Living Off Landscape

Is it only through vision that we can perceive a landscape? Is the space opened by the landscape truly an expanse cut off by the horizon? Do we observe a landscape in the way that we watch a show? What, ultimately, does it mean to look?In this important new book, one of Frances most influential living theorists argues that the first civilization to truly consider landscape was China. In giving landscape the name mountain(s)-water(s), the Chinese language provides a powerful alternative to Western biases. The Chinese conception speaks of a correlation between high and low, between the still and the motile, between what has form and what is formless, between what we see and what we hear. No longer a matter of vision, landscape becomes a matter of living. Francois Jullien invites the reader to explore reasons unthought choices, and to take a fresh look at our more basic involvement in the world.