The
book
published
by
Quodlibet
in
the
series
In
Ottavo
in
2019–original
edition
of
1997–is
the
outcome
of
a
collection
of
glances
by
the
author
of
the Third Landscape Manifesto, collected in
the
years
previous
its
publication,
in
the form of images, drawings and short notes. The slight format of the Italian edition–about
100
pages
in
14.5
x
21
cm
format–makes it partly similar to the romantic image of the flâneur’s notebook, in
the
meaning
given
at
the
word
by
Walter Benjamin in his passages [Benjamin 2002]. And as in Benjamin, it is not a book of idle thoughts, melancholy memories
or
simple
highlights
of
journey:
as
the
title
of
the
work
states,
the
literary
form
is
the
treatise,
in
which
the
introduction
to
the
subject
is
followed
by
a
taxonomic exposition and concluded by very brief synoptic considerations.
The
book
declares
its
intent
from
the
beginning,
in
which
Clément
seems
to
write
a
text
poised
between
the
manifesto and the dedicatory: manifesto because
its
language
is
allusive,
poetic,
visionary,
and
defines
a
field
of
observation of the world, dedicatory because it
appears
as
an
epistolary
writing
between
an
observer–the
author–and
any other latent observer–the readers: “For those who can observe, everything is art. Nature, the city, man, the landscape, the atmosphere, what we call ‘mood’, and, finally and above all, the light” [p. 13].
The
combination
of
a
holistic
vision,
the look at the landscape and the style of writing, are certainly not new in the French
landscaping,
and
bring
to
mind
another incipit: “everything is landscape [...]
and
every
landscape
is
a
form
of
civilization, a union of natural and cultural, at the same time voluntary and spontaneous,
orderly
and
chaotic,
hot
and
cold, wise and trivial” [Kroll 1999, p. 3]. This
correspondence,
among
many
others
possible,
seems
to
suggest
that
the
extension
of
the
gaze
presented
in this brief treatise can be considered a
natural
extension
of
the
concept
of
landscape
that
the
author–and
a
large
part
of
the
landscape
movement–has
developed
in
recent
decades:
with
the
fortunate
neologism
of
the
third
landscape
Clément
does
not
aim
to
re-evaluate
the
aesthetic
qualities,
sometimes
romantic,
of
abandoned
places–what
architect
who
formed
in
recent
decades
has
not
been
fascinated by the photographs by Luigi Ghirri, Gabriele Basilico or Francesco Jodice?–but
to
investigate
how
these
places
seeming
as
‘residues’
of
man’s
passage
can become a resource for the planet’s biological system. “If you stop looking at the landscape as the object of a human activity you immediately discover [...] a quantity of undecided spaces, devoid of function on which it is difficult to put a name. This ensemble belongs neither to the territory of shadow nor to that of light. It is located on the margins” [Clément 2005, p.10].
A further step back to trace the roots of Clément’s work leads us to the Mission Photographique de la DATAR promoted
in 1984 by the Délégation à l’aménagement du territoire et à l’action régionale[DATAR 1984] – a systematic landscape photography
campaign
animated
by
a
narrative
and
non-documentary
aim –
which
facilitated,
probably
sanctioned,
the collective awareness of the aesthetic qualities of marginal spaces.
The
eye
placed
on
the
marginality
of
such
spaces,
it
is
not
surprising
that
it
then
produced
the
recognition
of
the
aesthetic
qualities
even
of
sets
of
elements configured–sometimes apparently, sometimes literally–in an accidental way. Clément
describes
as
involuntary
art
“the
happy
result
of
an
unforeseen
combination
of
situations
or
objects
organized
according
to
the
rules
of
harmony
of
the
case”
[p.
13],
and
in
this
definition
he
encloses
his
entire program:
Clément’s
involuntary
art
is
a
combination
of
situations
or
organized objects, not a pure result of chaos. There
is
no
intention,
but
there
is
an
organization that, regardless of its raison d’être, produces a configuration that in the eyes of a predisposed observer acquires an aesthetic value.
Although
apparently
distant,
another
parallel
could
assist
us
in
focusing
the
substance
of
Clément’s
book:
in
the development of the child’s sign an essential
step
is
the
fortuitous realismphase, that is the stage when the child begins
to
a
posteriori
identify
shapes
and
objects
from
his
own
scribbles,
marked without representative aim. It is
possible
to
imagine
that
the
child’s
surprise at identifying a ball in one of his doodles–traced without the intention of reproducing a ball–is similar to the surprise of the landscaper–or the careful
observer–who
comes
across
an installation of involuntary art, which no
one
had
thought
of
as
such,
and
which also fears in his eyes with unexpected vigour.
