Landscape Imaginary is a concept I am developing in the project and is a parallel to Social Imaginary. I define Landscape Imaginary as an umbrella of place that includes our memories of the territory, the knowledge that is associated with the place, its identity and character, but also the qualities that can be transformed through movement interventions, i.e. human activity. I explore the identity of Rohan Island through its history, social perception, emotion and personal experience and seek to support this character. With artist and photographer Luke Palatinus, I have been working to reimagine a landscape that is perceived as dirty, dismal and is often unaccepted by the public. At the same time, we used the site's specific locations, which are what create the character of the place.
Among other things, we are creating a new image of the place that aesthetically relates to, for example, the science fiction film Stalker (1979) with its philosophical, theological and psychological overlap, made by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. The film depicts a restricted place, "The Zone", which contains a place that fulfills human desires, but getting to it is life-threatening. I see a parallel in that Rohan Island and bronwfields in metropolises in general are reminiscent of mysterious "Zones" and there is fear and perhaps that desire around them. Exploring these places and highlighting their mysteriousness and uniqueness, which is not common in metropolises, through photographs and videos is meant to raise questions in people's minds about how we perceive and use these places and what will happen to them in the future.
The methods that have been used are based on the exploration of Corporeal Expereince through Haptic Way of Knowing (M. O'Neill) and classification of space, 5 elements in the space defined by K. Lynch (Image of the City, 1960).
References:
Lynch, K. (1960). The Image of the City (Harvard-MIT Joint Center for Urban Studies Series) (Illustrated ed.). The MIT Press.
O’Neill, M. (2001). Corporeal Experience: A Haptic Way of Knowing. Journal of Architectural Education, 3–12.
