Bonneville Salt Flats, Wendover, Utah, 15 September 2021.

Land Arts 2021 Exhibition

Texas Tech University College of Architecture and Museum of Texas Tech University announce the
LAND ARTS 2021 EXHIBITION.

The opening reception will take place from 6-8 p.m. Friday, February 18, 2022, in Leonardo’s Kitchen at the Museum of Texas Tech University at 3301 4th Street in Lubbock, Texas.

The exhibition culminates the semester-long transdisciplinary field program Land Arts of the American West presenting documents and constructions by students Maria Amador, Jef Biesinger, Wills Brewer, Talia Brown, Christoffer Eide, Meghan Giles, Joshua Haunschild, Penelope Leggett, and Amber Noyola. Within the Texas Tech University College of Architecture, Land Arts is a “semester abroad in our own backyard” where architects, artists, historians, and writers camped for fifty nights while traveling 5,837 miles overland to experience major land art monuments—Double Negative, Spiral Jetty, Sun Tunnels, The Lightning Field—while also visiting sites expanding our understanding of what land art might be such as pre-contact archeology of Chaco Canyon, scientific exploration at the Very Large Array, and military-industrial operations in the Great Salt Lake Desert. To negotiate the multivalent meaning of these places and shed light on strategies to aid their comprehension we invite the wisdom of field guests—writers, artists, and interpreters—to join specific portions of our journey. 2021 field guests included Matt Coolidge and Aurora Tang of the Center for Land Use Interpretation, artist-filmmaker Deborah Stratman, musician, artist, curator, and soundworker Rebecca Gates, and curator at Chinati Foundation Ingrid Schaffner. Land Arts hinges on the primacy of first-person experience and the realization that human-land relationships are rarely singular. The Land Arts 2021 Exhibition will continue through April 17, 2022.

Gallery Hours and Events
The exhibition is open Tuesdays through Saturdays 10am – 5pm and Sundays 1-5pm. Admission is free.

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About Land Arts 2021

The Land Arts 2021 field crew includes participants Maria Amador an architect, PhD candidate in Seville, Spain, Jef Biesinger an environments designer and artist in Chicago, Wills Brewer an artist based in Los Angeles, Talia Brown a writer/artist, Hampshire College graduate, Christoffer Eide an artist from Oslo, Norway, Meghan Giles a poet/writer, PhD candidate at Texas Tech, Joshua Haunschild an artist/photographer with MFA from Arizona State University, Penelope Leggett a landscape architect with BLA from UC Berkeley, and Amber Noyola an architecture M Arch candidate at Texas Tech.

Sites on the 2021 itinerary ventured from Cebolla Canyon and Jackpile Mine to Muley Point, Goblin Valley, Spiral Jetty, Sun Tunnels, Center for Land Use Interpretation Wendover, Double Negative, North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Trick Tank, Chaco Canyon, Marfa, Cabinetlandia, Chiricahua Mountains, Mimbres River, Plains of San Agustin, The Lightning Field, Two Buttes, White Sands, and Lubbock.

Field guests for 2021 were Matthew Coolidge, Noémie Despland Lichtert, Gretchen Dietrich, Curtis Francisco, Rebecca Gates, Jesse & Irma Larriva, Colleen O’Brien, Monty Paret, Ingrid Schaffner, Brendan Sullivan Shea, Deborah Stratman, and Aurora Tang.

Land Arts 2021 field season was made possible with generous operational support from Andrea Nasher, the James Family Foundation, and Matti and Henry Brown. This was also the first year with the Land Arts Support Vehicle possible with a gift from Owl Call Radio.

Chris Taylor, director of Land Arts of the American West at Texas Tech, leads the program and was assisted in the field by Phil Jackson from Philadelphia and Austin.

About the Museum of Texas Tech University
Established in 1929, the Museum is an educational, scientific, cultural, and research element of Texas Tech University. It is a not-for-profit institution by virtue of being a part of Texas Tech University. The Museum’s purpose is to support the academic and intellectual mission of Texas Tech University through the collection, preservation, documentation, and research of scientific and cultural material and to disseminate information about those collections and their scientific and cultural topics through exhibition, interpretation, and publication for primary, secondary, and higher education students, the scholarly community, and the general public. The Museum aspires to provide the highest standard of excellence in museological ethics and practices, while pursuing continuous improvement, stimulating the greatest quantity of quality research, conservation, interpretation, exhibition, and education, and providing support for faculty, staff, and students. The Museum is a multi-faceted institution that includes the main building, the Helen Devitt Jones Auditorium and Sculpture Court, Moody Planetarium, Natural Science Research Laboratory, and Lubbock Lake Landmark, an archaeological and natural history preserve.

