Archive
2
Blending
in with the vegetation - Vegetation
is an anticolonial weapon.
The
archive images presented here are from the film Chiến
thắng Tây Bắc'
(The victory of the North West) shot in 1952 by the military forces
in Viet Minh during the war against French occupation. Here
vegetation is a tool employed in the struggle by the weakest against
the strongest. We do not refer here to the art of camouflage, nor to
a return to a primitive state: rather it is used as a subordinate
weapon for the preservation of autonomy. Vegetation is often used as
a political agent in asymmetrical or revolutionary wars, as theorised
by Mao Tse-Toung and Ho Chi Minh. These images also demonstrate a
form of counter-planning of the land that allows topography (plains
and mountains), geography and the ecosystem (the forest or the
savana) to be used as a weapon. These images depict the strength of
the soldiers who become one with their territory. I am the territory.
They inhabit it, and reconstruct it as something else. Thousands of
soldiers travel across the country without using the established
infrastructure. Instead they use pathways that allow them to avoid
detection by the French occupiers. In this way they invent a new map.
This map subverts the relationship between city and countryside, and
the new territory is built from nature (the countryside) towards
culture (the city). Where, previously, bamboo rafts were used to
cross rivers, here Giap built invisible bridges, along the Ho Chi
Minh route, made from bamboo and positioned 10 centimetres under the
surface of the water to allow them to escape the enemy's bombardment
of the infrastructure. As well as the refinement of these particular
inventions, what stands out is the use of vegetation to support the
resistance effort.
Archive
3
The
deconstruction of the indigenous landscape
–
Vegetation
as a colonial weapon
These
archive photos were taken by the French Army. They were taken between
1956 and 1958. They document harvesting in Algeria. In this case, it
is the French Army that are doing the harvesting, protected by elite
soldiers and armored units of the French army on behalf of leading
colonisers. These images clearly depict the yield obtained from the
land, and the exploitation of agriculture for the benefit of the
coloniser. But these images also show the critical aspects of the
transformation of the landscape. On the one hand, we note the radical
planning of this territory in terms of the intense cultivation of
cereals. The intensive monoculture is designed to produce the maximum
possible yield. On the other hand, a process of transformation of the
territory is under way. Aside from the word "Algeria"
written on the grain sacks, it seems that we are witnessing a French
cereal farming region. Here vegetation is clearly used to
assimilate and acculturate. Vegetation is employed by the attacker
and coloniser of a country or region, to deterritorialize its
inhabitants. Rendering the natives foreigners in their own land was a
technique that frequently used by colonisers. In the 20th
Century, following the invasion of Poland, Nazi Germany implemented a
wide-reaching process of “Germanisation” of the territory, to
render it German.
