On the Remote

BACKGROUND: Gilbert's essay responds to Kerb Journal 22's thematic, 'Remoteness,' which interrogates the notion from four viewpoints, identifying opportunities of engagement within spaces balancing on the edge of tangibility, or deeply virtually sited. The essay 'On the Remote' explores the theoretical concept of the remote and proposes through this as a rethinking and repositioning of the relationship between story and landscape whereby inherent landscape attributes of fragility and paradox are allowed expression. CONTRIBUTION: New knowledge is generated through this essay in engaging in a disciplinary discourse around the experience of landscape. In drawing parallels between Indigenous notions of reality expressed through relationship to country and those of more foundational (but often neglected) contemporary landscape paradigms of the sublime, Gilbert suggests a new approach to the practice of landscape architecture. In doing so, the practice of landscape architecture is necessarily extended beyond that of the environmental to include also the experiential realm challenging the profession to move beyond the world of formalized fixed outcomes and technocratic solutions to issues of sustainability and environmental concern, challenging the concept of a stewardship empty of the agency of design. SIGNIFICANCE: The significance of this work is evidenced by its inclusion in the Kerb Journal of Landscape Architecture - an annual cross-disciplinary design publication produced by the RMIT University School of Architecture and Design (ISSN: 1324-8049). It is a design journal focused on contemporary landscape architecture issues from an international and national perspective.