heart•land
–noun
1. the part of a region considered essential to the viability and survival of the whole, esp. a central land area relatively invulnerable to attack and capable of economic and political self-sufficiency.
Heartland Sisters of Mercy
Clearly now the past mistakes
The giant steps we had to take
The path that ever promise made to
Die in dream dissolve and fade
My heartland heartland heartland
The ownership of or the belonging to land forms an important part in the forming of identity, and power relations within society. This is nowhere more clear than in the History of South Africa.
‘Hartland’ documents an exploration of Afrikaner identity through the ‘sampling’ of selected Afrikaans text and its reconstruction/remixing into landscapes and maps. The maps and landscapes doubles as encrypted or obscure love letters, where the text becomes a maze of meaning, used to construct and reconstruct identity in relation to belonging.
text by Stephan Erasmus
