Art Doctor: Honoring Matthew Coolidge and the Center for Land Use Interpretation

At the University of Southern California and in institutions of higher education in America, there is a long-standing tradition of granting honorary degrees to worthy individuals. According to James Freedman, president emeritus of the University of Iowa and Dartmouth College, “In bestowing an honorary degree, a university makes an explicit statement to its students and the world about the qualities of character and attainment it admires most, [celebrating] distinguished and sublime achievement.” At USC, such degrees are awarded to “honor individuals who have distinguished themselves through extraordinary achievements… [and] outstanding contributions to the welfare and development” of their communities. This week, as commencement ceremonies approach I put forth a nominee for an honorary doctoral degree in fine arts at the University of Southern California, my home institution.

The founder and director of the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), Matthew Coolidge is one of the most prominent figures of contemporary art in America. Since 1994, the CLUI has been active in various regions in the country, examining the use and misuse of the landscape, while forming and maintaining a record that speaks to both our society and the changing environment. According to the official website, “the Center employs a variety of methods to pursue its mission, engaging in research, classification, extrapolation, and exhibition.” Past projects and exhibits range from Emergency States, an examination of small-scale towns made to train police and fire fighters for times of disaster, to The Best Dead Mall in America (pictured below), a photographic survey of an abandoned 800,000 square foot mall in Harvey, Illinois, to Antarctic 1 (pictured above), a look at the infrastructure of Antarctica’s first highway, and Proximity Issue, a series of digital photographs of the barricades that encircle the landmarks of the nation’s capitol after September 11, 2001. For more than a decade, the CLUI has been gathering and distributing vital and often overlooked information regarding humanity’s relationship to its environment. “People don't have all the facts, because how you get those facts is very much under the control of a limited number of people,” explains Coolidge in a 1998 interview. “What ‘The Center’ is doing is about information…. And so, in some ways we are trying to address the issue of the amount of information we are given, and the imbalance and control of information.”

In 1991, Coolidge received his bachelor degree in environmental, film, and contemporary art studies at Boston University. His diversified educational background has allowed him an artistic practice that is informed and unique, defying the boundaries between art, science, publishing and curating. This multidisciplinary quality is one that has been highly celebrated by the USC Roski School of Fine Arts in the past years. In fact, according to the USC Strategic Plan, the university as a whole boasts of its "strong reputation for interdisciplinary research and scholarship." The university's Renaissance Scholars Program, for example, has been honoring bright students,"whose majors and minors are from widely separated fields of study," since May 2000, awarding more than $90,000 each year. In the case of the School of Fine Arts, the most recent additions to the fulltime faculty include Adrea Zittel, whose work combines notions of art, architecture, design and sustainable living, as well as Charlie White and Sharon Lockhart, who move across boundaries of production, film and photography. Coolidge fits perfectly amongst them.

Of course, skeptics may argue that Coolidge’s efforts at the CLUI, which include those of a project director, curator, writer and photographer, cannot be defined as an artistic practice, particularly since the Center, in Coolidge's words, “exists within the institutional realm, [and works] to maintain an apparent neutrality and institutional objectivity.” In contemporary art, however, interdisciplinary boundaries undergo such constant and drastic changes that it becomes difficult and somewhat futile to give much thought to what is and is not art. Despite the institutional feel of Matthew Coolidge’s work, he is indeed a recognized figure in the world of fine arts. Under his direction, the Center has received numerous grants including support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Annenberg Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts. Coolidge was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 2004 and a media arts fellowship in 2005 from the Rockefeller Foundation and National Media Resources. In 2006, he was awarded the Lucelia Artist Award by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, an honor that has been shared by only five other artists, which include USC’s own Andrea Zittel. In describing him, Smithsonian director Elizabeth Broun states, “Matthew Coolidge represents the qualities that the Lucelia Artist Award seeks to reward–creative innovation and work that dares to address issues relevant in contemporary society.” In granting an honorary degree, USC, too, looks to pay tribute to these qualities.

