Page 117 - Hrobat Virloget, Katja, et al., eds. (2015). Stone narratives: heritage, mobility, performance. University of Primorska Press, Koper.
P. 117
“wanna walk under the rock?”: land art, time, and tourist passages
days, I took notes and pictures, but talked to no tourists, only to the employees of the mu-
seum. My intention was not to collect tourist stories but to observe their interactions with
the sculpture. No doubt their stories would add some other dimension to what I have ma-
naged to observe myself, but that would require a different design and time commitment.
Subsequent readings on the subject of the land art, the sublime, time, art of walking,
presence and absence, and finally a visit to Berlin provided also material for the present
text. During preparation a small stone (Figure 1) from San Diego canyon – a travel remin-
der – kept me company, and it was a pleasant surprise when consulting Tim Ingold’s book
(2011) I came across his suggestion that the reader should go outside, find a stone, bring it
inside, immerse it in a pail of water and keep it on his desk while reading this chapter on
material and materiality in order to note how the stone changes during that particular span
of time. Though my San Diego stone does not change markedly when immersed in water, it
does react to the hand temperature and warms up quickly. So it was a tactile relation with
the stone from the canyon that actively contributed to this narrative.
Figure 1: Placed/displaced (Photo: Irena Weber).
Placing the rock: Somewhere ‘out there’ and ‘here’ at the museum
I’ve reached the end, you see, for museums in this kind of thing. I need a place where I can build as big as I want and destroy as
violently. The only two settings I can think of are the Sahara and the American desert.
Jean Tinguely
Somewhere in an indeterminate time zone between Old and New Wests loom the massive outdoor sculptures dubbed earthworks
in the late 1960s, now more broadly defined as land art. /…/ All the artists are white; all but one are men (sporting cowboy boots
and ten gallon hats).
Lucy R. Lippard
John Ford, eat your heart out!
Robert Morris
The 2015 feature documentary by James Crump Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art,
plays into the well-established myth advanced both by popular media and some art histori-
ans, depicting the American land artists from the late 60s and early 70s as renegades and
heroes, the pioneers, the cowboys of the Wild West who presumably left New York in a
rather romanticized gesture of rebellion (not that they would want to be called romantic
115
days, I took notes and pictures, but talked to no tourists, only to the employees of the mu-
seum. My intention was not to collect tourist stories but to observe their interactions with
the sculpture. No doubt their stories would add some other dimension to what I have ma-
naged to observe myself, but that would require a different design and time commitment.
Subsequent readings on the subject of the land art, the sublime, time, art of walking,
presence and absence, and finally a visit to Berlin provided also material for the present
text. During preparation a small stone (Figure 1) from San Diego canyon – a travel remin-
der – kept me company, and it was a pleasant surprise when consulting Tim Ingold’s book
(2011) I came across his suggestion that the reader should go outside, find a stone, bring it
inside, immerse it in a pail of water and keep it on his desk while reading this chapter on
material and materiality in order to note how the stone changes during that particular span
of time. Though my San Diego stone does not change markedly when immersed in water, it
does react to the hand temperature and warms up quickly. So it was a tactile relation with
the stone from the canyon that actively contributed to this narrative.
Figure 1: Placed/displaced (Photo: Irena Weber).
Placing the rock: Somewhere ‘out there’ and ‘here’ at the museum
I’ve reached the end, you see, for museums in this kind of thing. I need a place where I can build as big as I want and destroy as
violently. The only two settings I can think of are the Sahara and the American desert.
Jean Tinguely
Somewhere in an indeterminate time zone between Old and New Wests loom the massive outdoor sculptures dubbed earthworks
in the late 1960s, now more broadly defined as land art. /…/ All the artists are white; all but one are men (sporting cowboy boots
and ten gallon hats).
Lucy R. Lippard
John Ford, eat your heart out!
Robert Morris
The 2015 feature documentary by James Crump Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art,
plays into the well-established myth advanced both by popular media and some art histori-
ans, depicting the American land artists from the late 60s and early 70s as renegades and
heroes, the pioneers, the cowboys of the Wild West who presumably left New York in a
rather romanticized gesture of rebellion (not that they would want to be called romantic
115
