Towards a practical knowledge of landscape: gesture, memory, speech

Overview of thesis

Starting from the understanding that there has been a fragmentation of classical frameworks for the representation of the landscape, thus an interrogation of its “death”, this thesis addresses these spaces in their heterogenous and fragmented dimension. It aims to develop a practical method which rebuilds the range of dispersed elements that remain copresent. 

Interrogating the notion of destruction and the etymological variants associated with it  –  trace, memory, burial  – this work seeks to flesh out the memory of a place. It draws on the interpretation of archives and of fragments (old cards, objects, materials) collected over the course of various site visits, and through practice-based research, seeks to piece together that which maintained the threads of a place, its ecology and its complexity. The first research site is the community of the Grand Paris Seine et Oise area, fifty kilometres from Paris in Seine Aval. Here different historical strata are condensed, visible in fragments which bring forth a range of testimonies: old hunting routes dating back to the 18th century, historic bridge towns, disused factories and former gypsum quarries.

Taking as its starting point the hypothesis that an inexorable process of transformation and fragmentation of landscape is at work, we suggest that it is necessary to enable the survival of a place by giving form to different narratives. These narratives emerge from collecting the fragments and archival elements of a place, they occur by taking risks when interpreting signs. They thus produce a new type of knowledge that emerges from an in situ practice, which is both adjacent to and complementary to more distant kinds of knowledge. This hypothesis implies the necessity to develop a language within this new landscape which would traverse a network of signs, with the aim of contributing, at our level, to re-establishing an epistemology of landscape. That is to say, to actively interrogate modes of representation and their limits. These days marked by its imminent destruction, landscape might also in this way, be kept alive in this “patrimonalised” sense, through the development of a basis of practice in terms of situated, concrete action.   

The aim of this project is to develop an original methodology at the intersection of enquiry through field work, historical investigation, and plastic practice, in order to contribute to and affirm the identity of the selected sites. This will form part of a reflection around a kind of active patrimonialisation of landscape ensembles.

PhD Supervisor:
SIMONNOT Nathalie, Léav- Ensav
Co-supervisor:
BEHAR Armand, Centre de Recherche en Design.

Funding:
Doctoral contract spécifique normalien.

Date of enrolment : September 2021.
Date of viva voce : Autumn 2024.