As an artist, I’ve always admired and appreciated the formation process of a landscape. The dynamics of the landscape are strongly affected by the organisms that inhabit it and the elements that shape it. The structures of a landscape are created through a multitude of factors. In my opinion, this dynamic is the main reason why a landscape is an embodiment of a perfect creation. As an artist, I am striving to create something as sublime as a landscape.

In this project, I research my position in relation to the landscape and try to figure out what I can contribute. How does my ability to create, compare to the abilities of nature? What kind of positive influence and value can I provide as a human being?

To exercise this influence and to create the essential dynamic, I needed to use the same organisms and elements that one finds in nature. Through experiments with capturing landscapes through photography and drawing, I have gained a better understanding of the specifics of the factors necessary to create a landscape. Based on these findings I started to create my own landscapes. To construct, I was required to work together with nature. Within these landscapes, I have mainly experimented with the power of plants, animals, water, and human beings. Working with nature in this sense has made me question my position in the chain of creation. Only through partnership with nature itself, would I be able to achieve to gain a higher position within this chain.

As I shaped my self-made landscapes, the landscapes also shaped my vision. My perception evolved similarly to the evolution process of existing landscapes. One thing I’ve learned is to see the beauty, importance and influence of small beings instead of only bigger factors and gave them refuge in my own landscape. The landscape I created is a symbiosis of natural and cultural elements that are carefully selected and combined.

Positioning in the Chain of Creation

Can nature still be sublime in an Anthropocene world?

I’ve always believed that we’re tiny compared to nature and that nature is much stronger than us. When getting lost in the woods of England or being dragged under a rock in my kayak, I experienced these natural forces in a down scaled way. This power is familiar to all of us via either news media or from our own experience. I want to show the beauty of these powers. While working on the project tough I found out that most forests are manmade and we’re trying to control nature’s forces. We’re building dams to protect ourselves from water and shooting arrows in the sky to stop the rain from falling. More and more people believe we’ve entered the Anthropocene and we’re banned to control and rival nature.

Hearing about the Anthropocene made me worry about nature still being as sublime as the romantic vision in my head. Something that comforts me is the fact that of course we are nature and the more we change it, it will change us. To try and find out about our relationship with nature, I made some nature myself and used human forces as a force of nature to try and make it sublime to myself. Can nature still be sublime to all of us in the Anthropocene and are we part of it?

These are just fragments of the full 6 minute videos.

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Thomas Meijerman