• Kim Stringfellow, Greetings from the Salton Sea: Folly and Intervention in the Southern California Landscape, 1905-2005, Center for American Places, 2005, pp. 4-29. (Blackboard)
• William DeBuys/Joan Meyers, “Have we got a deal for you,” Salt Dreams: Land & Water in Low-Down California, University of New Mexico Press, 1999, pp. 205-219.
• Michael DiGregorio, “The Ethical Outlaw,” Los Angeles Times Magazine, December 11, 2005. http://articles.latimes.com/2005/dec/11/magazine/tm-chocolates50
• Stringfellow’s photos for the article above are available at the following link: http://kimstringfellow.photoshelter.com/gallery-list

Discussion question topics will not be posted this week.

• Sue Spaid, “Section 2: Activism to Publicize Ecological Problems/Monitoring Ecological Problems,” Ecovention: Current Art to Transform Ecologies, Contemporary Arts Center, June 2002. http://www.greenmuseum.org/c/ecovention/sect2.html
• Alan Sonfist, “Natural Phenomena as Public Monuments [1968],” Land and Environmental Art, Phaidon Press, 2001, pp. 257-258. (available on Blackboard)
• Agnes Denes, “Wheatfield—A Confrontation [1982],” Land and Environmental Art, Phaidon Press, 2001, pp. 261-262. (available on Blackboard)
• Viet Ngo, “Lemna Systems [1995],” Land and Environmental Art, Phaidon Press, 2001, p. 264. (available on Blackboard)
• Mel Chin, “Revival Field [1995],” Land and Environmental Art, Phaidon Press, 2001, pp. 264-265. (available on Blackboard)
• Patricia Johanson, “Fecund Landscapes: Art and Process in Public Parks,” Land View: Online Journal of Landscape, Art, and Design.  http://www.landviews.org/la2003/fecund-pj.html
• Fritz Haeg, Edible Estates: http://www.fritzhaeg.com/garden/initiatives/edibleestates/about.html

Discussion Questions:

• Please post three in-depth discussion questions relating to a different artist/reading from above for this week’s conversation.

• Lucy R. Lippard, “Parking Places,” On the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art, and Place, The New Press, 1992, pp. 135-152.
• Emily Scott, “Field Operations: the Geographical Impulse in Post-1960s Art,” delivered at College Art Association Annual Meeting, February 26, 2009. (instructor will provide)
• Fallen Fruit: http://www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org/3/viegeneretal.htm
• Mindy Farabee, “(Re)Interpreting the City,” Legacy, Volume 1, no. 6, Nov-Dec 2007. (instructor will provide)
• Read the primer section for Jackrabbit Homestead at http://jackrabbithomestead.com/primer.html.
• Alexis Bhagat & Lize Mogel, Introduction, An Atlas of Radical Cartography, http://www.an-atlas.com/contents/contents_intro.html.

Discussion:

• Please post an in-depth discussion topic from this week’s readings for the class to consider for this week’s discussion.

We will go over a variety of technical approaches for this assignment in class. This project will be due on 10/27/10 (Week 9).

Visit soundwalk.com for some interesting ways to experience a place through mobile locative audio.

Discussion:

Please post at least one in-depth discussion question/topic concerning last week’s theme for the class to consider for this week’s discussion.

After reviewing the readings from this week, post a description and overview of the place and method(s) of documentation you plan to use for the Documented Walk* assignment. Questions to consider: Where is the location of the walk? Why is this place significant for you? What is the distance and time frame? Describe the community or landscape is your walk located in? What does it sound and smell like? Will you be looking for something in particular or will you document what catches your eye? Will the walk be physically challenging or strenuous in nature? Will you collect or document objects or things along your walk? What media will you use to document your walk? Text/writing? Poetry? Drawing? Photography? Sound or video recording? A journal? A combination of various media? How will the walk be mapped? What do you hope to find or discover?

Consider the following statement by Hamish Fulton when planning your walk:

‘No Walk No Work.’ The physicality of walking helps to evoke a state of mind and a relationship to the landscape. Fulton believes there is a strong correlation between his state of mind and his walking performance. When he walks he always attempts to empty his mind as much as possible, so enhancing the meditative quality of his walking. Think of the act of mindful walking as a creative process.

