MARKUS GUSCHELBAUER, 2016
www.markusguschelbauer.com

The Taming of The Landscape (postmodern agriculture)

Some people don't have the opportunity to travel while others do. Some people are compelled to leave home, though most don't, many won't. If you are the oldest sibling, you may be the lucky one; you know your path and you can stay, while the others have to leave. You might escape or you might see an opportunity and take a risk – first going into the city and then leaving it. You find a place to stay and after you settle in you take a walk and count your steps in feet – beside the United States only Myanmar and Liberia have not adopted the metric system as their official system of weights and measures.

You bend the bough of a tree and draw a line. You separate and merge colors. In May, the meadow turns from a brownish-grey green into a bright yellow green within a few weeks. Most of the time the lower part of the horizon is green, the upper part is blue, sometimes grey. Sometimes everything is black. You set up a landmark, build a fence to identify and protect your own and you think of how to cultivate the land and yourself. You create your landscape, which relates to the view through the screen of your lens: it can be a backdrop or it can be a playground. Sometimes you feel relief, sometimes you create an enclosed island. You domesticate the animals and yourself. It's about appropriation, adaptation and transformation, about domestication and evaluation. It's about a place called residency 108. One part of the property is more cultivated—the horses grazing, the crickets chirping smoothly away. As soon you enter the other half, you hear the wild croaking of the frogs compete with the howling of the coyotes, while the fireflies draw lines and spots into the night sky.