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.

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. The textures and tactile ness in this work made me want to create mountains out of other materials myself again. I'm going to build landscapes out of natural materials but also very men-made materials like 3D prints. I'm going to try to form diptychs and make the real world and the constructed world to communicate with each other. I plan to travel to more different places and produce landscape images and respond to those images with a constructed iteration. I want to maintain a flexible approach to these experiments and produce a number of outcomes. In wintertime I’m going back to the mountains to make new work and here I want to experiment more with moving image as well.

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. The power of nature dominates us, but the constructed landscape that fits in my hand is dominated by me. This power dynamic between humans and nature is something I'm going to explore more in my upcoming projects. Due to the contrast of the grand and the small, it is important that I also experiment with scale in the final presentation. 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. So 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 to present with different materials. This includes different kind of papers to deepen the texture aspect. But also working with (slide) projections, light(panels), video installations, stereo viewers, spaces and soundscapes.

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). Although the landscape still takes a central place in my work

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

Conversations With Landscape moves beyond the conventional dualisms associated with landscape, exploring notions of landscape and its relation with humans through the metaphor of conversation. With contributions drawn from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, geography, archaeology, philosophy, literature and the visual arts, this book explores the affects and emotions engendered in the conversations between landscape and humans.

Examples: the making of 40 photographs - Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams talks about the situations around the making of his photos and the methods he used to realize them. Each image is accompanied by a text that studies the technical and aesthetic conditions of the subject and contains memories of the places and people involved.

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

2 How do you plan to make it?

3 What is your timetable?

[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; ]