| Abstract [eng] |
In theoretical background, nature and culture are now commonly considered a unity. Suggestions to revisit the nature-culture relationship and place culture within a larger system on more equal grounds to nature are made. The thesis attempts to employ a combination of semiotic instruments proposed by Algirdas Julius Greimas and Yuri Lotman, as well as the concept of nature suggested by Kalevi Kull, in order to analyse how value dynamics between the society and various nature-culture relations is reflected in Vilnius city spaces. A structure of meaning consisting of naturalisation, culturalisation, deculturalisation and denaturalisation was proposed to be applied when analysing city elements where a relation between nature and culture can be observed. Monuments and sculptures, river spaces, a military bunker colonised by bats and a notorious city tree transformed into a bench-monument were among the examples selected for research. A close analysis of the chosen city fragments disclosed polarisation being a characteristic aspect with respect to how nature-culture relations are spatially organised for the society to interact with or experience. The application of the concept of the semiosphere allowed to articulate the core expressing indications of controlled, objectified and visualised images of nature, having practical functions assigned to it (denaturalisation and culturalisation); the attempts to employ metaphors expressing the processes of nature in symbolical metadescriptions (symbolic deculturalisation and naturalisation) were rejected. A more spontaneous spatial forms of nature and a personified image of nature prevail in the periphery. |
