Christos Merantzas is Associate Professor in the Department of History & Archaeology of the University of Patras where he teaches cultural history and theory. He has published extensively in the cultural history of Byzantine and post-Byzantine period (six books, two co-authored monographs) and in the aesthetic appreciation of human-constructed environments (one book) and numerous articles in a variety of journals covering subjects from cultural history of the body to cultural management and environmental aesthetics. He was the scientific responsible for the Research Project entitled 'The Virtual Museum' funded by the 'John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation' (2015). In 2013 he has awarded the Metsovion Interdisciplinary Research Prize of the National Technical University of Athens for the best academic research.
Christos Merantzas (2020). Topio-graphies. Athens: Smili
Over-exploitation, without the much required development standards to protect the environment and ecosystems, can create a sensory experience with negative signs and values due to the extensive field of mechanical production and profit generation therefore offending historical values, the policy of spatial arrangement in force concerning exploitative potential zones, the cultivated civilization, the biological status of ecosystems or the physical composition of the natural environment following a marked manifestation of technical domination. The lack of boundaries has ethical and cultural implications and is one of the main elements that manifests industrial domination. Its defining revelation is evident because limits that otherwise objectify the many profit-making activities are absent. The consequences of a dense industrial world, the demands of ever-increasing production and the immediate replaceability of entire natural fields with industrial interventions that alter the cultural landscape and deplete raw materials are visible and at the mercy of the enforced mechanisms of a technical order. An industrial world is certainly not, nor to be naively believed, as the forefront to innovation thanks to all available technological means, instead this world brings the unconditional enforcement of a treaty that entirely demotes the aesthetic values where the environment is downgraded to the level of a degraded nature. In this case, the imprint of the anthropogenic alterations of the landscape following industrial exploitation constitutes a coherent code of intervention, resulting from a multitude of synergies exploiting bauxite reserves. Itea and the northern part of the Gulf of Corinth are currently host to intense industrial activity, contributing to a labor-intense deterioration of environmental aesthetics where the dominance of tools is expressed through a variety of activities. Intense tool-prone activity serves an aggressive role as it imprints onto the landscape’s anatomy the content of a permanent and irreversible industrial alteration of the environment at large, with the potential deterioration of biodiversity and the ecosystem’s operation.
In particular, overfishing, coupled with a lack of Marine Zoning or Spatial Planning, aquaculture zoning within the Gulf of Itea, and this considering the shores of Delphi land have been confirmed as a Natura Protected Area, marine pollution, the mass dumping of fertilizers and pesticides in the marine environment, illegal fishing, and the above performed via destructive practices, the destruction of marine habitats and the underwater fields of Posidonia oceanica, non-compliance with European and Domestic environmental legislation, the decades-long scrapping of heavy industrial waste at sea in addition to largecapacity olive waste, the invasion of habitats by environmentally unfriendly human activity and interventions as well as the construction of hazardous and risky industrial installations within Natura 2000 sites, red bauxite-rich heavy metal residues flowing into the Gulf of Antikyra in Corinth, where the 1970- 1994 period recorded an estimated 43 million tons of deposited red bauxite residues, covering a total area of 288 square meters, not to mention the overwhelmed overland and coastal zones around the industrial complex of Aluminum SA in Ag. Nikolaos of Boeotia due to certain inorganic pollutants, but mainly organic pollutants (Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons), which currently define the region as one of the most polluted areas in the country, the shock absorbed by Itea Bay in terms of natural radionuclides, both of the 238U and 232Th series, as a result of the burdensome operations of the company exploiting bauxite, the strain caused by fluorine gas emissions from the production of aluminum which has severely afflicted the soils east of the Antikyra and within a radius of more than ten (10) kilometers, the extremely high values of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) found in the soils, the lack of research on the cumulative effects of wind park installations over an extended period of time, particularly within Natura zones, the Approval of the Revised Regional Spatial Framework for the Region of Central Greece and its Certified Environmental Protection Plan published in Government Gazette 299/14.12.2018, which puts forward a proposal for mining works in line with the region’s future development, the proclamation of the prefectural area as an “Area of Exclusive Mining Activity”, with mining activities surrounding the perimeter of archaeological protection zones A and B of the Delphic landscape, shifting their scalability to penetrate into these sites, all of the above encouraging the need for an aesthetic evaluation of the Delphic landscape
The narrow and unrestricted dependence of populations on bauxite and fish farming is a fundamental foundation for the livelihood of local populations and this dependence explains how two monocultures, within a dynamic and culturally rich environment, reap the creative power of local populations. There’s the impression that while two systems co-exist, one comes to exclude the other. The first is closer to nature and consists of a network of cultural terms, historical wealth, where the olive grove and Apollo dominate. The other emerged in the region as a form of aggressive discontinuity, and strongly leans towards the irreversibility of its industrial choices and consists of an important employment prospect that absorbs the labor of the local population, but also oppressively interrupts communication with the natural environment, therefore demonstrating a high relevancy deficit with respect to the region within which it operates.
