ABSTRACT
Through the last decade there has been a critical engagement with notions of landscape – as process, as practice – within the social sciences and humanities. This work problematizes the ways in which, since the 1980s and in part for much longer, landscape had been conceptualized. This adjustment raises new challenges and potential for the practice of landscape-related research. Similarly, it raises issues concerning the relationship between institutional notions of landscape and this wave of re-conceptualization. At the centre of these challenges and opportunities is the rethinking of landscape as process rather than object; subjectively ‘in the making’ rather than as an assemblage of physical features. This chapter presents the key themes in this re-grounding of landscape and outlines its con-
sequences for landscape research. At its centre lies a consideration of matters of performance and performativity. It is argued that these emergent concepts mobilize new approaches to both discussions that surround the matter of landscape and fresh ways of professionally engaging with it in adjusting, conserving and changing the material with which professional landscaping is handled. Despite the apparent complexity and awkwardness of the terms considered in this chapter, they address very practical, real-life and place matters. The chapter commences with an articulation of the arguments surrounding what performance and performativity are, and their critical orientations of theory. From this discussion emerge directions for further investigation, understanding and thus application in work related with landscape. The chapter then unpacks the emergence and key approaches in performance and performativity, and related terms, and directs explanation towards making sense of landscape. This discussion, as performance itself, attends to a very individual, human level and the importance of its feeling, away from representational closure. This positioning of performance-performativity in matters of understanding landscape is articulated through recent debates concerning space and the idea of flirting with space. Awkwardly, the understandings so far are taken next to matters professional – practitioners,
academic and otherwise. It is argued that an engagement with performance-performativity is valuable, crucial and, moreover, practical in progressing the professional affect on the sites that individuals encounter in their lives. In the final section, an emergent case for further understanding what landscape is and how it works, and the orientations of research and professional practice conclude the chapter.
