Cette intervention explore comment l’industrialisation et la consommation capitalistes produisent leurs propres ruines, et comment les artistes contemporains y répondent à travers des pratiques de « dépaysage », c’est-à-dire des représentations critiques qui révèlent la face matérielle, toxique et oubliée de l’image du paysage. Elle analyse ainsi des informations et des œuvres de plusieurs artistes qui mettent en lumière les conséquences écologiques et sociales de la production matérielle des images, c’est-à-dire la face cachée de la production de la peinture aux pigments toxiques, de la photographie argentique fondée sur l’extraction minière, et des paysages numériques générés avec du lithium et une consommation énergétique massive. En opposant à la fascination esthétique une matérialité critique, cette intervention propose une écologie visuelle lucide dénonçant le « fétichisme » des images de paysages traditionnels.

Introduite dans les années 40 à l’Institut Supérieur d’Agronomie de Lisbonne par Francisco Caldeira Cabral, qui étudia à Berlin (1936-1939) dans l’ambiance de l’organicisme romantique et d’une nouvelle science, l’écologie, l’école portugaise d’architecture du paysage se distingue par sa conception integrée de paysage – “Notre travail se fait dans l’espace et se base sur le temps.” Le concept de continuum naturale, qu’il opposa au modernisme, sera suivi par des disciples, comme Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles, prix Jellicoe en 2013, en tenant déjà compte des nouveaux problèmes qui menacent tant les villes que la campagne. L’idée de “paysage global”, qui met au centre l’agriculture, inspira ses projets de reliaison entre monde urbain et monde rural. Plus recémment, Manuela Raposo Magalhães soutient la planification pour l’avenir, soit pour freiner l’abandon des villages, soit pour revitaliser les zones détruites par les feux forestiers.

Le travail fait sur les migrations suicidaires des jeunes Sénégambiens qui a été d’ailleurs l’un des thèmes évoqués par l’artiste que j’ai présenté à la Biennale de Venise. Ce même thème est revenu aussi dans nombre de projets de la dernière Biennale de Dakar.

Entropic landscapes refer to those landscapes whose fate has been sealed by the “Entropocene”, Bernard Stiegler’s concept, which underlines the entropic character of the Anthropocene. Hyper-industrial society has so deepened resource extraction and socio-technical territorialisation that, in some places, the environment has become an exorganism particularly marked by a technical appropriation of the landscape. I want to study these socio-technical milieus, industrial zones that, although they function, although they have a certain systemic life, do not cease to produce entropic tendencies that exhaust not only resources but the very possibility of being inhabited or even perceived. I wonder about the logics that lie behind this technical way of inhabiting the world, this distribution of sensible, and whether there is a “pharmakon” or a way of making technology allow us to live in an “after”.

It is undeniable that we spend a significant part of our lives in digital environments. Recent studies estimate that we spend an average of more than four hours a day in front of screens (Electronics Hub, 2024; Zablotsky, Arockiaraj, Haile and Ng, 2024; Kosola, Mörö and Holopainen, 2024), which grant us access to various digital environments. At the same time, some generations are beginning to witness the abandonment or even disappearance of platforms where we once spent considerable time. These digital ruins, composed of bits, house data but also elements of reference, affection and personal and collective memory. Consider social networks like MySpace or Fotolog, and especially those that proposed three-dimensional worlds, multiverses like Second Life or the initial versions of online games such as World of Warcraft. In this presentation, I will characterise the concept of digital ruins. Then, I will focus on the ruins of three-dimensional worlds to identify spatial practices and their symbolic meanings for people who once inhabited them, paying particular attention to the emotions and perceptions they had on these places. I will compare these emotions to the ones that the current ruined states of these worlds now generate for their former dwellers. Finally, I will discuss the need of reflecting on digital ruins preservation as memory places and some of the challenges this entails, including environmental and property rights issues.

From a specific landscape from the edge of the World, the ‘Tierra del Fuego’, and within the history and the experience of a particular ethnic group, the ‘Yahgan People’, the conference will ‘explore’ the metaphorical and ontological insights which lie in our occidental imagination of the End of the World. There are several ends of the world in the geographical sphere of the Earth. They changed through history, and what was considered unknown was destroyed and transformed into an example of what is now called the Anthropocene. Retracing this transformation, the specific landscape and its native inhabitants mirror our present and pronounce the changes which may have to come.

Le paysage d’après se glisse tantôt de manière peu perceptible dans un processus de gentrification du centre ville et tantôt de manière imposante à grand renfort de béton dans sa périphérie. Des concepts spatio-temporels comme la friche ou le tiers paysage sont inexistants dans cet endroit du monde qui se configure au goût du tourisme des fortunés propriétaires de yachts, ou de masse du Maroc entier et du monde.
Les logiques paysagères citadines, paysannes, côtières, ultra-locales et préexistant à ce bond urbain sont rebattues en profondeur par une logique de valorisation des «vues sur mer, marinas et attributs d’une ville qui poursuit sa trajectoire de balnéarisation.

The Landscape is neither a scenery nor a suffix that we can attach to any given concept (mental-, economic-, political-, etc.), but rather a fundamental, grounding experience that one experiences both in solitude and as a community. At least in the Portuguese and French versions of the title of this conference, “Paisagens do depois, Paysages d’Après – the “after” does not mean that there is no landscape anymore. This is a relief, as we can still talk about (and experience) landscape, after.
After what? Perhaps after we realise that it is time to affirm the right to the landscape. Of course, the “right to” presupposes the “care for”. Having the right to the landscape means we have to defend it, look after it, safeguard it so that it keeps its own process of becoming, its self-building process. So that there is still landscape, after.
Also, the concept of landscape presupposes life. A liveable place where nature (even if in a degraded stage) is vibrant. Being a space of nature, it is something that is not (entirely) human-made. It provides an opportunity of encounter with that which is not human. With other life-forms. Holding on to this idea, it seems reassuring that in the “after” there will still be life, we will still be living (in) the landscape. The issue at hand is to envision what kind of landscape(s) could that be.