Landscape Biography

Abstract

Authorship, the fundamental base for a Landscape Biography, can be identified, analysed, and visualised in landscape stories and narratives in a theoretical framework. These can vary from the stories of the longue durée to the historic events (Braudel 1966) and the stories connected to the local communities of daily use to the overarching narratives of the authorised or a minority group influencing the sites. This framework can be used to identify and analyse the myriad of landscape stories which we can identify in our landscapes. To improve inclusivity in the redesign of our landscapes and urban public spaces, the variety of human and more-thanhuman voices needs to be taken into account. When these voices are different or even dissonant, these landscapes become landscapes of trauma, neglect and pain. Turmarkin (2005) called these places Traumascapes, places that bear the physical traces and symbolic representations, as well as the associated collective memories and socio-psychological effects of trauma, human conflict, violence, and loss. These Traumascapes do not only refer to great trauma, like World War 2, the Holocaust or colonisation, but might be referring to a layered site of more personal trauma or pain. Our (historic) military landscapes bear a wide diversity of these stories and narratives, which reflect shifting values and perspectives through time and show community trauma. This contribution discusses a framework of narratives and stories in a landscape biography and various methods to describe and visualise these various landscapes of dissonant or even contested sites.