Committed Landscape : Cho Miyoung
Landscape as a verb
In 『Landscape and Power』, W.J.T Mitchell shifts the meaning of “landscape” from a noun to a verb. For him, landscape is not an object to look at or a text to read. It is a process that shapes social and personal identity.
Landscape is not something placed in front of me. It is an organic extension of my body. Inside my home, through daily contact, I share time and space. My body expands through these connections. Homes gather into buildings. Buildings crowd limited land and form structures that support life. Repeated and varied, they grow into a city. As I step out of my room, leave the building, walk down the street, and enter the city, my being stretches outward and meets what we call landscape.
Yet landscape does not really exist. Tall apartments and towers block distant views and allow only nearby streets and walls. To see the city from afar, one must drive along a highway by the river. The changing landscape seems to speak.
“You are old. You are shabby.”
“I am being reborn. But you.”
Memories fade with old buildings. In their place rise new ones that seem as if they will never wither. These proud buildings belong to people who are not immortal. Their newness feeds desire and comforts capitalism. What is shown to me and to many others is only a smooth surface. It is a desire carried out.
The landscape that belongs to others is no longer simply another. It reacts with my eyes and body. It occupies my senses. Each day, some version of me is broken, erased, and rebuilt. The process feels shallow and violent.
I catch one floating image in my mind and begin a work I call “psychological landscape.” I use high-density foam board, cardboard, glue, and recycled or scattered materials. I do not start with a sketch. Only when I need to measure size or plan structure do I draw. Like sketching on a blank canvas, I cut out a large mass. With a heated wire, the foam becomes hills, roads, and trees. At first, the work is vague, like shapes in dawn fog. I wonder what it will become.
When it is time to define details I take photos or look up references. I sometimes use real branches. I weld pieces together if needed. To join large and small parts, I use different glues. Forms grow clearer. Then I tear thin pieces of paper and attach them to the surface. The colours are not bright, but the process feels like painting over a drawn image. Covering every surface is slow and repetitive. It can be tiring, yet the repetition can clear my mind and bring a quiet sense of achievement. After a few more steps, the work is done.
Still, I cannot simply call my work painting. It has mass and space that flat painting does not. I care deeply about how masses and lines settle within space. I believe everyone holds a sense of architecture inside. This process of building connects to that inner structure.
Not every step carries the same weight. Materials often try to go in directions I did not plan. Sometimes I follow them. Sometimes I resist. We struggle. At times I ignore them. At times they refuse to cooperate. In the end, the result settles somewhere between my will and the nature of the material. It may be called compromise, or even inspiration. More clearly, it is a trace of the dialogue between my hands, my body, and the material.
In a time used to clear visual images, working slowly with hands, cutting, tearing, joining, shaping, may seem useless. Yet such slow and simple acts may be what brought us from instinct to civilization. By shaping tools, homes, and streets with our hands, we endured. Today, technology builds almost everything with speed and ease. I think about what it means to shape my thoughts and senses by hand.
The word “carried out” stays in my mind. It means done boldly, even if reckless or criticized. To me, it also suggests lack of agreement and lack of empathy. Rapid construction creates landscapes that feel reckless. So I carry out my work. Between greatness and smallness, capital and speed, habit and change, wealth and poverty, this is what I can do.