Indeed, the work of this Los Angeles-based artist is not only exceptional, but of special relevance to the current human condition. Coolidge describes his efforts by noting, “we are really just working with the medium of landscape to explore social, societal, and philosophical issues.” The fundamental goal of the Center is to "increase and diffuse knowledge about how the nation's lands are apportioned, utilized, and perceived." It is this unwavering commitment to society and the spread of information across geopolitical barriers that make Matthew Coolidge the perfect candidate to be honored by the University of Southern California. And whom better to pass knowledge and unwavering passion onto than graduating students? I believe that Coolidge's speech will be not only inspiring, but of universal appeal, merging art and science, the unknown and the mundane. It will be an important accomplishment for the University of Southern California to acknowledge Coolidge's distinguished artistic efforts in addressing, saving and honoring our environment. Afterall, a main purpose of the honorary degree is to "elevate the university in the eyes of the world by honoring individuals who are highly regarded for achievements in their respective fields of endeavor."

Art Home and Away: A look at the Past and Present of my Artistic Development

This week, inspired by National Public Radio’s This I Believe program, I will be writing a more personal post, focusing on the core values and beliefs that guide my daily life as well as my chosen profession.

Some years ago, a friend asked me why I was not seeking financial security and going into the family business. “And what business would that be,” I asked laughingly, “that of the Town Sage?” My father was, indeed, the Sage of his town. I remember walking with him in the streets. He had such presence that everyone who passed him could not help but turn around for a second look. We would walk to the baker’s and an old man or a young doctor or a new father would hold his hand and ask him to converse awhile, to hear their troubles. He always did, and always knew what to say, how to ease people’s pain, how to give them hope, how to jolt them out of their paralysis. I remember once he took me to visit a man who had just lost his young son. The grieving father, surrounded by friends and family, wept as though he was determined to weep for as long as he lived. In fact, he had not stopped since the news of his son’s passing. When he looked into my father’s eyes, the pain of the world was in his own two black circles. My father sat before him and began to speak. As the man sobbed, the sage spoke of his own life, of all that he knew, all that he believed. He spoke and spoke until his voice was no longer drowned by the poor man’s sobs. When he finished, there wasn’t a tear amongst us all.

My father believed in the power of self-expression. And this I, too, believe. Though I spent most of my life without him, I was always aware that he was a revolutionary, a man who had sacrificed much of his life for the political well-being of his people. Watching him, I learned that the power to effectively express one’s beliefs and experience is the power to bring about change, to be active in a world marked with passivity. As Pablo Picasso explains, “art is an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy.”

As a child of immigration, my artistic practice is, for me, the ultimate attempt at taking an active role in a life whose direction throughout my early youth was largely decided by states and politicians. In turning to the visual arts, I was in search of an underlying, common language to relay my own experience, while touching on specific facets of the contemporary human condition. As such, my work expresses a deep interest in the investigation and comprehension of space, both literal and metaphoric. In reality, it deals not only with space, but the spaces in between (created by everything from physical barriers to history and national borders,), thereby examining agents responsible for the formation and maintenance of a modern condition. I am drawn to themes concerning the earth in relation to humanity, and more specifically, humanity’s perceived conquest and division of the earth. In the past, I have explored these themes as a macrocosmic view of individual and state endeavors, often adopting specific political and societal practices as foundations for the creation of a body of work.

Each piece often carries with it a strong sense of local and global history, placing my use of the ephemeral in a larger context of time. In a recent exhibition (pictured here), for example, where 3000 lbs of salt recreate, on the gallery floor, a pseudo-topographical map of the continents inspired by satellite images of the Earth at night, the overwhelming spread of light, as well as its absence in select areas of the planet, are indicators of the patterns of human history. Similarly, the history of salt, while enmeshed with the Earth, is a history of civilizations. In its productive form (salt as currency, food and preservation), it is linked to notions of creation and rising nations, while in its destructive form (“salting the land”), it is a cruel force of destruction.

In my practice, I deal with issues such as migration, division and displacement not only on the level of global power structures (creating photographs that manipulate national borders or draw walls through imaginary landscapes) but also on a personal and sensual level (installations that deal with sense memory, nostalgia and movement). After all, as artist/choreographer Yvonne Rainer exclaims in reaction to the horror of media images of the Vietnam War in 1968, it is “the body that remains the enduring reality.” Politics enter my work in the same way that visual aesthetics do; they do so only when detrimental to the experience. I do not look for them. They are both natural derivatives of a particular personal relationship with the world. My aesthetic choices, I have found, are often fueled by my own cultural experience and draw on forms and images that have become moving to one people while enigmatic to others. I strive to present each specific issue as both an insider and an outsider, while conveying a bridge between the two. Each piece, then, functions, at once, esoterically, subconsciously, and exoterically and self-consciously. In that, my works are places for me both to speak and to search.

