The Flat Earth of the Anthropocene and Landscape Art Beyond Borders

Abstract

The article offers an analysis of diverse responses of selected artists and humanists to the problems created by the anthropocentrically structured powers geared for exploitation of biological environments and material ecologies. It presents the contemporary understanding of landscape relating to current views of environments as living, interconnected, interdependent organisms, and demonstrates that the mechanistic view of the universe is no longer feasible in the current environmental situation, where systemic predatory attitudes to views of our planet and its life are still dominant. The three South African artists discussed in this article compel us to form a different understanding of how landscape art can be employed to tell stories that go beyond categorising life and translating it into profits. Analysis of the artworks shows how anthropocentrism can be diffused when artists make effort to look into those aspects of nature which are often invisible to the naked human eye and escape our attention.