WDM 8_23 Lecture | Knowledge and landscape: Landscapes of Knowledge vs Landscapes of Oblivion

General subject area | landscape theory

Abstract | As the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos (c. 556-468 BC) empirically discovered, all our memories are associated with a place; a topos. Only forgeRng is placeless, or, in other words, every memory needs a spa,al context. In fact, there are a number of very interes,ng metaphors that express forgeRng. Thus, for example, when memory is presented as a landscape, the metaphors of forgeRng are related to barren or uncul,vated land, wastelands or abandoned wells. But it must be said that our era has become forgeUul, forgeUul of itself, forgeUul of memory. And in this forgeUulness, it has distanced itself from knowledge of the landscape.
This paper will offer a theore,cal framework and a series of examples that will allow us to understand the fact that for many centuries, and thanks to the development of the techniques of the art of memory, the prac,ces of knowledge genera,on and the prac,ces of the produc,on of meaning became, on more than a few occasions, landscape prac,ces. At the same ,me, landscape prac,ces became a great laboratory for tes,ng the most varied prac,ces of knowledge genera,on and the produc,on of meaning. It should be recalled here that the French philosopher Se?bas,en Marot explains in his work Suburbanism and the Art of Memory that the Ars topiaria “was a great laboratory for the seman,sa,on of territory”.
The influence of the techniques of the art of memory and the prac7ces of memory on landscape architecture and contemporary crea,on linked to the landscape will also be discussed. And, finally, it will try to show with significant examples that the art of memory, and the prac7ces of memory, have been, and con,nue to be, one of the most relevant methodologies in the process of knowing, understanding and, also, projec,ng the landscape.