DIVERSIFY OR DECAY: THE RUST BELT BUCKLES
Student Exhibition, LAND ART IN AN ELECTRONIC AGE
Taught by Julia Christensen, Luce Visiting Professor of the Emerging Arts
NOVEMBER 21-25, 2008; FISHER GALLERY, OBERLIN COLLEGE
Opening reception is at 7:30 PM, Friday, November 21
ANNA * DAVID * LISA * IRIS * LEO * MARGARET * RENEE * SHANNON
Diversify or Decay: The Rust Belt Buckles
EXHIBIT TEXT
Land Arts of an Electronic Age is a class developed in order to understand how contemporary artists connect with and interpret the landscape, since digital connectivity and GPS abilities emerged as artists’ tools. The work of land artists is inherently interdisciplinary. A central discovery made by the class is that contemporary land art is as much a document of “creative research” as it is “art that hangs on a wall.” This class has focused on the artistic output of research––photography, video, design, creative writing––to blend with the traditional research methods of academic writing or reading.
This fall, we hosted visiting artists to inform our understanding of currents in land art methodology. Trevor Paglen visited to tell us about his work uncoving secrets of the "black sites" of the U.S. military. Chris Taylor visited from Texas Tech to tell us about the Land Arts of the American West program he directs with Bill Gilbert. Nathan Martin visited to expand our understanding of what a "map" means to us in this electronic age.
Matthew Coolidge of the Center for Land Use Interpretation had an educational residency at Oberlin College facilitated by the Luce professorship. Coolidge worked with students here on campus, and he also led the class on a three-day field trip to Gary, Indiana. In Gary, we were faced with the underbelly of America’s steel industry. For the first time, we were seeing where our own cities come from––where our steel beams are made, where the pipes that run underground come from, where much of America’s infrastructure is built. And it is not a “pretty” sight to see. The 20-mile stretch on Lake Michigan surrounding Gary is a notoriously abandoned industrial wasteland, from Burns Harbor all the way to East Chicago. Active steel plants mingle with abandoned mills, which mingle with a tragically stunning natural display of dunes and lakeside nature. While in the area, we met with a local history teacher who is also a community organizer and industrial historian; we visited an industry museum in East Chicago; we met with Gary’s local historical society’s president; we climbed the dunes to see vistas of electricity plants with active cooling towers looming over the lake; we explored abandoned steel mill sites; and we were even so lucky to take airplanes up to see the site from above, to get the bird’s eye view. We were continually asked to question what the landscape of Gary means within the larger structure of our lives as inhabitants of Oberlin and beyond.
The art work in this exhibition, DIVERSIFY OR DECAY: THE RUST BELT BUCKLES, is the creative output that the students in the class have made in response to our trip to Gary. Disciplinary restrictions were removed from this assignment, as students were asked to focus on the concepts that struck them during their trip. As a result, the art work seen in this exhibition draws from students’ varied backgrounds within the liberal arts setting of Oberlin College and Conservatory. This class has an extremely interdisciplinary student population––students from environmental studies, political studies, art history, creative writing, the conservatory––so the art work seen in this exhibition is also highly interdisciplinary. Students have used digital tools in order to create sound environments, video projections, mapping web sites, digital photography, combined with creative writing, collage, drawing, and more, meant to express research findings from the Gary field trip.
We believe that in order to create a sustainable future, artists have a holistic set of tools that inform as well as inspire. We expand and implement change. Art is always a hub for interdisciplinary research––and as artists, we have the power of creativity on our side.
--Professor Julia Christensen, November 2008