Consequently new balances shared between three types of values – ecological, socio-cultural and economic – can define the boundaries of the lineal urge for development and the field of forced conservation of natural envirnoment. The social and economic values include the labor structure and employability of the local population, as well as the utilization of natural resources both locally and nationally, the ecologiacal values include endangered species and the importance of the area as a repository and conservation site, and finally cultural values include the depth and density of a historical wealth as the potential for a culture to express itself.
The active encounter of the human body with the environment is a decisive and crucial driver in the uptake and transformation of environmental aesthetics, similar to the way that German philosopher Gernot Böhme perceives the ecological aesthetics of nature, making environmental aesthetics dependent on how the human body is positioned within the natural environment. The quality and essence of environmental aesthetics solely depending on this re-emergence of anthropocentrism reintroduces the ultra-authority of a human supremacy to the body of land and sea. On the basis of this treaty, the environmental aesthetic cannot simply be reduced to a subjective human experience, nor can it be weakened because of a simplistic empirical sense exclusive to the human being according to Arnold Berleant. The multiple constituent structures of a region include both the human and non-human, geology, weather phenomena, climatic conditions, fauna and flora, water systems, culture, history, everyday practices, power mechanisms, exploitation, production management, industrial laws, dissemination of knowhow, scientific legitimacy, etc. which are the building blocks for coherent content and narrative on how a particular environment is structured, this approach being specific to the Chinese holistic perception of environmental aesthetics where humans and nature are treated as a single whole.
The priority for the appraisal of environmental aesthetic is to layout the terms of a process rich in social content that does not demote the essence of man to behaviors of personal consumption, thus providing human actions with the necessary foundation to communicate a holistic perspective where the subject serves as an active representative of environmental and cultural values. The challenge is not simply to distort the physical characteristics of a place, but extends deeper into citizens’ democratic consciousness by defending the environmental characteristics of the landscape, the ecological sensitivity and ethical quality that results from defending environmental aesthetics. The greater the interest of societies in environmental aesthetics, the more they invest in the content and substance of a fundamental moral good in order to maintain a strong level of community democratization. Therefore, the pursuit of ecological sustainability as a matter of priority to protect the natural landscape is linked to a higher degree of democratic citizenship, that will strive towards a dialogue of evaluative thinking aimed at establishing accountability for ecological and democratic citizenship. At this crucial junction point emerges the public presence and outreach of Corinthian ecological organizations, mainly the Alcyon, where information and awareness of environmental values are precisely the practices that give an inherent democratic dynamism to their public discourse.
In this context, environmental aesthetics include the interpretation of a whole, advocated by the need for an approach with a scientifically and practically sound basis and where any environmental intrusion that causes the impairment and degradation of natural resources and biodiversity is identified. However, in addition to the regulatory treaty of an approach embraced by a technocratic perspective and cognitive certitude, imagination, emotion, and varying degrees of dialectic practice and cultural engagements build a webbed and dense array of processes for interpreting, approaching, absorbing and conceptualizing environmental aesthetics. Between technocratic expertise and creative imagination there is a middle point, that is a more liberating, open and creative way of absorbing environmental aesthetics.