Land Arts 2021 Exhibition at the Museum of Texas Tech University will take place within Leonardo’s Kitchen, a gallery of new ideas, research, and creativity established to present a changing array of exhibitions that examine the research and creativity of Texas Tech University across science, technology, engineering, math, humanities, and the arts.

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For additional information about Land Arts of the American West at Texas Tech or to schedule an interview with Chris Taylor contact him by phone at 806-834-1589 or email at chris.taylor@ttu.edu. Information about the College of Architecture can be found at http://arch.ttu.edu, and the Museum of Texas Tech University by visiting https://www.depts.ttu.edu/museumttu/.

Leonard_al rio.jpg — Zoe Leonard, image from *Al Rio/To the River*, 2016–20. Gelatin silver prints. © Zoe Leonard.
Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne.

Land Arts 2020 ADAPTATION

How does a field program adapt to a pandemic? Science fiction scenarios of bio-hazard-suited researchers, roaming the desert, examining the residue of humanity’s engagement with the natural world do not adequately protect participants from covid-19 uncertainty. Nor can we shield the vulnerable communities and lands—disadvantaged by systemic economic poverty and limited health infrastructure—that we routinely encounter. Rather than magnify the inherent risks of travel, Land Arts 2020 will adapt.

Land Arts 2020 ADAPTATION will conduct an interdisciplinary deep research studio and seminar to construct a meander map of the Rio Bravo / Rio Grande as it marks the border from Juarez / El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico. We will collectively research, study, draw, the history and traces of the ever-changing river. The work produced will be part a publication being developed by the artist Zoe Leonard, a former Land Arts field guest, and poet Tim Johnson to build knowledge around terrain of past (and future) field operations. The 2020 Adaption seeks to responsibly honor the ethos, aspirations, and complexities of the Land Arts program that is dedicated to teaching greater awareness and understanding of how we as humans build and operate on the planet.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE
Land Arts 2020 Adaptation will operate from the College of Architecture at Texas Tech University during the Fall semester as a non-traveling (face-to-face and/or hybrid-remote) studio and seminar to conduct the research necessary to produce the Rio Bravo / Rio Grande meander map that will describe the undulating and shifting course of the river over time and provide a significant resource for Leonard’s Al Rio / To the River publication.

The map, inspired by those produced by Harold Fisk and team in 1944 of The Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi, will require extensive binational and multilingual research into the history of river geometry and mapping as a manifestation of dynamic ecosystems modified over time by wide ranges of human construction.

The opportunity for students, guests, and the Land Arts program, to create a map as temporal condition report that will have significant international visibility is a tremendous opportunity in itself, and a clear way to productively adjust our operations to the present conditions.

Participation is open to everyone—architects, artists, poets, writers, historians, linguists, geographers, scientists—from those interested in the 12 credit hour graduate Land Arts Certificate to undergraduates and people yet to enroll in the university. Ideally participants will register for both the graduate topical studio and seminar, yet that is not required as it will also be possible to participate through variable credit independent study or the seminar or studio individually. There will be a host of guest collaborators from across campus and beyond.

For additional information see the Land Arts 2020 ADAPTATION prospectus and get in touch with Chris Taylor.

Scanning *Double Negative* (Michael Heizer, 1969) at 50 with Sarah Aziz—10 years after our first scan, September 2019.

Land Arts 2019 Exhibition

Texas Tech University College of Architecture and Museum of Texas Tech University announce the
LAND ARTS 2019 EXHIBITION marking ten years of the program operating from Lubbock.

The opening reception will take place from 6-8 p.m. Friday, February 21, 2020, in Leonardo’s Kitchen at the Museum of Texas Tech University at 3301 4th Street in Lubbock, Texas.

The exhibition culminates the semester-long transdisciplinary field program Land Arts of the American West presenting documents and constructions by students Isaac Arzate, Romina Cardiello Cereijo, Ashley Condina, Lia Forslund, Daisy Limon, Maggie Mitts, Barbara Pearsall, Skylar Perez, Adrian Reyna, and Franek Wardynski. Within the Texas Tech University College of Architecture, Land Arts is a “semester abroad in our own backyard” where architects, artists, historians, and writers camp for fifty-one nights while traveling 6,128 miles overland to experience major land art monuments—Double Negative, Spiral Jetty, Sun Tunnels—while also visiting sites expanding our understanding of what land art might be such as pre-contact archeology of Chaco Canyon, scientific exploration at the Very Large Array, and military-industrial operations in the Great Salt Lake Desert. To negotiate the multivalent meaning of these places and shed light on strategies to aid their comprehension we invite the wisdom of field guests—writers, artists, and interpreters—to join specific portions of our journey. 2019 field guests included Center for Land Use Interpretation director Matt Coolidge, artist-filmmaker Deborah Stratman, Holt-Smithson Foundation director Lisa Le Feuvre, and writer Barry Lopez among many others. Land Arts hinges on the primacy of first-person experience and the realization that human-land relationships are rarely singular. The Land Arts 2019 Exhibition will continue through April 19, 2020.

