Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Landscape (etym. dub.)

Further Thoughts on the Moving Image Research Network seminar

Landscape: the land's kip. (1) kip, a place to lay your head; a doss house, but in earlier times without the negative connotations; poor man's hotel; the land where Piers Plowman stretches out to dream pestilence and revolt, belling the cat and the harrowing of Hell. (2) sleep, as in the sleep of the Giant Albion, or the Sleeping Lord, who with his knights drowses the centuries under many hills. The land sleeps, and we who walk it are its dream

Landscape: the land escapes (1) when we try to seize it with our maps, satellites, geographic information systems and Street Views, land is what evades our surveillance (2) land is the terrain of escape

Landscape: the land wandered by the scapegoat, the wilderness beyond the pale where sins go to be absolved

Landscape: the land's a cape: a stylish but always out-of-fashion garment we wrap around ourselves to keep our icy anti-migrant feelings warm

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