Art Taking on the Environment: Politicians Turn to the Efforts of Visual Artists to Help Shape Environmental Policies

Opening this month at the Hood Museum of Art in New Hampshire, Subhankar Banerjee’s exhibition, Resource Wars in the American Arctic, features four of his stunning and monumental photographs, captured during five years of travel through largely untouched regions in Northeastern Alaska. In 2002, Banerjee began his nearly four thousand miles journey through the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in search of concrete evidence of plant and animal life in the 19.5-million-acre region. What began as an attempt by a Boeing scientist turned amateur photographer to study the ecological and cultural diversity of the ANWR soon “evolved into a visual exploration of the Arctic ’s connection to larger global issues such as resource wars, global warming, toxic migration and human rights struggles of the indigenous northern communities.” As such, Banerjee’s photographs have been the subject of critical and public acclaim, as well as condemnation from many politicians and institutions. According to Regina Hackett of the Seattle Post Intelligencer, in 2003 “the artist was horrified to find himself denounced in Congress and virtually abandoned by the Smithsonian's National Museum of History,” where his photographs were to be exhibited for the first time. Under pressure from Congress, the museum not only removed all captions, for they contained language that advocated no oil drilling in the refuge, but changed the location of the exhibition in an attempt to limit its viewing. Perhaps it was this very reaction that placed Banerjee’s work in the spotlight for which he had been hoping.

As politicians in favor of oil drilling in the region tried to paint a picture of the ANWR as a barren land devoid of life, Banerjee's photographs provided irrefutable evidence of the refuge's fragile and unmatched beauty and rich ecological diversity. A month before his opening at the Smithsonian, “during a Senate debate about drilling for gas and oil in the refuge, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) held up a Banerjee photo of a polar bear crossing a frozen harbor. This was a response to drilling advocates, who claimed there was nothing there but…‘a flat white nothingness,’ [or in the words of Alaska’s former Senator Frank Murkowsky,]…‘a frozen wasteland of snow and ice.’”

This is not the first time that the work of an artist has been brought to the Senate floor in order to help shape policy. Photography, in particular, has historically enjoyed a prominent place in the country’s legislature. In the late 19th century, for example, photographer William Henry Jackson (his work shown on the left) was commissioned to travel west as part of the U.S. Geological Survey. Upon his return, his photographs were presented to the U.S. Congress, and "on March 1, 1872 President Grant signed a bill making the region [that Jackson had been exploring] Yellowstone National Park.” Likewise, the works of photographic giants like Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange were highly celebrated and influential in both houses. Banerjee, however, did not receive what Hackett calls the “warm Welcome” of his predecessors. It seems that there has been a grand shift in the workings of our legislative branch and our perception of photography since the time of William Henry Jackson. While in the past photographers were seen and respected as capturers of irrefutable truths, today, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens openly calls Banerjee and his supporters, such as Jimmy Carter, “liars,” publicly threatening them as well as his colleagues who voted against the ANWR drilling.

Thankfully, what Peter Brown of the Front-page news calls a “climate of intimidation” does not have a hold on all institutions around the world. Indeed, in many cases, artists are still viewed as agents of truth, esteemed by politicians and advocates who utilize their creative abilities as a means to deliver a message to a larger audience. It seems that, in recent years, art and environmental protection have formed a new and significant bond. In June of this year, in celebration of the annual UN World Environment Day, the Natural World Museum, in partnership with the UN Environment Program, the Norwegian Ministry of Environment and the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, will present an exhibition of international contemporary artists, entitled Envisioning Change. According to an official press release by the UNEP website, the exhibit “is designed to generate awareness of global warming and climate change while inspiring positive change in people’s attitudes and actions toward the environment.” What is refreshing about the choice of the forty participating artists is that not all are known for their interest in environmental issues. While artists like Banerjee and David Nash (his Wooden Boulder featured on the right) are, of course, included, it is both surprising and intriguing to see such names as Mona Hatoum and Yoshiaki Kaihatsu on the list.

The artists in this exhibition are not merely documenting. They are utilizing all forms of expression, from abstraction to extrapolation, to create, to inform, and to claim a right to the preservation of their planet. Their efforts help secure the artistic community as a whole a unique place in the global fight to save our ecosystem. We are now at the threshold of a new era of environmental and political transformation, one in which we must take bold actions to generate international and interdisciplinary solutions to fight off the threats posed by our changing climate. The actions described above, though of great importance, are only tips of the iceberg.

