28 February 2009
Land Arts at the College Art Association Conference
SCRATCHES, ROADS, AND MONUMENTS: ground truth in Land Arts of the American West
Panel presentation by Chris Taylor
Saturday, February 28, 2009, 2:30-5:00pm
College Art Association Annual Conference, Los Angeles Convention Center, Concourse Meeting Room 407
Landscape historian J.B. Jackson taught us the road is more than a means of conveyance—it is also a place. He considered road and trailer park alongside monuments and formal estates. The designation of Roden Crater as a “natural observatory” to protect its dark skies, land acquisition around The Lightning Field to preserve its view shed, and the recent activism protesting exploratory oil drilling near the Spiral Jetty all demonstrate the complex overlays of land use in land art.
This presentation casts Land Arts of the American West as a work that makes other works, as a pliable registration between the geologic forces shaping land with the complex cultural and ecological actions defining landscape. Spanning deep history, ‘epic’ projects started in the 1960’s, and ephemeral works of today, Land Arts is a field program using direct experience to develop ground truth as a keen measure of landscape.
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