Remembering landscape

by Schmidt, Eva

What does landscape mean today? Still the romantic ideal of a diversified natural, agricultural and settlement area? Modern landscapes today are often 'non-places'. They bear traces of economic interventions, changing demarcations, are marked by displacement and war as well as by urban sprawl and mining. Quite often, only a kind of residual nature remains, where a few ruins tell of historical events. Barren landscapes that speak of past violence are degraded to (illustrative) material. At the same time, (war) memories are visibly embodied in architectural monuments from the 20th century. In...