural situation—both a darkened chamber with an opening, both with a single vantage point, and both revealing only a partial and tightly framed view of the outside world.
