Landwriting
Recent
Landschreiben / Landwriting
These digital prints are directly extracted from digital photographs of Austrian vineyards.
This visual response was created during a residency by the artist at AIR – ARTIST IN RESIDENCE, Niederösterreich (S. Austria).
Context:
In the autumn vineyards in the hills around Krems, S. Austria (Niederösterreich), the patterns in which the vines are propagated become more visible. In their leafless state, the stakes used to support the vines appear to set up rhythms that are reminiscent of ancient forms of line-based writing, such as Ogham, a line-based alphabet which was traditionally used to write early Irish from around 1,600 years ago, and is the earliest known form of writing in Ireland. Ogham was originally used on boundary markers, marking ownership of territory.
The rhythms of the vine poles suggest a similar kind of written 'language', one that responds to the landscape in which it is placed. Whether this is fanciful supposition or the expression of a subliminal response by the farmers to the demands or characteristics of the land, is something that proposes further aesthetic investigation.
- Ian Wieczorek
