MIASU

With respect to multiple theories and interpretations within which the ‘concept of landscape’ oscillates, this research attempts to re-define the notion, bringing it back to the original condition of the man-nature relation: sort of first derivative of the interaction between the being (man) and the entity (reality). In the effort to trace the cultural origins of the issue, the attempt is to link the matter to a paradigm of thought linked to a dimension constituting man, his awareness. Hence the need to consider the implications that each landscape reality embodies and consequent need to decipher its complexity, by systematizing knowledge through the progressive identification of relations between components (nature, culture, society, economy) and scalar level of complexity concerning the landscape itself. In other words, an attempt is made to formulate a unifying cognitive-evaluation of the concept of landscape by defining an analysis tool of logic-classification type, aiming at the phenomenological-synthetic reading of all elements making up a landscape reality with the purpose to steer relative design choices with awareness.
The application-experimental field of the research is the territory of Mongolia. A land with a vast, multi-faceted, apparently little anthropized, whose essence and balance are based on a silent and constant interaction process between environmental, social-economic and settlement conditions based on the co-existence between permanent and non-permanent culture.

Recent scholarship on subnational identity, territoriality, and power in Inner Asia has emphasized its basis in forms of asymmetrical relation (“ruler” and “subject,” “owner” and “custodian,” “patron” and “client,” “host” and “guest,” etc.) spreading from supernatural masters of the land (Mng. gazriin ezed) to individual humans, mediated by heads of state, sangha, and household heads. In many contexts, these distinct institutions and individuals situate relations among themselves in terms of sharing a local “pasture” (Mng. nutag) under the power of a supernatural master. How is this “pasture” like a Bourdieusian “field” — how is the identity of these common masters, and the form of the pasture upon which institutions and persons negotiate the rules governing their relations, determined?

This talk describes the years-long process of planning, construction, remodeling, awakening, and reawakening of a monumental Buddha (Burkhan Bagsh) in Erdenet, Mongolia. Other monumental statuary projects of the postsocialist period, including Kh. Battulga’s Chinggis Khaan complex and Guru Deva Rinpoche’s Burkhan Bagsh in Ulaanbaatar, have been associated with a single human person’s claims to exemplarship and assertion of the singular importance of an institution these individual masters are reforming. The construction of the Erdenet Burkhan Bagsh, however, has involved local and national-level Buddhist institutions, the city’s coeval mining corporation, and the office of the provincial governor appointed by the national government. These institutions have often been in open conflict with one another and variously patronized by different demographics resident in Erdenet. However, during the process of building the Burkhan Bagsh divisions along lines of territorialized ethnic (undesten) identity, religious practice, political party affiliation, and natural resource management have been maintained, various masters of the land and ties to other pastures undisturbed, and local coherence in terms of national heritage, environmental responsibility, and international belonging articulated.