The Fifth Landscape: Art in the Contemporary Landscape

At the Shaping the City conference organised by the European Cultural Center at the 2018 Venice Biennale, the concept of the Fifth Landscape (or Landscape 5.0) was exhibited for the first time. Thanks to creativity, the goal is to experiment with spaces for the sake of social and cultural imagination, in which it is no longer just a question of architecture but of dreams and social imagination. “Ideal” spaces are related to their impact on the architecture, art and human hopes. In the Fifth Landscape, the contemporary prefers the moment of the artistic gesture that will be remembered but that is not relived in everyday life. Temporary installations in urban centers and open spaces become an occasion for new uses of the different environments, such as living them in a completely new way with novel prospects for the future. If the First Landscape is the managed forest, then the Second is the cultivated field. The Third is the abandonment of places at the hands of man, according to Gilles Clément, and the Fourth is where art is used to counter urban degradation and solitude. The Fifth Landscape is generated by temporary works that, catalysing territorial force, stimulate people to live in the environment in a new way, making it dreamlike. The strong emotional impact on the collective memory transmits, in addition to the true meaning of the work, a sense of uniqueness of the moment that one is experiencing. New visions of landscapes are provided to the community, in which art, architecture, design and nature are confronted using environmental sustainability and the landscape itself as themes. What influences will cultural dematerialisation have on the landscape? How will the sense of beauty in the future society be transmitted and realised? If it is, through which artistic and ephemeral gestures will it appear? Helped by virtuous and suggestive artworks among which Vesuvius by Diego Repetto, Illusion by Alberto Timossi and ARTgo by Diego Repetto, we try to answer the proposed questions, thus understanding more about the potential future perception of the landscape in a continuous search for beauty.