*Those of you considering a walk in nature may want to check out nearby Lake Merritt or Mission Trails Park. The Tijuana Estuary at the border is another interesting location—you can actually walk along the fence where it meets the ocean. Of course, walks on the beach will do or perhaps a walk through Fashion Valley mall. Remember that your walk does not have to be necessarily staged in nature. The walk can be in an urban area, a city neighborhood or maybe downtown in Gaslamp. Consider closing your eyes and selecting a location on a map in San Diego blindly—let fate determine your walk.

• Chris Taylor/Bill Gilbert, “Practicing Land Arts: On Site, Part One,” Land Arts of the American West, University of Texas Press, 2009, pp. 137-155.
• Matthew Coolidge/Sarah Simmons, Overlook: Exploring the Internal Fringes of America with the Center for Land Use Interpretation, Metropolis Books, 2006, pp. 15-41.
• CLUI: Owens Valley Bus Tour (in conjunction with the Diversions and Dislocations exhibit) http://www.clui.org/lotl/v27/day1.html
• “Trevor Paglen Talks About “The Other Night Sky,”Artforum, March 2010, pp. 225-228. PDF download at http://www.paglen.com/pages/media.html (click on the blue Art Forum graphic)
• Art Now: Mark Dion: Tate Thames Dig (read all sections in interactive Flash feature) http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/artnow/markdion/default.shtm and http://www.tate.org.uk/learning/thamesdig/flash.htm

Discussion Questions:

1. A big concern of the Land Arts program is transcending disciplinary boundaries or frames of studio art and design culture. I would like the art students in the class to reflect on this part of the conversation and share their thoughts on how this direction could be a healthy one for art/design practice. Also consider why disciplinary boundaries seem to persist. For the non-art students, I would like you to consider how transcending disciplinary boundaries could broaden your experience here at the university.
2. Studio art, design practice, and most art historical research are traditionally done in a studio environment. How does moving into the field affect both creative research and actual arts production? Provide examples from the Land Arts article. What types of creative possibilities do you imagine could evolve from direct immersion in specific places or landscapes for extended periods of time?
3. Explain the Land Arts “leave no trace behind” ethic in relation to field-based research and production.
4. The Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI) in its quest to “increase and diffusion of knowledge about how the nation’s lands are apportioned, utilized, and perceived” seeks to “connect disparate fields and perspectives” and “embraces a post-protest ethic that moves beyond simple binary oppositions” in their multidisciplinary projects. Describe why work of this kind is innovative and unique compared to more traditional means of interpreting landscape and the built environment. Which types of disciplinary boundaries are blurred? How are these presented? Provide a few examples listed in the article.
5. Explain how the CLUI’s non-partisanship with many of the more politicized subjects they investigate enable them to operate across boundaries and gain entry into difficult locations such as the Nevada Test Site. How is this seemingly neutral stance subversive?
6. Working as both a fine artist and geographer, Trevor Paglen is a prime example of a cultural producer operating across diverse fields of study in areas that until recently, most contemporary artists did not explore. Discuss some of his projects and technical innovations. How might it be helpful for artists to explore areas outside of formal arts practice within their work?
7. How does Mark Dion’s Tate Thames Dig tell a story of London’s rich archaeological past? How are the taxonomic arrangement of artifacts in this piece different from ones found in scientific displays of nineteenth century natural history museums he is replicating and inspired by? How might this type of field research/production model be applied to a localized subject in San Diego?

• New Topographics Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Topographics
• Williams Jenkins, “Introduction,” New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-altered Landscape exhibition catalog, International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester, New York, 1975. (available on Blackboard)
• Leah Ollman, “Art Banality, in black and white: Exploring the rise of photography’s New Topographics movement, whatever it may mean,” Los Angeles Times, November 15, 2009. (available on Blackboard)
• Slate.com’s photo essay feature on Disney’s Celebration— a planned residential community in Florida: http://www.slate.com/id/2113107/slideshow/2113258/fs/0//entry/2113259/
• Lucy R. Lippard, “The Grass on the Other Side of the Fence,” Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society, The New Press, 1997, pp. 225-241.
• Rebecca Solnit, “Poison Pictures,” Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics, University of California Press, 2003, pp. 135-139. (available on Blackboard)

Discussion Questions: (please respond to all questions this week)