Understanding, also, the complexity and uniqueness of nature through the scientific view of the world, and consequently the approach to environmental aesthetics, is a principle that assumes we live in a technological biocosm and this approach that certainly belongs to the future of a world dominated by technological rationality, therefore acknowledging the only way to access the truth of nature within the scientific realm. Allen Carlson supported the interpretation of environmental aesthetics on the basis of scientific criteria that reveal its greatness regardless of human intervention. Science penetrates the innermost conditions and relationships of the physical and can guide a scientific evaluation on the basis of specific criteria, not simply of a superficial exterior but that intrinsically allow a multifaceted biocosm to function. Even though environmental aesthetics, through the scientific exploration of nature, can be reduced to quantifying a reality that extends beyond any sensory experience, we cannot overlook the fact that scientific evidence researches and highlights the individual constituents of a natural world, i.e. organic components of a biocosmic reality, demonstrating the specific and complex nature of natural phenomena.
That said, any terms for a clear instrumentation of observability should not burden the appreciation of environmental aesthetics because of the dynamics of a technological rationality, instead should be accompanied by a poetic and contemplative exploration that penetrates beyond the surface of the landscape into the endless stocks of the cultural formations that make up it. A holistic appraisal should be sought, one that will converge scientific and cultural elements under a completely unified treaty. Nor could the degradation of nature serve as the sole condition for the appraisal of environmental aesthetics as a contemporary matter, where environmental aesthetics is consumed solely as a sensory or even imaginary object, depending on the will of the human subject and its conscious realities.
Unlike the positions of Allen Carlson, Marcia Muelder Eaton and Yuriko Saito, we could not claim the exclusive reliance of environmental aesthetics solely on scientific knowledge and documentation just to avoid giving priority to subjective and unsubstantiated opinions, because landscapes are not cut off from vocal pre-modern traditions and practices, mythical elements and fairytales, where fortunately, people still remain their carriers despite the intense industrialization of our civilization. We cannot expect a “radical” aesthetic cut off from the metaphysical search of the past, just as we cannot expect the eradication of local folk languages and force speech to succumb to the priorities of a common exclusive official language. If there is one thing needed opposite present-day challenges is to establish an aesthetic overlap with the complexity of the very challenges facing the whole biocosm in unity against the empowered challenges of technology. This aesthetic will not abandon the historical dimension of places, as it is founded on the understanding of diverse differences and establishes valid and pragmatic proposals.
Perhaps in order to define its dominant field, technical expertise eliminated the idea of unity in nature, however it is now imperative to reverse the correlation of forces toward the nature-culture dipole and practice a sense of humility with nature in order to establish a new sense of familiarity that takes into account the constitution of human interventions and practices, the historicity and regulation of culture, the global technological rule together with the inclusiveness of nature in its entirety, this notion being understood as a completely unified concept. A holistic approach to nature should foresee a future beyond the exclusive objectification of profit and shift to a form of development that will set further boundaries on the will for any activity to dominate within the natural environment. The notion of a holistic approach is radically different from the standards of sustainability and livability, both of which are understood as anthropocentric egoism, as it highlights a single place of coexistence that prioritizes nature rather than culturally mediated technicalization and power relations imposed by the individual’s uniqueness. The uniqueness of man must be re-merged into the totality of the natural single place. Within a framework of a reshaping universalism, the basic concern therefore is to define practices within everyday life under a light of unbreakable unity between nature and culture, simultaneously recognizing the essential fact of viewing nature as a coherent whole.
The single cohesive route for the biocosm together with the complexity of its individual systems should be borne in mind whenever, from the point of view of environmental aesthetics and ecological landscape, we wish to re-establish our essential position within the natural environment, all the while considering that nature’s reckless industrialization removes from environmental aesthetic its focal ability to think of the world as a single system in which a multitude of organisms inhabit, grow, and die. In the case of the Delphic landscape, the crucial protection of the intrinsic value of local historical and cultural heritage, not only in consideration of archaeological landmarks but all aspects of the human condition, including traditional knowledge and skills, working practices and the impact of exploiting existing infrastructure, biodiversity, social structures, modern farming and fishing practices, artistic creativity, environmental protection, pollution, technological changes and mining production, should also be embedded into every effort to achieve the holistic protection of the natural environment and its resources. The essential concern for nature should serve to counterbalance the exploitation of natural resources seeing that modern subjectivism degrades and commercializes nature, driven by the narrow understanding of capitalist maximization of human well-being and its preferences.
