Straight

The idea of doing research is slowly taking hold of me. I’ve:

  1. written a short text and handed in an image for LUCA to use for communication purposes like so
  2. published on social media that I’ve taken on this research
  3. got in touch with a few people to start a series of interviews
  4. had a look at my fairly random notes (on iphone, on laptop, on pc, in mails-to-self, on paper) and organised these
  5. so all is in now in folders on one location (PC) and will be backupped (OneDrive)
  6. also trying out a separate blog for notes
  7. started research-reading books and articles on Ruilverkaveling, as my first area to be researched will be a much-Ruilverkaveled area somewhere in the Netherlands

The image below is the one I chose – for now – to be the emblematic image for my research. It has a lot of things going for it – man-madeness, flatness, bits of nature, straight line, crookedness. When picking this image I did not know that the rows of trees delineating the landscape are very much an ingredient of the Ruilverkaveling. But now I know! Because a neighbour pointed me towards the research done by Henk van Blerck.

Van Blerck recently finished a thesis on “the millions of trees and shrubs planted in our landscape in the decades after the war. They were part of the landscape plans drawn up by designers … for 450 land consolidations – in 70% of the Netherlands. They [the trees] were inconspicuous and small .. when they were planted, but nowadays they are often iconic.” quote, my translation. Henk van Blerck calls this ‘Het Groene Maatpak’ which translates to ‘the green tailor-made suit’

Made some other images of straight-lined-ness that I took come to the forefront of my mind – see images above.

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