Gallery Hours and Events
The exhibition is open Tuesdays through Saturdays 10am – 5pm and Sundays 1-5pm. Admission is free.

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About Land Arts 2019

The Land Arts 2019 field crew includes participants Isaac Arzate, an architecture student at Texas Tech, Romina Cardiello Cereijo, an architecture MArch graduate from Texas Tech, Ashley Condina, an artist and aspiring historian from Brooklyn, New York, Lia Forslund, a writer and artist with an MA from the Royal College of Art who is from Sweden based in European Union, Daisy Limon, an architecture MArch graduate from Texas Tech, Maggie Mitts, an art historian with MA from University of Texas at Austin, Barbara Pearsall, an artist with BA from William & Mary based in New York, Skylar Perez, an architecture MArch candidate at Texas Tech, Adrian Reyna, an architecture student at Texas Tech, and Franek Wardynski, an artist and designer with an MA from the Royal College of Art who is from Poland based in European Union.

Sites on the 2019 itinerary ventured from Cebolla Canyon and Jackpile Mine to Muley Point, Spiral Jetty, Sun Tunnels, Center for Land Use Interpretation Wendover, Double Negative, North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Trick Tank, Chaco Canyon, Two Buttes, White Sands, Plains of San Agustin, The Lightning Field, Chiricahua Mountains, Mimbres River, Cabinetlandia, Marfa, and Lubbock.

Field guests for 2019 were Sarah Aziz, Steve Badgett, Katherine Bash, Curtis Bauer, Ted Carey, Matthew Coolidge, Noémie Despland Lichtert, Gretchen Dietrich, Curtis Francisco, Deborah Garcia, Aaron Hegert, Cara Ray Joven, Lisa Le Feuvre, Hikmet Sidney Loe, Barry Lopez, Jason Lukas, Victoria McReynolds, Shay Myerson, Zachary Norman, Rob Ray, Ingrid Schaffner, Brendan Sullivan Shea, Eric Strain, Deborah Stratman, Aurora Tang, Whitney Tassie, KT Thompson, and Jim Williamson.

Land Arts 2019 field season was made possible with generous operational support from Andrea Nasher and the James Family Foundation.

Chris Taylor, director of Land Arts of the American West at Texas Tech, leads the program and was assisted in the field by Kellie Flint from California.

Land Arts 2019 Exhibition at the Museum of Texas Tech University will take place within Leonardo’s Kitchen, a gallery of new ideas, research, and creativity established to present a changing array of exhibitions that examine the research and creativity of Texas Tech University across science, technology, engineering, math, humanities, and the arts.

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*Examining brine collection canals with CLUI’s Matt Coolidge, Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah, 17 Sept 2018.*

Land Arts 2018 Exhibition

Texas Tech University College of Architecture and Museum of Texas Tech University announce the
LAND ARTS 2018 EXHIBITION.

An opening reception will take place from 6-8 p.m. Saturday, February 23, 2019, in Leonardo’s Kitchen at the Museum of Texas Tech University at 3301 4th Street in Lubbock, Texas.

The exhibition culminates the semester-long transdisciplinary field program Land Arts of the American West presenting documents and constructions by students Jessie Dodington, Elise Dupré, Amanda Jolley, Cara Rae Joven, Shay Myerson, Elijah Olson, and Hannah Rotwein. Within the Texas Tech University College of Architecture, Land Arts is a “semester abroad in our own backyard” where architects, artists, and writers camp for fifty-four nights while traveling 6,424 miles overland to experience major land art monuments—Double Negative, Spiral Jetty, Sun Tunnels—while also visiting sites expanding our understanding of what land art might be such as pre-contact archeology of Chaco Canyon, scientific exploration at the Very Large Array, and military-industrial operations in the Great Salt Lake Desert. To negotiate the multivalent meaning of these places and shed light on strategies to aid their comprehension we invite the wisdom of field guests—writers, artists, and interpreters—to join specific portions of our journey. 2018 field guests included Center for Land Use Interpretation director Matt Coolidge, art historian Ann Reynolds, and writer Barry Lopez among many others. Land Arts hinges on the primacy of first-person experience and the realization that human-land relationships are rarely singular. The Land Arts 2018 Exhibition will continue through April 22, 2019.