The author provide us an ample example of his approach, and tries to classify it by proposing
a
taxonomy
of
eight
distinct
categories
of
involuntary
art:
Flights,
Accumulations,
Islands,
Constructions,
Erosions, Installations,
Traces and Apparitions, outlining
the
categories:
Flightsand Accumulations
have
to
do
with
the
wind,
Islandswith the relationship between solid and fluid, Constructions and Erosions with the work of man, Traces tells of uncertainties, Apparitions of animated beings and, finally, Installations collects configurations similar to art installations [pp. 15, 16].
The
eight
classes
in
which
Clément
organises
his
examples
of
involuntary
art
have
the
character
of
an
accidental
landscape
grammar.
A
grammar
symmetrical
to
the
founding
grammar
of
architectural
thinking,
as,
by
way
of
example only, in the series of drawings Come si agisce / Dentro l’architettura
by
Franco
Purini
exhibited
at
the
Brera
Academy in 1994, in which the graphic sign stands as a demonstration of a conceptual
theorem
on
the
categories
of
architectural thinking, untranslatable – in the
author’s
opinion–in
a
praxis
[Purini 1996]: Bending,
Overlapping,
Thinning, Measuring,
Wrapping
and
many
others
are
the
components
of
an
analogical
and structural design thinking that seem to suggest a parallel with Flying,
Accumulating,
Isolating,
Building,
Eroding,
Installing, Tracing
and
Appearing,
involuntary
actions
that
precede
the
taxonomy
proposed
by
Clément.
But
the
symmetry
and,
therefore,
the
distinction
between
these
grammars
is
all
too
clear :
while
the
Purinian
grammar
underlies
a
poietic event, Clément’s grammar accentuates the self-poietic value of the residual landscape narrated in the book.
The
tools
used
by
Clément
in
his
narration are verbal, graphical and visual, in a happy coexistence that demonstrates further the mutual distinction between them: sketches and photographs are at the
heart
of
the
book,
described
and
commented
on
in
the
brief
texts
accompanying
it,
and
in
this
balance
between three languages–verbal, graphical and visual–the book acquires a specific value
for
scholars
of
representation.
In
the first instance for the distinction be-tween sign and image, between graphical
and
visual
domain,
which
although
strongly correlated refer to symmetrical processes, a distinction that justifies the alternative
use
of
drawing
and
photography:
there
seems
to
be
a
distinction
between
the
involuntary
works
of
art
represented
with
a
proximity
gaze,
and
therefore
perspective
and
visual–through
photography–and
those
represented
according
to
parallel
projection
models
and
the
graphic
medium–through
drawing.
The
latter,
in
fact,
are perhaps more effective in identifying that organization
that
conforms
to
the
rules of harmony of the case by accompanying the observer’s gaze into otherwise
inaccessible
points
of
view.
This
is
the case for the rice fields of Kerobokan, in Indonesia, whose system of bamboo xylophones
animated
by
the
wind
to
dissuade
birds,
ends
up
producing
a
visual landscape despite their essentially sound function, or for the fencing of the golf course of Mauille-Point,
a
district
of
Cape
Town
in
South
Africa,
where
the
author probably felt the need to isolate some elements with the drawing, from others
that
would
have
entered
the
photographic frame, documenting their value
as
a
morphological
rather
than
visual system.
But the key reason for this book’s interest
is
that
the
role
of
drawing
in
Clément’s
work
seems
to
adhere
to
that
“paradoxical
archaeological
point
of
view”
which
“should
be
addressed
to
concrete objects in order to grasp [...] the drawing”,
and
which
Fabrizio
Gay
points
out
as
the
second
of
three
instances of a correct eidetic theory [Gay 2014,
p.
166].
“This
is
an
ideal
anthro-pological point of view–as Gay wrote–that
should
be
addressed
archaeologically to objects, that is without knowing in advance ‘what they are’, ignoring the mutual
functional,
commodity
and
literary
gender
boundaries
between
the
arts and the techniques that produced them.
Only
through
this
effort
of
categorical
extraneousness,
of
‘learned
ignorance’
of
the
current
artistic
and
technical categories, is the image of objects reconstructed (archaeologically) a posteriori” [Gay 2014, p. 167].
From this point of view Clément seems to
realize
precisely
that
archaeological
look that a posteriori acknowledges the image, and therefore, the drawing. That is,
the
project,
but
in
an
eidetic
back-wards path.
And yet, in conclusion, it would seem to
lack
that
original
impulse
of
intentionality
that
would
be
necessary
for
the
recognition
of
the
artifact
as
a
work of art, but in Clément’s work, like ready-mades,
it
is
precisely
the
recognition
by
the
author
of
the
aesthetic
value of that organization that conforms to the rules of harmonyof chance that makes
plastic
bags
dispersed
in
the
environment and carried by the wind on the fence of the golf course in Mauille-Point an artwork. Involuntary in its realization, of course, but intentional in its acknowledgement.