Landscape and the Moving Image

by Catherine Elwes

Overview

Essays explore how the moving image mediates our relationship to and understanding of landscapes.

Catherine Elwes takes readers on a journey through the twin histories of landscape art and experimental moving image to reveal how they coalesce in the work of artists from the 1970s to the present day. Written in a clear, engaging style and drawing on a wide geographical sampling, Elwes considers issues that have preoccupied film and video artists over the years, ranging from ecology, gender, race, performativity, conflict, colonialism, and our relationship to the nonhuman creatures with whom we share our world. The book conveys Elwes’s belief that artists can provide an embodied, emotional response to landscape, which is an essential driver in the urgent task of combating the environmental crisis we now face. Enlivened by the author’s own experiences as a video artist, writer, and curator and informed by conversations with fellow practitioners, the book offers an informed, personal view of the subject.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789385687
Publisher:	Intellect, Limited
Publication date:	06/21/2022
Pages:	350
Product dimensions:	6.69(w) x 9.61(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Catherine Elwes is founding editor of the Moving Image Review & Art Journal. She is the author of several books, most recently Installation and the Moving Image.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements xi

1 Introduction 1

The semiotics of the view 1

Eco-critical practices 3

The indivisibility of the human subject and nature 4

The text 6

The parameters 14

Author's note 15

2 The Terms of Engagement 19

Landscape, space and place 19

Inside and outside 22

The ethnographic eye and documentary: Negotiations of the real 22

The contested status of the real 23

Taking step back - crossing over 24

3 The Invention of Landscape 27

Landscape, the antithesis of city life 27

The sublime, the spiritual and the indifference of nature 29

The picturesque and the pastoral 30

The return of the picturesque and the romantic sublime 32

4 The Social Construction of Landscape 34

National identity, society and history 34

Framing trauma in the landscape 35

Property, ownership, colonialism and class identity 37

5 Landscape Subjectivities 41

Do you see what I see? 41

The perceiving subject 43

A template for seeing, touching, hearing and feeling 43

Emotion, affect and sensation in nature 44

6 Painted Landscapes 48

The tools of the trade 48

Taking the eye for a walk - perspectives in painting 49

The great outdoors 51

7 Frames and Sequences 53

Photographing the view 53

Slide-tape: Landscape in series 55

8 Talking Pictures: Narrative, Time, Colour and Sound 62

'Nature caught in the act' 62

Narrative film: Background and foreground 64

The time base 68

Colour and black-and-white 72

Sound and silence 73

9 Talking Pictures: Framing the View and the Spectator 82

Framing the view 82

Point of view: The restless eye 83

The spectator 87

10 Artists' Moving Image 92

'Unmade Narratives': Experimental film 92

Video: The travelling companion 96

Digital media: No man's land 100

Photogénie and the entanglement of matter 104

11 Weather-Blown Film 111

River Yar (1971-72), William Raban and Chris Welsby 111

Theory: Clouds and clocks 113

Wind Vane (1972), Chris Welsby 115

Feedback: Cybernetics 117

12 Being-With: Rocks, Sea and Sky 120

La Région Centrale (1971), Michael Snow 120

Aspect (2004), Emily Richardson 121

Sea-changed film: R.V. Ramani and David Gatten 124

This Is My Land (2006), Ben Rivers 127

Dawn Burn (1975-76), Mary Lncier 128

Interwoven Motion (2004), Chris Meigh-Andrews 129

The wide blue yonder: Semiconductor, Susan Collins, James Turrell and James Benning 132

13 Getting the Shivers: Empathic Projection and the Elements 138

Jack Lauder and Lloyd Branson, Zacharias Kunuk, Oscar Muhoz, Bill Viola, Joan Jonas and William Raban 138

14 Anti-Terrain: Australasia and the 'Vexed' Question of Landscape 147

Preconceptions 147

The antipodean gaze 150

Refiguring landscapes 153

Imagining a future 159

15 Landscape and Identity Politics 163

Signatures 163

Slavery and the African Diaspora: The Black body in the landscape 165

Mother Earth 170

Queering the landscape 177

Fault lines - masculinity 181

16 Performing the Landscape 193

Acting out in Merrie England 193

Performing matter 196

Shifting the scenery 199

17 Animals 205

A pantomime of animals 205

Captive animals: A transaction of the gaze 211

'Companion animals' 215

Cruelty to animals 217

Discreet courtship 219

18 Postscript 227

References 231

Index 253

Editorial Reviews

"Complex, yet highly readable. [...] The strength of Elwes’s writing is that she is not simply a film scholar discussing landscape and the moving image, but she is also an artist underpinning it with her experience of making videos, hence her interest in embodied and emotional responses to landscape. [...] Elwes takes great care to include a wide range of artists (using moving image or otherwise), sometimes returning to specific individuals, which creates a sense of continuity. Her stated focus is how artists might sensitively and ethically engage with the moving image in the landscape in the context of the environmental crisis."
 

MIRAJ: Moving Image Review & Art Journal - Edwina fitzPatrick

"This is a beautifully-written, well-researched, thoughtful, generous and passionate book. It is one that seeks to make a difference not only to our knowledge of representations of landscapes by moving image artists but also to inspire new generations of eco-critically-minded artists to discover fresh ways to communicate urgent messages about the ongoing breakdown of the natural world. The book offers innovative explorations of how the moving image continues to facilitate understandings of our relationships to ‘natural’ landscapes. [...] This is an original, often inspirational work which offers a comprehensive and up-to-date view of landscape and moving image from the perspective of a highly knowledgeable artist."
 

Journal of British Cinema and Television - Paul Newland