Tecno-estetica audiovisiva e medium del paesaggio

By examining "Godland" (2022) this contribution aims to provide a joint consideration of audiovisual techno-aesthetics and the medium of landscape. Through the story of Lucas – a young Danish Lutheran pastor dispatched to a remote northern Iceland’s village to supervise the construction of a church at the end of the 19th century – the third feature film by Hlynur Pálmason conveys the perceptible experience of the landscape, i.e. of nature as mediated by technology and culture. In Godland’s narrative, moreover, Lucas’ passion for wet-plate photography, medium of back-then modernity, turns out to be inadequate to capture the complexity of the Icelandic landscape. Instead, it is the audiovisual medium, through a carefully considered and techno-aesthetic use of cinematography, that provides the ideal trans-sensory engagement and immersion for the anthropo-cosmo-centric understanding of the medium of landscape. To better express the conceptual solidity of the audiovisual landscape, this contribution intentionally combines transdisciplinary perspectives from film analysis, media theory, cultural geography, anthropology, visual culture studies, aesthetics, sociology, and literature.