Land Use Poetics I, Malmö/Lund, Sweden 2009

Initiated by Professor Maria Hellström Reimer, then of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Landscape Architecture, Alnarp, ‘Land Use Poetics’ brought together 10 artists and architects from Sweden, Germany and the U.K. in a short, arts-based research project, to document changing patterns of land use in the urban areas of Malmö, Lund and surrounding landscapes.

Our preparatory research focused on the Alnarp Agricultural College and its library collection. We were drawn to its original conception in the 19th century as a pedagogic ‘Model Farm’, adopting this as a conceptual framework for our representation of diverse, post-industrial landscape sites across the region as imagined examples of the utopian influence of the farm’s ‘model’ practices.

We began by scanning photographic images of floral blooms used on the covers of archival seed catalogues from the early to mid-twentieth century, attentive in particular to the changing qualities of colour across the periods of the archive. Elements of these ‘historically specific’ colour samples were then montaged onto photographic documentation of the landscapes of the edge Malmö, such as Bulltofta Park. We also used stereoscopic film (developed in a local, one hour photo-lab), to record the landfill peninsula of Spillepeng, reimagining it as a landscape of model cloning and repetition.

The project was shown at an exhibition and symposium at the Museum of the Sketch, Lund.