the assumption of this exploration is that the separation between culture and nature only exists as an act of imagination. nature is all encompassing embracing our selves as an integral part. to separate man from nature or the ‘man-made’ from the ‘natural’ can only be an act of creating a rift. this rift is the place that is being explored here.
the separation between man and nature is constructed everyday through our acts, gestures, metaphors and institutional systems. nature is thus made- taking on different forms and different meanings. this is an exploration of some of these constructs and the modes through which nature is thus constructed / imagined.
three categories below
the tame / the wild / the resource
a the tame
pastoral peace – the hearth
architecture is what forms through man in a love/war dance with nature
the primitive hut / the noble savage
farmhouses without farming
nature framed
alienation of use / productivity
the anxiety of age / deterioration
the fetishisation of the flower- colour
perpetual youth – the lawn / the flower
the soft pornography of the rosebud
floral motifs on clothes’ paisley prints / orchids
roots, tubers.
The biological portrayed as fetish
the picturesque
‘strategic beautification’
lawns – desire romanticisation
pretty nature
mangroves
the claude glass- the making of the real into a picture
beauty vs the real
sentimentalising nature
plastic flowers
topiary
guerrilla gardening
the reclamation of public space by agriculture
totalitarian schemes – ‘utopia’
b the wild
modes of survival – to please the gods/ to banish the untameable
taming the animal
shit / sex
bestiality of man
civilizing cities – “urban jungle” – free running
the dangers (possibilities) of darkness
violent docility
nature as woman
landscape as barbed wire
surveillance
the alienation of the reclining body
playfields and laughter clubs
yoga
kaifi azmi park / the morning walk
cosmology
potent nature
folk narratives? religious / mythical?
the festival – holi.
nature as metaphor
the “natural order” racism / evolutionism
‘unnatural’ behaviour – deviance – ‘against nature’
national park as view
the wilderness / panther attacks
representations
the weekend trek
the zoo, aquariums
national geographic
fossils/ traces
the ruin, dust
the sublime
helpless in the face of such majesty
c the resource
science
food
zoology
botany
naturopathy / nature as healer – mother
ayurveda
agriculture as a return to the uncorrupted relationship to land
the ‘green’ building
fishing villages / crabs
environmentalists
kitchen gardens
railway tracks
the nallah
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