Discussion and reflection

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OUTRO

Discussion and Reflection

DISCUSSION AND REFLECTION

I entered this thesis process wishing to acquire new insights into the landscape architectural practise by exploring a filmic methodology. My aim was to investigate the potentials of the film medium and the filmmaking process in dialogue with the exploration of the historical footprint and transitional reclamation process of Rødby Fjord.

In the beginning of the process, I asked myself how the story of the physical transformation that took place during 200 years could be brought to attention and visually transmitted in the modern landscape of Rødby Fjord, in order to create a connection between the historical, cultural and future identity of Rødby Fjord.

Based on a two-part analysis shedding light on existing and historical structures and inherent qualities of the modern landscapes of Rødby fjord, I have pieced together a connected pathway providing access to, and awareness of, the historical layers of Rødby Fjord. I have worked strategically highlighting the dams and the former coastal outline, and thus I emphasize existing landscape typologies and qualities through connection and implemented new green structures that create a new context, new spatialities and new historical and future references.

This proposal offers a solution to the sense of historical disorientation and neglect that I saw displayed most clearly in the endless farmland and the unmotivated presentation of the Memorial Stone. The fact that Lolland is so economically dependent on the agricultural sector while also suffering from depopulation, stresses the need for a new future reference, founded in the past, yet engaging with both present and future challenges, as well as possibilities, in the Rødby Fjord area.

I have found that Rødby Fjord carries many traces of the physical reclamation process, just as it offers a variety of sensuous, intimate and interesting nature environments, some of them expressed in the filmic notations and some of them expressed in chapter 4. This, I believe, will support the idea of a connected pathway of new landscape structures as a way to access the existing stories in the landscape.

In this thesis I have not included thoughts and reflections on how to engage the local farmers and landowners regarding the involved private agricultural parcels. The agricultural parcels have often been passed on through generations. This is obviously a crucial consideration in the process of realisation as the proposal includes multiple parcels. Rather, this proposal lays the grounds for a possible scenario and alternative narrative to strengthen the identity of Rødby Fjord.

It has been a challenge for me to work with such a big scale project as I have struggled to balance the big-scale perspectives and the small-scale perspectives. In between the detailed intimate explorations of the environments around the dike and the historical and geographical overview of Rødby Fjord in a scale of 1:40.000, it was hard to find a meaningful scale that could offer the right amount of insight to my proposal.

The filmic methodology

Studying the multiple layers of the landscapes of Rødby Fjord though a filmic work method has been powerful, rewarding and challenging. I want to bring forward some of my reflections about

filming, filmmaking and what role the filmic method has had on the outcome of my thesis exploration.

Filming is a way to enter a landscape experience that requires a bodily presence. The sharpened focus on your surroundings awakens the senses to the small details and the big sensations. At the same time, the film camera creates a space between the photographer and the experienced landscape through which the photographer manifests her actions and decisions. What do you film, how do you film it and why?

In addition, the film camera cannot adequately capture the full picture of what the eye sees, which gives rise to immediate and intuitive decisions on how to frame the landscape in front of you. To exemplify, I had a discouraging felling when I looked though the filmic registrations of Kramnitze Havn, thinking that it didn’t really capture the essence of my sensuous and bodily impression and the grandiosity from the site. While this might have been the case, I later learned how new meaning and impressions could evolve through the act of editing.

The filmmaking process, as I have referred to as the act of editing, is where I see the qualities of the filmic method expressed most strongly. It is in the numerous choices of what to edit, how it is edited and how image and sound relate to each other, that the act of filmmaking becomes interesting and valuable. During this process, new images and new spatial environments sprout from my filmic notations. I enter a new landscape experience.

The filmmaking process has given access to a sequential, layered, liberating, poetic and abstract world of its own. Being that this is my final project at the school of Landscape Architecture, I have allowed myself to dive deep into this parallel universe to see how far that would get me, trying to find a balance between dreams and reality. Kentridge’s reflections on how images and ideas emerge in the looseness of trying different things has led to many interesting creations, some of them relevant to the thesis, others perhaps more relevant in other contexts.

To sum up I have presented the work of five filmic notations as a part of my initial analysis of Rødby Fjord:

1. / I see things that were, going quiet behind my eyes

2. / I see pieces of the past in the shimmering soil of the present

3. / I see the forest emerge in the lee of the dike

4. / I see transitions emerge thorough movement

5. / I see encounters between reality and dreams in the ponds of the farmland

The filmic notations / I see things that were, going quiet behind my eyes, / I see pieces of the past in the shimmering soil of the present and / I see encounters between reality and dreams in the ponds of the farmland show how the film medium can transcend both time and space with clear references to historical events expressed though images of the present. These notations have been instrumental in the articulation of the dualistic properties embedded in Rødby Fjord: the past and the present, above and below water, the new coast and the historical coast, the deep inher-