PROGRAM
Land Arts of the American West is a semester-long interdisciplinary field program expanding the definition of land art through direct experience of the complex social and ecological processes that produce contemporary landscapes—from geomorphology to human construction in the inscriptions of petrogylphs, roads, dwellings, and monuments, as well as traces of those actions. Land art includes gestures both small and grand, directing our attention from potsherd, cigarette butt, and mark in the sand to human settlements, monumental artworks, and military/industrial projects such as hydroelectric dams and decommissioned airfields.
Each year Land Arts travels more than 8,000 miles to live and work for over fifty days in the landscape while visiting sites such as Chaco Canyon and Roden Crater, the Grand Canyon and Double Negative, the Wendover Complex of the Center for Land Use Interpretation and Spiral Jetty, Marfa and Mata Ortiz, the Very Large Array and The Lightning Field.
Land Arts was founded in 2000 at the University of New Mexico by Bill Gilbert with the assistance of John Wenger. From 2001 to 2007 the program developed as a collaboration co-directed by Bill Gilbert and Chris Taylor, then at the University of Texas at Austin. In the fall of 2008 Taylor began teaching within the College of Architecture at Texas Tech University and now Gilbert and Taylor operate the program autonomously at the University of New Mexico and Texas Tech University. For information about the program at UNM see http://landarts.unm.edu/. In January of 2009 the Nevada Museum of Art announced the creation of the new Center for Art + Environment and the acquisition of the archive of Land Arts of the American West.
Operational and curricular material about Land Arts at Texas Tech can be found on the College of Architecture website. Later in year this site will be widely updated to include greater access to the program archive. Please contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)for any additional information.
2010 Admissions at Texas Tech
Opening The Cultivated Wilderness, or, What is Landscape? architecture critic Paul Shepheard reveals that “This book is about seeing things that are too big to see.” He goes on to provide three clear frames to orient our recognition: “The Wilderness of the book’s title is the world before humans appeared in it, and the Cultivation is everything we’ve done to it since. Landscape is another name for the strategies that have governed what we’ve done.” Investigating earthworks or land art is a way of mapping the intersection of geomorphology and human construction. Earthworks begin with the shape of the land and extend through the complex social and ecological processes that create landscape. Including the full array of human activity marking the planet, from petroglyphs to roads, dwellings, monuments and traces of those actions, earthworks show us who we are.
Since 2001 Land Arts of the American West has been developing as an interdisciplinary field program expanding the definition of land art and our relationship to landscape. Land Arts is a semester abroad in our own back yard. Connecting the pedagogic potential of travel with the rigors of field research.
Land Arts at Texas Tech University seeks to cultivate collective energy within an expanded interdisciplinary range of examinations from architecture, the built environment, public culture, literature, science, and geography to explorations of contemporary art practices.
THE COLLEGE OF ARCHITECTURE IS RECRUITING STUDENTS FROM ACROSS TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY AND BEYOND FOR LAND ARTS 2010.
Application information is available here: 20090313_land_arts_application.pdf. The following schedule will facilitate the application and selection process:
Information Meeting on Tuesday, March 9, 2010, 5:00pm in the Architecture and Art Courtyard. This meeting is for all students interested in applying to the program. We will review the program overview and application details.
Application Deadline is on Tuesday, March 30, 2010, 5:00pm in Room 709 of the Architecture Building.
Notification of Acceptance will occur on Tuesday, April 13, 2010.
For questions or additional information please contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).