Occupied Peripheries: Rethinking Landscape in the Anthropocene Visuality

Sammanfattning: Although landscape representations in the US-European culture have traditionally been acknowledged as a peaceful ordering of the world or the tool of imperialism, nationalism and private property (sometimes all simultaneously), a new shift in the landscape scopic regime seems to be happening. Produced by the current rise of concerns around climate change and environmental crisis, this shift seems to be related to a specific attention to land use and land value. In other words, instead of focusing on aesthetical conventions and on an idealisation of nature, the landscape is perceived as a relationship between human’s socio-political activities and the nature where they take place. However, it is legitimate to ask how the aesthetical aspects of these new landscapes are constructed and wonder if it is possible to evade such problematic history. In this context, where landscape topic is studied by different disciplines like art history and visual studies but also geography, anthropology and political ecology, the landscape definitions are diverted by activists and artists addressing subjects like the Anthropocene and the commons. This thesis analyses two European artists’ video essays: Deep Weather by Ursula Biemann and Everything is coming together, while everything is following apart: the ZAD by Oliver Ressler. Their works, that have in common to depict peripheral occupied landscapes, are compared and interpreted, with the objective to discuss their different approaches. Applying theoretical tools as Nicolas Mirzoeff’s visuality and Trevor Paglen’s concept of experimental geography, the two artists’ positions will be questioned: from the view from above to the people in the field, from the global to the local, from the observer to the viewer. These two artists offer landscapes, understood as a space and as its representation, that reveal the pointlessness of the war on nature and how communal activities could be a first step to rethink the relationship between human and nature.