Hi Johannes and all,
I wholeheartedly agree that the nature/culture divide is a residual
false dichotomy from Romanticism. So all "land art" is always already
about "cultural forces."
Roden Crater is interesting because it really does have to do with
the time scale of Turrell's lifelong practice. He says the project
has cost him a marriage, several relationships, etc. So he really is
thinking of it in terms of the scale of his life.
Regarding perpetuity -- "which eternity? whose eternity?" Yes!
Shelley comes immediately to mind:
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said -- "two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert ... near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,
Look on my Works ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away." --
(and the archived Machinima enactment for good measure:
http://www.archive.org/details/Ozymandias )
Best,
Curt
Johannes wrote:
>The preservational dimensions here are indeed challenging to
>discuss: if they elude the control of both artist and
>gallery/museum/trust/estate etc --- do they fall into the domain of
>the state? national park authorities? district attorney? I guess,
>into the hands of land owners?
>how is geological time (in an artwork) or a work about complex
>layers of time preserved, if you claim that some such work was
>planned for "perpetuity" (eternity?), which eternity? whose
>eternity?
>it was a durational piece surely anticipated to disappear, to
>crumble and erode?
>
>The sonic art piece that recently intrigued me in regard to
>geological and cultural layers, and interactional movement
>through/listening through, is CORE SAMPLE (created by Teri Rueb
>on/about Spectacle island in Boston Harbor).
>
>Now, Smithson would not have anticipated drilling interests? You
>say: >> he yields a portion of artistic "control" to a non-human
>system that outlives him -- purposefully opening the piece up to
>large scales of time>..., implying a notion of "nature" ("non-human
>system") which we might argue does not exist. The Lake is a cultural
>field of economic interest, like an oil field or a forest or the
>sea... or like Roden Crater?
>
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