These Grand Places
In-progress report
April 2020, in honor of the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, UW Madison, created by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson (Wisconsin) as an environmental teach-in.
An in-progress exhibition and programming for “These Grand Places” in conjunction with Earth Day was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
#thesegrandplaces
These Grand Places is a socially-engaged photography-based research project. The project consists of designing and fabricating a mobile research studio (MRS), developing an interdisciplinary methodology to carry out the work, and realizing creative field research and community-engaged practices on public land. My mechanism for relational art practice is social engagement through the act of the conversation, it influences where I go, how I see, what I make and bring localized knowledge, others’ opinions, experience and perceptions to weave into the narrative. An element of the project are informal cyanotype workshops and trail walks.
The US Department of Interior’s recommendations to deregulate public lands brings a sense of urgency. I began this project informally, looking at how both myself and others use the land we live and play on. On the Cultural Landscape Tour with Omar Poler, American Indian Curriculum Services Coordinator, he posed the question, “What if we were to look at this place through new eyes, would that change how we acted?” Omar is a collaborator on my seed grant team, to help gather a wide range of how we, as a diverse population, experience place, and how seeing it in a new way may shift our thinking or change our behavior.
My photographic practice engages the landscape with a focus on ecology in the age of climate change. Working in the landscape is instinctual, familial, cultural, memorial; looking at the perception of belonging to a place vis-à-vis as visitors on the land. I am in a pivotal moment to strengthen my investigation of place-making into a sustainable, longform practice. This private–public inquiry of place is a response to the current geopolitical-environmental moment. Utilizing on-site residencies to gather information, stories, and visual artifacts, These Grand Places documents the lived experience and connections between land and people. It does not follow the norm of straight documentary nor presents a loss narrative common in photography–it asks questions rather than only highlights problems.
The Mobile Research Studio, the MRS, is a custom-built trailer, a live/work space equipped with cameras, laptop for post-production, printing station for digital and alternative processes, a kit to conduct public workshops, and video projector and audio for outdoor projections. Living quarters provide shelter, water, and electricity generated through solar power to run appliances, lights, equipment, and recharging stations.
The mobility of the MRS functions as a site-specific investigative tool engaging place-based methodology, ultimately providing the means to create a multilayered inquiry of place through prints, text, and community-engagement activities. The installations, subsequent publications, and exhibits will be shared in conventional art contexts, educational institutions, civic spaces and online. A broader impact is realized through social media networks that expand connections to “unlikely allies,” crowdsourcing imagery, and learning of localized issues.
International border wall, US-México at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Arizona, Tohono O’odham Nation , México