Cheaper Than Dust
From the claystone boulder I sat on, perched on a snow-covered ridge high above camp, the arid shrub steppe of the Wyoming Basin stretched far into the distance. This rugged sea of sagebrush appeared infinite. A big, almost exaggerated open space. Basked in glowing light and rendered dynamic by contrasts of texture, it’s a space that invites movement. Maybe it’s the scale, wind, or the long view. Yet, motion brought the crushing realization that this is also a land of barriers. Physically crisscrossed with thousands of miles of barbed-wire fencing, roads and mining activities. Animals making their age-old treks face an ever-growing number of obstacles. The iconic beauty of the West is fragmented, nature is fenced in.
The title of the show is based on a quote from John “Bet-A-Million” Gates, in a promotion for barbed wire fencing. Joseph Glidden’s durable and cheap design, dubbed by some in the 1870s as the “greatest invention in the world”, led to the widespread use of wire fencing across North American rangelands. It brought order to range rights holders and made it cheap to enclose land, cheaper than cowboys. The wild West was tamed by a thin steel wire.
Over a century later, cheapness is getting humankind in all kinds of environmental trouble. Our relentless thirst to own, fracture and exploit land is only cheap when the destruction of soils, along with the loss of biodiversity, are abstracted. Rather than thinking about the natural environment as an autonomous sphere of existence, this body of work seeks to link it with its cultural counterpart. Nature and a way of life struggling to find a balance.
How do we reconcile private property with a healthy biotic community? How do we make public interests consistent with owners’ rights to use their land? Devised in the West, these pressing questions nonetheless apply from coast to coast to coast.
From the claystone boulder I sat on, perched on a snow-covered ridge high above camp, the arid shrub steppe of the Wyoming Basin stretched far into the distance. This rugged sea of sagebrush appeared infinite. A big, almost exaggerated open space. Basked in glowing light and rendered dynamic by contrasts of texture, it’s a space that invites movement. Maybe it’s the scale, wind, or the long view. Yet, motion brought the crushing realization that this is also a land of barriers. Physically crisscrossed with thousands of miles of barbed-wire fencing, roads and mining activities. Animals making their age-old treks face an ever-growing number of obstacles. The iconic beauty of the West is fragmented, nature is fenced in.
The title of the show is based on a quote from John “Bet-A-Million” Gates, in a promotion for barbed wire fencing. Joseph Glidden’s durable and cheap design, dubbed by some in the 1870s as the “greatest invention in the world”, led to the widespread use of wire fencing across North American rangelands. It brought order to range rights holders and made it cheap to enclose land, cheaper than cowboys. The wild West was tamed by a thin steel wire.
Over a century later, cheapness is getting humankind in all kinds of environmental trouble. Our relentless thirst to own, fracture and exploit land is only cheap when the destruction of soils, along with the loss of biodiversity, are abstracted. Rather than thinking about the natural environment as an autonomous sphere of existence, this body of work seeks to link it with its cultural counterpart. Nature and a way of life struggling to find a balance.
How do we reconcile private property with a healthy biotic community? How do we make public interests consistent with owners’ rights to use their land? Devised in the West, these pressing questions nonetheless apply from coast to coast to coast.
