Archive Post-Landscape: Between Nature and Culture

Curator's Essay | Images from the Exhibition | Kim Abeles Sandow Birk | Laurie Brown | Elizabeth Bryant The Center for Land Use Interpretation | Wanda Hammerbeck Andreas Hessing | Sant Khalsa | Skeet McAuley Kathryn Miller | Diana Thater | Post-Landscape Home Page Archive - Fall 2001 Home

Public Sitings (All Space in Los Angeles County)

Specific Procedure: Public Sitings defines all the public space in Los Angeles County. My definition of public encompasses a psychological approach rather than that of legal ownership. A mall, for example, is privately owned, but most people consider it to be public as they stroll or loiter among fountains, artificial plants, and shops of every specialty. I use a magnifying glass to pinpoint each public siting, paint its color code, and connect it with telephone wire of the same color; the wire in turn is connected to the matching disk color. I work from the determination that regardless of the actual size of a site, a person’s experience is based on a psychological connection and a physical idea of one body, one place. Therefore, all sitings received one disk, like a poker chip, regardless of the actual area of the space.

Aspects of Public: The terms of public remain limited to rules of entry. Parks may be visited during daylight hours, and freeways require a vehicle. People wearing metal spikes cannot walk onto Alhambra Golf Course. Huntington Memorial Hospital is public if you require emergency care, and anyone can visit from 11 to 8, unless a person is in intensive care, in which case only the immediate family is allowed. Norton Simon Museum, like most museums, is public to children under the age of 12, or if you pay—$4 for adults, $2 for seniors 62 years and over, and $2 for students.

Purpose: I took a perfectly good Thomas Guide and other maps of worthy direction, and hand-painted my public considerations. Like scalp implants, I plugged each site with its color-coded wire. Wild hairs sprouting like electricity from the orderly circuit board. I try to begin without predetermination of the results by stitching a massive quilt of Los Angeles County, hung upon the wall, floating onto the floor with piles of coded poker chips or coins tallying the cultural view.

The Smog Collectors

The London Globe printed a new word, “smog,” coined in a speech at the 1905 Public Health Congress. They considered it a public service to describe this phenomenon. Ninety-one years later we possess, yet avoid using, the technology to correct 95% of the pollution legacy.

The Smog Collectors materialize the reality of the air we breathe. They achieve their potency most effectively when the image contradicts their substance. Thus, my process is a private retaliation brought to public attention. They respond to the contradiction between the pure sky and landscape that are part of North America's history (as it is typically presented), and the reality of our polluted skies (throughout the U.S., and not confined to urban areas).

I chose selections from the Arizona State University Art Museum's collection that portray idealized American landscapes. We remember these landscapes, and more important, we involuntarily call upon this type of image when we hear terms such as “nature” or “landscape.” Then, I translated the images into smog collectors, rendering the exact scale and content of the originals, then left these on the roof of my studio and let the particulate matter in the heavy air fall upon them. When the stencil was removed, the images revealed themselves. To quote a stranger, they are “footprints of the sky.” Since the worst in our air can't be seen, Smog Collectors are both literal and metaphoric depictions of the current conditions of our life source. They are reminders of our industrial decisions: the road we took that seemed so modern.