Sacha-project proposal

1 What do you want to make? During the pandemic of 2020, I started working in the studio to make self-constructed landscapes. I wanted to escape the reality I inhabited. Missing the possibility to go places, at first I wanted to make landscapes that look like Earth. When I was forced to cancel my trip to the Alps I started to built my own snowy mountains. Later I became interested in traveling even further and became inspired by distant expeditions and images from other planets. I started to incorporate the alien aspect in these self-constructed landscapes. Some of the images evoke uncanniness that speaks of alien landscapes, dreams of the ‘otherworldly’ and science fiction cinema.

Through my miniaturisation of landscape photography, I have been able to focus on photography as image making rather than recording. I developed interesting methods within this project to explore themes of escapism and traveling within strict limitations. The works deceives the viewer, creating a sublime landscape from otherwise prosaic materials. This way I want to challenge the notion of the imagined sublime and our willingness to believe in it.

In 2021, the borders were opened again and I started traveling. I made a series of photographs of real mountains in Switzerland. This year, I want to make a body of work wherein the experience of landscape takes a central place. This includes finishing the current project I am working on. Going through the 90 images I made of the Swiss mountains and make a selection out of these images that I want to turn into a presentation. This could be a book, or an installation consisting of projections or something else. I'm going to include working with miniatures in this project and try to find out if I can form diptychs. While photographing outside again, I've noticed that my gaze is different now. Whereas I normally pack a lot of materials and equipment, I now made this series with one camera and lens. I didn’t take ‘props’ but only focused on the mountains themselves. I was more focused on getting close instead of capture the vastness of the landscape. By capturing the mountains this way, I wanted

[unpack= tell us more about the experiment what, how and why. This provides an example of how I want to proceed:= experimenting with different modes of presentation and the difference between a virtual landscape and a landscape (photograph) (landscape image)].

I want to maintain a flexible approach to these issues and produce a number of outcomes. I plan to travel to different pklaces and produce landscape images and respond to those images with a constructed iteration (in the manner of previous work cc 2020. In wintertime I’m going back to the mountains to make new work and here I want to experiment more with moving image.

2 How do you plan to make it?

One of the important things to focus on this year would be to create an immersive experience for the spectator. Therefore, I’d like to experiment with different materials. This includes different kind of papers, (slide) projections, light(panels), video installations, or stereo viewers, spaces and soundscapes. For my miniatures landscapes I’d like to experiment with 3D prints of mountains and making them out of clay.

3 What is your timetable?

I’m going back in wintertime to photograph another series in the mountains. In the meantime, I’m planning on making my miniature models of mountainscapes. After this I’d like to focus on working on a presentation.

4 Why do you want to make it?

The landscape has always been a big inspiration for me. I am fascinated about how we live in and are influenced by our environment and how we can use our imagination to create a new one. For a long time, I wanted my work not only to be about my own experience but also about making this experience accessible for the spectator.

5 Who can help you and how? My tutors with continuing the conversation about my work and reflecting on it. Also, we have the opportunity to invite a guest ‘mentor’. I’d like to investigate a bit more who I want to invite. Other than that, I’d like to take workshops in the wood station and ceramics station to see how I can build things myself.

6 Relation to previous practice

I’ve always been fascinated about landscape and nature, so this is a central subject in my work. I am taking on different approaches within this subject and I try to deepen this more. Instead of using the landscape just as a ‘decor’ for my work, as I did before, I am now trying to incorporate different views (anthropological, geographical, cultural, environmental, aesthetical).

7 Relation to a larger context

There’s a relationship with my work with the following themes: Romanticism, The Sublime experience, Escapism.

8 References/bibliography

Conversations with landscape – Karl Benediktsson, Katrin Anna Lund Examples: the making of 40 photographs - Ansel Adams Space is the place – Lukas Feireiss Landscape and power – W.J.T. Mitchell [please make annotated bibliography: make a synopsis of the text= what story is it telling

[Steve notes: I think you should start with the story of your previous work: your work with landscape; your work with made landscapes and your current experiments. There is a very clear and strong development in this - you say "I’ve always been fascinated about landscape" which underplays your engagement with landscape, which has been intense; ]