Gallery Hours and Events
The exhibition is open Tuesdays through Saturdays 10am – 5pm and Sundays 1-5pm. Admission is free.

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About Land Arts 2018

The Land Arts 2018 field crew includes Jessie Dodington, an artist working on an MFA at Texas Tech, Elise Dupré, an illustrator and art historian from Ghent University, Belgium, Amanda Jolley, an artist with BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, Cara Rae Joven, artist and University of California, Riverside MFA candidate, Shay Myerson, artist with BA from Lewis & Clark College, Elijah Olson, University of Texas at Austin BA in geography candidate, and Hannah Rotwein, artist and historian with BFA and BA from the University of Texas at Austin.

Sites on the 2018 itinerary ventured from Cebolla Canyon and Jackpile Mine to Muley Point, Spiral Jetty, Sun Tunnels, Center for Land Use Interpretation Wendover, Double Negative, North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Trick Tank, Chaco Canyon, Two Buttes, White Sands, Plains of San Agustin, The Lightning Field, Chiricahua Mountains, Mimbres River, Cabinetlandia, Marfa, and Lubbock.

Field guests for 2018 were SIMPARCH artist Steve Badgett, art historian Kevin Chua, Center for Land Use Interpretation director Matthew Coolidge, artist and alumna k. Flint, geologist Curtis Francisco, architects Sofia Krimizi and Kryiakos Kryiaku, writer Barry Lopez, cultural activator Andrea Nasher, art historian Ann Reynolds, and curator Whitney Tassie.

Land Arts 2018 field season was made possible with generous operational support from Andrea Nasher and the James Family Foundation.

Chris Taylor, director of Land Arts of the American West at Texas Tech, leads the program and was assisted in the field by Emily Rabinowitz from Taos and New Jersey.

About the College of Architecture
The College of Architecture at Texas Tech University is located in Lubbock where architectural education has been offered since 1927. The college includes undergraduate, graduate and PhD students and over fifty faculty members. Graduate certificate programs are offered in Historic Preservation, Visualization, Community Design, Rural Health Care Design, and Digital Design Fabrication, as well as an interdisciplinary doctoral program in Land-Use Planning, Management, and Design. To extend the academic offerings on campus every undergraduate student participates in directed summer study abroad offerings in places such as France, South Korea, Spain, and Chile. The presence of Land Arts within the college expands the range of field study connecting teaching and research directly to landscapes we inhabit.

Land Arts 2018 Exhibition at the Museum of Texas Tech University will take place within Leonardo’s Kitchen, a gallery of new ideas, research, and creativity established to present a changing array of exhibitions that examine the research and creativity of Texas Tech University across science, technology, engineering, math, humanities, and the arts.

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Above Double Negative, Mormon Mesa, and the Virgin River, Nevada, 22 September 2017. Photo by Chris Taylor.

Land Arts 2017 Exhibition

Texas Tech University College of Architecture and Museum of Texas Tech University announce the
LAND ARTS 2017 EXHIBITION.

An opening reception will take place from 6-8 p.m. Friday, February 16, 2018, in Leonardo’s Kitchen at the Museum of Texas Tech University at 3301 4th Street in Lubbock, Texas.

The exhibition culminates the semester-long transdisciplinary field program Land Arts of the American West presenting documents and constructions by students Elmer Guerrero Arrieta, Lyza Baum, Caroline Carney, k. Flint, R. Ilia Reyes, Nicolle LaMere, and Aida Salán Sierra. Within the Texas Tech University College of Architecture, Land Arts is a “semester abroad in our own backyard” where architects, artists, and writers camp for two months while traveling 5,572 miles overland to experience major land art monuments—Double Negative, Spiral Jetty, Sun Tunnels—while also visiting sites expanding our understanding of what land art might be such as pre-contact archeology of Chaco Canyon, scientific exploration at the Very Large Array, and military-industrial operations in the Great Salt Lake Desert. To negotiate the multivalent meaning of these places and shed light on strategies to aid their comprehension we invite the wisdom of field guests—writers, artists, and interpreters—to join specific portions of our journey. 2017 field guests included Center for Land Use Interpretation director Matt Coolidge, artist Zoe Leonard, and writer Barry Lopez among many others. Land Arts hinges on the primacy of first-person experience and the realization that human-land relationships are rarely singular. The Land Arts 2017 Exhibition will continue through April 29, 2018.

