Lecture by Chris Taylor
Thursday 21 March 2013 at 4:30pm
Commons Theater
Virginia Commonwealth University
School of the Arts
Department of Graphic Design
325 N. Harrison Street
Richmond, VA 23284
Taylor will talk about the embodied experience accumulated within the last ten years of Land Arts of the American West, the transdisciplinary field program he directs at Texas Tech University that investigates the intersection of human construction and the evolving shape of the planet. 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.