Most people can name a landscape (urban or rural) which they think has been ruined by something – an often large, often ugly, and generally “careless” or “thoughtless” thing. But… what about landscapes that have been ruined because of care? How can landscapes be ruined by loving hands that apply errant care? And what is it like to live in a landscape like this? This is what Perpetrating Landscapes asks.
Perpetrating Landscapes is a nascent research project, and I’m using this website to bring my ideas together. The ingredients for this project are…
1) A very particular and fascinating landscape, Llyn Trawsfynydd, which demands some new thinking to explain what’s happening there.
2) Some new thinking – the idea of a “perpetrating landscape” – which argues that landscapes aren’t spoiled/scarred/ruined because of thoughtless human interventions… landscapes can be spoiled/scarred/ruined by interventions that are full of love, affection, and consideration. Those interventions, lovely though they are, still make for spoilings/scarrings/ruinings that people have to live with. For a more detailed explanation (including why I’ve chosen “perpetrating” as a key term) see this early post.
There’s one last ingredient…
3) Some existing thinking: the idea for Perpetrating Landscapes was, to no small extent, inspired by Llyn Trawsfynydd, but the idea also takes some cues from my existing research and writing on landscapes and heritage.
Over the coming weeks and months I’ll be talking about these ingredients in more detail – you can check back here, or you can follow me here, where I’ll tweet updates when a new entry is published.
Paul.