Gallery Hours and Events
The exhibition is open Tuesdays through Saturdays 10am – 5pm and Sundays 1-5pm. Admission is free.

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About Land Arts 2017

The Land Arts 2017 field crew includes Elmer Guerrero Arrieta, architecture student working on MARCH at Texas Tech, Lyza Baum, artist with BFA from Rhode Island School of Design, Caroline Carney, artist with BA in Medical Anthropology from University of Pennsylvania, k. Flint, artist working on MFA at University of California, Riverside, R. Ilia Reyes, architecture student working on MARCH at Texas Tech, Nicolle LaMere, artist with MFA from Texas Tech, and Aida Salán Sierra, architecture student with Masters from ETSAM, Madrid, Spain who joined as a field resident.

Sites on the 2017 itinerary ventured from Cebolla Canyon and Jackpile Mine to Muley Point, Spiral Jetty, Sun Tunnels, Center for Land Use Interpretation Wendover, Double Negative, North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Chaco Canyon, Brokeoff Mountains, Marfa, Presidio, Cabinetlandia, Mimbres River, Chiricahua Mountains, Twin Buttes, White Sands, and Lubbock.

Field guests for 2017 were SIMPARCH artist Steve Badgett, poet and translator Curtis Bauer, journalist Betsy Blaney, art historian Kevin Chua, Center for Land Use Interpretation director Matthew Coolidge, architect Upe Flueckiger, geologist Curtis Francisco, artist Zoe Leonard, writer Barry Lopez, cultural activator Andrea Nasher, art historian Monty Paret, artist Deborah Stratman, and archeologist Chris Witmore.

Land Arts 2017 field season was made possible with generous operational support from Andrea Nasher and the James Family Foundation.

Chris Taylor, director of Land Arts of the American West at Texas Tech, leads the program and was assisted in the field by Emily Rabinowitz from Taos and New Jersey.

Land Arts 2017 Exhibition at the Museum of Texas Tech University will take place within Leonardo’s Kitchen, a gallery of new ideas, research, and creativity established to present a changing array of exhibitions that examine the research and creativity of Texas Tech University across science, technology, engineering, math, humanities, and the arts.

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Elmer on last morning of Journey 2, Two Buttes, New Mexico. Photo by Chris Taylor.

Writing with tragic news of the passing of Land Arts 2017 participant Elmer Guerrero Arrieta Silva. He fell yesterday while hiking on Olkhon Island in Siberia where he was studying this summer.

He went into the American West with Land Arts to look for Russia and was in Russia in search of America when we lost him. His generous curiosity, humane grace, and love of translation are deeply missed. Thinking of his family and extensive network of friends at Texas Tech and beyond now as we grapple with this news.

Big Beard Films at Double Negative, Morman Mesa, Nevada, 4 September 2011.

Through the Repellent Fence: A Land Art Film by Sam Wainwright Douglas has been in the works since 2011 and premiered at the Museum of Modern Art Documentary Fortnight 2017. The film follows Postcommodity as they create a two-mile-long work straddling the U.S.-Mexico border in 2015 to “put land art in a tribal context.” It also includes scenes that expand the land art conversation with Lucy Lippard, Matt Coolidge of the Center for Land Use Interpretation, and Chris Taylor of Land Arts of the American West at Texas Tech as well as footage of the program experiencing the historic works. After premiering at MoMA it has gone on to screen at SXSW and many other keen venues. It broadcast on the PBS World Channel on 24 April 2018.

Stay tuned to the film’s social feeds for updates on screenings and news. Reach out to the filmmakers with queries to schedule university and museum screenings.

Found humanitarian water, Two Buttes, New Mexico, 14 October 2016, by Chris Taylor.

Land Arts 2016 Exhibition

Texas Tech University College of Architecture and Museum of Texas Tech University announce the
LAND ARTS 2016 EXHIBITION.

An opening reception will take place from 6-8 p.m. Friday, February 17, 2017, in Leonardo’s Kitchen at the Museum of Texas Tech University at 3301 4th Street in Lubbock, Texas.

