Land Art Reimagined

Confronting the Climate Century

Abstract

Every day, more people are being impacted by climate change. Scientific evidences proves the growing effects of global warming although action and the creation of social responses to climate change are challenging. The majority of people are trailing behind in taking action because of the challenging issues in their comfort zone. The creation of social awareness in order to generate demand is crucial then ever. Art is now the most important factor for collective action. Along with climate change art, contemporary approaches to land art are emerging as an important social awareness driver of climate action. Within the scope of the research, it is aimed to investigate contemporary and traditional land art projects comparatively and to identify the components of land art  that can be integrated into contemporary sustainable landscape design. The research examines contemporary approaches to land art and uses a mixed method. First, the link between land art and climate change was evaluated. Second, the role that land art can play in the landscape as climate action becomes more prominent was examined. Ten land art cases were then examined on a comparative matrix to identify what climate-related issues they could address and what elements they could combine them with, such as materials or stakeholders. Nineteen factors were compared between five cases from the 1960s and 1970s, when land art first emerged, and five cases from the 2000s when climate change was at its peak. Consequently, by comparing the contemporary and traditional land art projects, the research investigates at which characteristics of land art have emerged in response to environmental concerns and could potentially be used in sustainable landscape design.