1. In William Jenkins Introduction from the New Topographics catalog, he comments about the veracity of the photograph. What does he mean by this? How can documentary photographs imply fact or a perceived reality when in actuality they can be completely false and misleading? How does the advent of manipulation of the photographic image through digital means further blur whether a photograph is fact or fiction?
2. A commonality of the photographs included in the 1975 New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-altered Landscape exhibit is the absent of visual or pictorial style (to the point of being completely boring) that is associated with earlier examples of landscape photography such as the work of Ansel Adams. “The pictures were stripped of any artistic frills and reduced to an essentially topographic state, conveying substantial amounts of visual information but eschewing entirely the aspects of beauty, emotion and opinion.” [Wikipedia: New Topographics] Why was it important for this group of photographers to negate stylistic conventions generally held in the representation of landscape in photography and art? What was their collective goal in doing so?
3. New Topographics has been heralded as a landmark exhibit in photography. The show’s title gave a name to “a phenomenon — the proliferation of straight, seemingly uninflected photography of the banal, built environment.” Considering the photography of nature and landscape discussed in last week’s class, please discuss why you feel that this exhibit had such an impact on photography.
4. Briefly characterize and outline Lippard’s overview of suburbia in her essay, “The Grass on the Other Side of the Fence.”

Additional homework:

• Please read & respond to the “What is your place?” homework assignment available in Course Docs section.

• Rebecca Solnit, “Every Corner is Alive: Eliot Porter as an Environmentalist and an Artist,” Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics, University of California Press, 2003, pp. 225-253. (click here for an online link to this reading).
• Rebecca Solnit, “Unsettling the West: Contemporary American Landscape Photography/Look the Other Way: New Western Landscapes,” As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art, University of Georgia Press, 2001, pp. 90-108.
• Lucy R. Lippard, “Out of the Picture Window,” Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society, The New Press, 1997, pp. 178-192.

Graduate reading:

• Rebecca Solnit, “Scapeland,” As Eve Said to the Serpent: On Landscape, Gender, and Art, University of Georgia Press, 2001, pp. 63-89.

Discussion Questions:

1. Solnit states that Eliot Porter’s photography gave “the wilderness idea a face” that taught the public how to perceive natural spaces and what to look for when we visit these places.  She comments on page 226, “The greater success is more paradoxical: the work becomes so compelling that it eventually becomes how we see and imagine, rather than what we look at.” How can these types of mediated images limit our experience of nature?
2. With the popularity and commercial successes of Porter’s photographic body of work with the Sierra Club, much of the contemporary nature photography produced today mimics Porter’s work directly in style, color, and subject.  How does this ubiquitous style of photography, which, at times, seems to focus on wilderness devoid of a human presence perpetuate a romantic view of nature and complicate or devalue human “symbiotic relationships with the land?” Give some examples that Solnit provides.
3. On page 243 of the Porter reading, Solnit posits, “Landscape photography generally depicts open space, usually defined by a horizon line, with the camera looking forward, much as a standing or striding human being might. It depicts, most often, anthropomorphic space— anthropomorphic because its central subject is space, space that can be entered at least in the imagination.” What does she mean by anthropomorphic space? Why does most of Porter’s photographic work not fit within the anthropomorphic space convention she suggests?
4. In the Out of the Picture Window reading, Lippard comments how, “conventional landscape photography tends to overwhelm place with image. It is usually presented in fragments rather than in grounded sequences. Once wrenched from its context, the image, no matter how well intentioned or well researched, floats off into artland.” Why does she feel that it is important for contemporary artists dealing with a particular place or community as subject to offer multilayered vignettes place rather than singular images?
5. Both authors contend that aesthetic beauty can be a very powerful conveyor of difficult and complex ideas. Why is it problematic when artists, especially photographers, aestheticize scenes of environmental devastation in their work? How can beauty be an impetus that motivates us to examine ecological destruction? What examples does each author provide?
6. Lippard argues that one of the problems with classic earthworks of the 1960s/70s—such as the work of Smithson and Heizer—is that a monumental art object in the landscape derives “much of its power from distance: distance from people, from issues, and even from places. Its site-specific but not place-specific.” Why is this distancing problematic and how can this form of art evolve into something more than “artists indulging their desire for scale and monumental presence on the land?”
7. Both authors talk about the problems an artist/photographer faces when documenting sites of environmental devastation or ones where grave human injustices took place. They both contend that these “invisible landscapes” are difficult to represent and require complex tactics to address them. What are some ways that artists can represent this type of site in their work? Please provide some examples presented by each author.