The exhibition culminates the semester-long transdisciplinary field program Land Arts of the American West with the Texas Tech University College of Architecture presenting documents, objects and constructions by students Roberto Becerra, Liz Janoff, Matthew Mendez, Kaitlin Pomerantz and Claudia Vásquez. Land Arts is “semester abroad in our own backyard” where architects, artists, and writers camp for two months while traveling 5,820 miles overland to experience major land art monuments—Double Negative, Spiral Jetty, Sun Tunnels—while also visiting sites expanding our understanding of what land art might be such as pre-contact archeology of Chaco Canyon, scientific exploration at the Very Large Array, and military-industrial operations in the Great Salt Lake Desert. To negotiate the multivalent meaning of these places and shed light on strategies to aid their comprehension we invite the wisdom of field guests—writers, artists and interpreters—to join specific portions of our journey. 2016 field guests included Center for Land Use Interpretation director Matt Coolidge, art collective Post Commodity, and writer Lucy Lippard among many others. Land Arts hinges on the primacy of first person experience and the realization that human-land relationships are rarely singular. The Land Arts 2016 Exhibition will continue through April 23, 2017.

Gallery Hours and Events
The exhibition is open Tuesdays through Saturdays 10am – 5pm and Sundays 1-5pm. Admission is free.

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About Land Arts 2016
The Land Arts 2016 field crew includes Texas Tech architecture graduate student Roberto Becerra, artist and urbanist with BFA from New York University Liz Janoff, San Antonio based artist and writer Matthew Mendez, interdisciplinary artist Kaitlin Pomerantz with an MFA from the University Pennsylvania, and Claudia Vásquez an artist based in Santiago, Chile who joined as a field resident.

Sites on the 2016 itinerary ventured from Chaco Canyon to Muley Point, Spiral Jetty, Antelope Island, Center for Land Use Interpretation Wendover, Sun Tunnels, Double Negative, North rim of the Grand Canyon, Jackpile Mine, SITE Santa Fe, Plains of San Agustin, Very Large Array, White Sands, Cabinetlandia, Mimbres River, Gila Hot Springs, Chiricahua Mountains, Valentine, Marfa and Lubbock.

Field guests for 2016 were musician, artists and performers Terry and Jo Harvey Allen, SIMPARCH artist Steve Badgett, poet and translator Curtis Bauer, Post Commodity members Raven Chacon and Kade Twist, Center for Land Use Interpretation director Matthew Coolidge, Utah Museum of Fine Arts director Gretchen Dietrich, Big Beard Films director Sam Douglas, artist Boyd Elder, architect and professor Upe Flueckiger, writer Lucy Lippard, writer Barry Lopez, producer and Austin Film Society chief operating officer Sarah Ann Mockbee, cultural activator Andrea Nasher, art historian Monty Paret, artist and filmmaker Deborah Stratman, and Utah Museum of Fine Arts curator Whitney Tassie.

Land Arts 2016 field season was made possible with generous operational support from Andrea Nasher. Chris Taylor, director of Land Arts of the American West at Texas Tech, leads the program and was assisted in the field by Emily Rabinowitz from Taos and New Jersey.

About the College of Architecture
The College of Architecture at Texas Tech University is located in Lubbock where architectural education has been offered since 1927. The college includes undergraduate, graduate and PhD students and 51 faculty members. Graduate certificate programs are offered in Historic Preservation, Visualization, Community Design, Rural Health Care Design, and Digital Design Fabrication, as well as an interdisciplinary doctoral program in Land-Use Planning, Management, and Design. To extend the academic offerings on campus every undergraduate student participates in directed summer study abroad offerings in places such as France, South Korea, Spain, and Chile. The presence of Land Arts within the college expands the range of field study connecting teaching and research directly to landscapes we inhabit.

Land Arts 2016 Exhibition at the Museum of Texas Tech University will inaugurate Leonardo’s Kitchen, a gallery of new ideas, research, and creativity established to present a changing array of exhibitions that examine the research and creativity of Texas Tech University across science, technology, engineering, math, humanities, and the arts.

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Land Arts 2015 Exhibition

Texas Tech University College of Architecture and the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts (LHUCA) announce Land Arts 2015 Exhibition. An opening reception will take place from 6-9 p.m. April 1, 2016 at the LHUCA Warehouses at 1001 Mac Davis Lane in Lubbock, Texas.

The exhibition culminates the semester-long transdisciplinary field program Land Arts of the American West at Texas Tech in the College of Architecture and presents documents, objects and constructions by Whitman College art and geology student Fiona Bennitt from Bellingham, Washington, artist and Rhode Island School of Design MFA Henry Brown from New York, artist/writer and Bard College MFA Nick Keys from Sydney, Australia, artist and University of California at Riverside graduate student Ashley May from South Deerfield, Massachusetts, and Texas Tech architecture graduate students Mark Freres from San Antonio, Caleb Lightfoot from Midland, and Sadie Richter from Corpus Christi.

