Landmarking - what is it?

We think of landmarks as big important structures - cathedrals or public buildings. Natural landmarks might include ancient trees, dramatic cliffs, thundering waterfalls. They are nearly always big, often old and their purpose is to show us where we are.

There’s no doubt that humans have left their mark on the earth - the scars of open cut mines, plastic in the oceans, chemicals in our rivers. But I think we can do better than scrawl ‘We were here!’ across the surface of the earth. I believe that landmarking can be reframed as a positive act - a way of impacting the planet to the benefit of human and non-human life. This sounds quite abstract, but that’s not my approach. I want to explore here art projects, community movements, and individual acts of creativity that show us how we can build a better future in connection with Nature.

It’s a huge ambition, and a longshot. Wishing for something doesn’t make it so. But human imagination is a powerful tool and I want to use this space to celebrate acts of positive connection from artists, writers and ordinary citizens that will give us the inspiration to be bold.

‘Art is thought from the future. Thought we cannot explicitly think at present. Thought we may not think or speak at all. If we want thought different from the present, then thought must veer towards art.’ Timothy Morton, Dark Ecology