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Roundtable - Deep in the countryside: current trends in Modernism research

par Tenzon, Michele ; [et al.]
Référence "Modernism Today", Meeting of the Modernist Studies Association (10-13 August 2017: Amsterdam)
Publication Non publié, 2017-08

Communication à un colloque

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Résumé :

Modernism, as the cultural and artistic expression of core modern values has been, quite always, associated with urban and industrial contexts, as opposed to a declining, atavistic countryside. Just as how the export of Western modernisms to the colonies and developing countries gave birth to “Other” or “Hybrid” modernisms, the introduction of modernism in the countryside blurred modern values.The MODSCAPES project (Oct.2016-2019; funded under the HERA JRP III call dedicated to the “Uses of the Past”) specifically questions this commonplace as it deals with “Modernist reinventions of the rural landscape”: large-scale agricultural development schemes, planned and implemented during the 20th century throughout Europe and beyond. From the Fascist reclamation of the Pontine Marshes to Zionist agricultural colonisation, from Soviet forced collectivisation of the Baltic States countryside to the exchange of refugee to interwar Northern Greece, such schemes were conceived in different political and ideological contexts, combining major land reclamation works with the (re)settlement of problematic groups. They were pivotal experiments in nation-building policies, aiming at modernizing the countryside and provided a testing ground for the ideas and tools of environmental and social scientists, architects, engineers, planners, landscape architects and artists, which converged around a shared challenge.The present roundtable proposes invites participants involved in MODSCAPES to deliver short position statements based on their ongoing case-study research in response to the following questions and discuss them with the audience:- How did typical modernist themes such as speed, technology, scientific progress, human control of the environment, calculation, rhythm, … reacted in rural environments? Were these values still able to convey progressive values, or did they abdicate to authoritarian ideologies? Did the encounter with the rural impose the emergence of specific modernist themes?- While hovering between the past, alleged vernacular authenticity, and idealised visions of a possible future, which conceptions of “past” and “future” di modernist rural landscapes entail in different periods and places?- Some modernist rural landscapes stand out for their bold architectural experiments, while others for their innovative agricultural landscape, and yet others for their cultural contributions to literature, folk music, etc. Which cultural agencies, whether planned or spontaneous, succeeded in creating a new “place identity”, and why?- What is the present legacy of modernist rural landscapes? Is it limited to a physical one, as cultural heritage? Can they inspire new ways to combine welfare, migration and planning policies to cope with the current refugee crisis, or with the quest for more sustainable urbanisation and development policies?Over and all, this roundtable aims to discuss the new lights shed on Modernism research by modernist rural landscapes.