Chris Taylor, director of Land Arts of the American West at Texas Tech, leads the program and was assisted in the field by Emily Rabinowitz from Taos and New Jersey. Land Arts 2015 field season was made possible with generous operational support from Andrea Nasher and student support from the James Family Foundation.

Students traveled 6,000 miles visiting locations across the Southwest camping for two months as they explored natural and human forces that shape contemporary landscapes—ranging from geology and weather to cigarette butts and hydroelectric dams. The itinerary included: Chaco Caynon, Muley Point, Moon House, Cedar Mesa, Epicenter, Green River, Spiral Jetty, Sun Tunnels, Center for Land Use Interpretation — Wendover, Double Negative, Las Vegas Piece, North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Cebolla Canyon, Jackpile Mine, Laguna Pueblo, Adobe Alliance, Marfa, Plains of San Agustin, Very Large Array, The Lightning Field, Mimbres River, Chiricahua Mountains, Cabinetlandia, Twin Buttes, White Sands, and Lubbock.

The exhibition will open with a reception on Friday, 1 April 2016 from 6 – 9 pm during the First Friday Art Trail. The exhibition will be on view Saturday afternoons from noon to 4pm and by appointment through Friday, 6 May 2016 when the exhibition will close with another First Friday Art Trail reception. To set up an appointment contact Chris Taylor by phone at 806-834-1589 or by email at chris.taylor@ttu.edu.

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About Land Arts
Land Arts of the American West is a field program investigating the intersection of geomorphology and human construction. Land art or earthworks begin with the land and extend through the complex social and ecological processes that create landscape. Encompassing constructions that range from petroglyphs to roads, dwellings, monuments and traces of those actions, earthworks show us who we are. Examining gestures small and grand, Land Arts directs our attention from potsherd, cigarette butt, and track in the sand, to human settlements, monumental artworks, and military-industrial installations. Land Arts is a semester abroad in our own back yard investigating the American landscape through immersion, action and reflection.

Land Arts 2015 field season at Texas Tech was made possible with generous operational support from Andrea Nasher and student support from the James Family Foundation. The 2015 field crew was composed of three architecture graduate students and four artists. Future years will continue to broaden the transdisciplinary involvement from students across the Texas Tech community and participants from beyond the university.

About the College of Architecture
The College of Architecture at Texas Tech University is located in Lubbock where architectural education has been offered since 1927. The college includes 650 undergraduate, graduate and PhD students and 50 faculty members. Graduate certificate programs are offered in Historic Preservation, Visualization, Community Design, Rural Health Care Design, and Digital Design Fabrication, as well as an interdisciplinary doctoral program in Land-Use Planning, Management, and Design. To extend the academic offerings on campus every undergraduate student participates in directed summer study abroad offerings in places such as Paris, Seoul, Seville, Valparaiso and Verona. The presence of Land Arts within the college expands the range of field study connecting teaching and research directly to landscapes we inhabit.

About the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts
The mission of the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts is to inspire and enrich our community by being a catalyst for the arts. Celebrating eleven years of serving our community, LHUCA is proud to announce this fabulous addition of the Warehouses on Mac Davis Lane and Studio Flats as part of the expanding LHUCA Campus. Our campus, located on a two city block area of downtown Lubbock, is the heart of the cultural district. The campus includes the FireHouse Building with a state-of-the-art theatre and four exhibition galleries, the Helen DeVitt Jones Clay Studio, and the IceHouse that provides rehearsal, event and gallery spaces. The Graffiti Building, equipped with a classroom and teaching gallery space, will open in April of this year. The newly acquired Warehouses will provide alternative exhibition and studio spaces for creative works that reach beyond the traditional gallery presentation. Land Arts 2014 Exhibition will continue to demonstrate the flexible use of this space and serve as a magnet for the cultural growth and educational dialog between creator and viewer. The Board of Trustees and staff of LHUCA invite you to join us in celebrating the redevelopment and renovation of the cultural heart of Lubbock.

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If you would like more information about Land Arts or to schedule an interview with Chris Taylor contact him by phone at 806-834-1589 or by email at chris.taylor@ttu.edu. Additional information about the College of Architecture is at http://arch.ttu.edu, and the Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts at http://lhuca.org.

Image: Pivotal footprints, Cabinetlandia, New Mexico, 25 October 2015, by Chris Taylor.

