TY - CONF

T1 - Unstable Landscapes

T2 - Unruly Landscapes

AU - Southern, Jen

PY - 2020/6/18

Y1 - 2020/6/18

N2 - The artwork Unstable Landscapes was the outcome of a short residency with arts organisation BridA in Sempas, Slovenia, in May 2017. During the residency I placed GoPro cameras and GPS devices on kites flown by local young people, on a pair of dogs walked in the local hills above, and on a kite that we flew on nearby fallow strips of field below the village.The work builds on a practice of tracking and tracing of movement, and a translation of those movements into visual works, and develops my interest in the co-production of relational landscapes through the activities that take place in them. By sharing theactivity of filming the work became a snapshot portrait of Sempas made by the actions of local people, animals, wind currents, field and footpath networks and ponds.Made roughly a month before Brexit negotiations started, the instability of familiar landscapes and their relationships to each other was always present. Through working with collaborators,I gave up some of the control over the camera to a dog or a kite so that the film was directed by scent, footpath, wind, and weather, and immersed in landscape rather than being carefully composed in a static framing of a view.The resulting videos reframe and rediscover landscape through movement and activity rather than the notion of a specific viewpoint or the picturesque. The landscape was reframed as one that is constantly in motion in relation to the lives and activities that happen within it. The shift in movement, from a body or form moving through a static landscape, to a static agent surrounded by a moving environment emphasises the notion of an unstable landscape in constant flux.

AB - The artwork Unstable Landscapes was the outcome of a short residency with arts organisation BridA in Sempas, Slovenia, in May 2017. During the residency I placed GoPro cameras and GPS devices on kites flown by local young people, on a pair of dogs walked in the local hills above, and on a kite that we flew on nearby fallow strips of field below the village.The work builds on a practice of tracking and tracing of movement, and a translation of those movements into visual works, and develops my interest in the co-production of relational landscapes through the activities that take place in them. By sharing theactivity of filming the work became a snapshot portrait of Sempas made by the actions of local people, animals, wind currents, field and footpath networks and ponds.Made roughly a month before Brexit negotiations started, the instability of familiar landscapes and their relationships to each other was always present. Through working with collaborators,I gave up some of the control over the camera to a dog or a kite so that the film was directed by scent, footpath, wind, and weather, and immersed in landscape rather than being carefully composed in a static framing of a view.The resulting videos reframe and rediscover landscape through movement and activity rather than the notion of a specific viewpoint or the picturesque. The landscape was reframed as one that is constantly in motion in relation to the lives and activities that happen within it. The shift in movement, from a body or form moving through a static landscape, to a static agent surrounded by a moving environment emphasises the notion of an unstable landscape in constant flux.

M3 - Conference paper

Y2 - 18 June 2020 through 19 June 2020

ER -