Published June 2009
Scapes
We stand in the hallway of a friend’s apartment looking at a postcard, we remember an old book that’s crisp pages frame views of Kosciusko, we stand on a hill, on the phone and tell people on other sides of the world what we see – the horizon stretches on, nestled in the panorama, our viewpoint. Between the view, the viewer and those that see or hear of what the viewer saw there’s a synthesis formed – one of identity, time and place, changing to suit.
As a word, landscape came to us from the Dutch landschap in the 16th Century. At the time the young Dutch Republic, recently separated from Spain, was enjoying the naturalistic depiction of their countryside – the windmills, rivers, forests, and cloudy skies over sweeping planes, dotted by the odd steeple or ruin or general farmy-life. These early landscapes served two purposes: to celebrate an idea of their world (and who they were to live in that land) and to take them away from the growing urban sprawl that many in the Netherlands found themselves living in.
This issue of Das Superpaper focuses on the Scape as a notion of both landscape and escape: cultural production that takes the viewer to a new vantage point. Perhaps the ‘escape’ element is like watching the burning town in the rear-view mirror, or, perhaps it’s the constant construction, breaking down and reconfiguring of the ideas evident in what lies around us to make them relevant to where we’re going.