Abounaddara, “Once Upon A Time In Syria” (2011)

Land Arts is pleased to announce “Abounaddara. The Right to the Image,” an online art exhibition that seeks to illuminate the contemporary conditions of the Syrian revolution, show solidarity with civil society in Syria, and provoke new thinking about media representation. Organized by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School, Slought, and Project Projects/P! in collaboration with Abounaddara, this virtual, distributed online exhibition seeks to spread awareness of Abounaddara’s widely acclaimed work as an anonymous collective of volunteer, self-taught artists in Syria.

The exhibition will be activated through postings of new work at exactly 12pm noon EST on three Fridays: October 23, October 30, and November 6, 2015.

The Syrian revolution has transformed the political landscape of Europe, the Middle East and now the U.S. As it dominates a global discourse on warfare, migration, and media representation, the only voices still reaching us directly from Syria are those of artists. The exhibition “Abounaddara. The Right to the Image” connects with these voices and demonstrates that cultural institutions care deeply about, and can provide direct access to, issues of great social, political, and cultural urgency. Like the work of Abounaddara itself, the exhibition offers an image of Syrians that respects the complexity of the situation and advances the right to be represented beyond categories of race, religion or political affiliation.

In situations of war and mass violations of human rights, our hyper-mediatized world creates the typical images of victims. We live in a world filled with images that are captured, edited, and published at hyper speeds. The images of the human debris of human madness are too frequently about mutilated and starved bodies, not about persons; they are too frequently images of the dystopian landscapes of wretched camps and the ruins of devastated neighborhoods and not images of the network of social relations and forms of collective cultural and political life that sustains individuals in their struggle for life in dignity and peace. Representations of human suffering and injustice are not only the effects of aesthetic choices; these are also political and ethical choices.

The right to the image finds its legal/ethical foundation in the central principle that ‘every person is entitled to equal concern and respect in the design of the structure of society.’ A broad and inclusive process for the progressive development of a right to the image is possible under existing rules of international human rights law, by deepening a holistic reading of binding international treaties. For example, in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights it is as much implicit in the right to self-determination (Article 1) as it is in the right to privacy (Article 17), or the right to the freedom of opinion and expression (Article 19).

It is as much about individual choice and the dignity of the human person, as it is about the right of a people to freely determine the terms of their political association including issues related to the expression of cultural identity.

— Abounaddara, 2015

Abounaddara is an anonymous collective of volunteer, self-taught artists whose practice is founded on the principle of emergency and an attitude of defiance towards established powers and the culture industry. Since April 2010, Abounaddara has produced self-funded, weekly short films and made them freely available to the public online. These films are anonymous and open-ended. They offer a glimpse of ordinary Syrians without restricting them to political or religious affiliations, while focusing on the details of daily life and evoking horror without ever showing it. The work of Abounaddara thus provides an alternative to the customarily extremely violent representation of the Syrian condition and is generated in close collaboration with the individuals featured in the videos. Abounaddara aims to empower civil society to independently produce its own image. An artistic project that employs the aesthetics of cinema in a spirit of do-it- yourself and disorientation, Abounaddara is also a political project that plays on anonymity and dis-identification to construct a space of resistance. The films do not look to prove a point, but rather to defend the rights of everyone to a dignified image.

For their courageous and groundbreaking work, Abounaddara have been recognized by Human Rights Watch, the Venice Biennale, the Sundance Film Festival (2014 Sundance Short Film Grand Jury Award), the Vera List Center (2014 Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics), and many others.

Exhibition works

Abounaddara, “The Russian Plane,” (November 6, 2015) Video, 1 minutes, 55 seconds.

Abounaddara, “Return of the Son,” (October 30, 2015) Video, 3 minutes, 27 seconds.

Abounaddara, “The Kid,” (October 23, 2015) Video, 1 minute 36 seconds.

Selection of additional works:
Abounaddara, “The Woman in Pants” (October 25, 2013) Video, 4 minutes.
https://vimeo.com/77826189

Abounaddara, “The Unknown Soldier,” Part 1 (November 23, 2012) Video, 2 minutes.
https://vimeo.com/54135942

Abounaddara, “The Lady of Syria,” Part 1 (February 7, 2014) Video, 4 minutes.
https://vimeo.com/86114065

Abounaddara, “The Sniper” (April 18, 2014) Video, 2 minutes. https://vimeo.com/92318539

Abounaddara, “Kill Them!” (January 16, 2015) Video, 2 minutes. https://vimeo.com/116944509

Credits
Organizing Institution
Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School

Contributing Institutions
Slought
Project Projects/P!

Acknowledgments
In conjunction with the second Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics,
awarded to Abounaddara on October 22, 2015

On the web
vimeo.com/user6924378
abounaddara.com
#Abounaddara
#RightToTheImage
#VeraListCenter