Art Power and Censorship: New Global Art Markets and the De-politicization of the Art World

In this week’s post, I venture into the outside world, commenting on recent posts from two other weblogs, which, I find, deal with similar issues as mine. The first is a post entitled “Abu Dhabi Consolidates Place as ME Cultural/Media Avant Garde," examining Abu Dhabi’s plans for a museum island built in collaboration with the Guggenheim and possibly the Louvre, with designs by renowned architects Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel, Tadao Ando, and Zaha Hadid (as presented in the image below). The second, "Between Shanghai and Manhattan, Wenda Gu, New Breed of Artist” explores the work of New York-based Chinese-born artist Wenda Gu and the role of Chinese artists in a Western art market at large. In both cases, my comments, also published below, focus on new global trends in the art market and their potential effects on inherently politically-charged art scenes.

It is perhaps true that art is "the best vehicle of crossing borders," but what is not mentioned in this post is the effect that this crossing of borders can have on the art that is created (particularly by Middle Eastern artists). There is no doubt that modern and contemporary art production within the Middle East and its diaspora is indeed for the most part revolutionary. I fear that the emergence of Abu Dhabi as a giant in the international art market will give Arab governments new and effective powers of censorship over an otherwise political and revolutionary art scene, all in the name of the Market. In this manner, the new market can work to depoliticize even the works of Western artists, who may be seen as critical of either Middle Eastern governments or their allies. That which does not please Abu Dhabi’s billionaires can easily be labeled undesirable.

Although the article does touch upon issues of censorship on the part of the Chinese government, what I find missing is a discussion of self-censorship by Chinese artists who are looking to be even more desirable to an already intrigued Western art market. While in the past, in communist China, the very practice of art making within the confines of government surveillance and regulations was an act of political significance, today’s Chinese artists seem to be practicing under far stricter censors, for, as Wenda Gu (pictured to the left) explains, “the most successful art is without political ambition.” Clearly, Gu himself has gone from a blacklisted controversial artist to one dealing with far safer subjects such as “ethnicity, minority, globalization, language and communication.” While it is wonderful to see young Chinese artists finally gaining success and recognition, I cannot help but ask how China, or any other country in a similar situation, is fairing without its actively political artists. Is the country no longer in need of revolutionary artistic voices?

Working with the Boundaries of Censure: The First Slideshow Photography Exhibition in Iran

The first gallery exhibition of slideshows by Iranian photographers to be held in Iran was a very recent initiative of Fanoos Photo, a website dedicated to the online showcasing of work by Iranian artists. The exhibition, which closed several days ago, commenced and continued, as with any other public event in Iran, with the blessings of the central government and its notorious Ministry of Culture. Those familiar with the Iranian art scene would know the complexities and difficulties an organization must face to hold a presentation of any work within the country. The red ribbon across movie posters reading “Banned in Iran” has become a marketing ploy for distribution companies in Europe and America. Internationally recognized filmmakers, such as Mohsen Makhmalbaf, whose screenplays have been meticulously inspected by the Ministry of Culture and have received its approval, discover upon the completion of their projects that their films cannot be displayed in local theaters. It is no wonder then that the success of the slideshow exhibition sponsored by Fanoos website would immediately become the subject of political discussion.

It definitely bears mentioning that Iran is the country with the largest number of weblogs per capita in the world. The phenomenon is even more impressive when we consider that a large portion of the country is yet to have access to broadband internet, and in provincial cities personal computer is yet to become a common household item. As expected, the internet is yet another battleground between the hardliner government and its overwhelmingly young and dissatisfied constituency. ISPs operate under strict governmental supervision, and the web is subject to some of the fiercest filtering programs. Every week hundreds of new websites are added to the blacklist that attempts to block all subversive or sacrilegious content from the nation’s eyes. Everyday new ways of circumventing the barricades are offered. That Fanoos, dealing in the inevitably controversial realm of photography, has managed to thrive as an open organization is an oddity worth considering.

Though it is a simple site, offering only a few photos from each artist, its juxtaposition of well-recognized and obscure names in Iran’s photography have made Fanoos a famous place among Iranian intellectuals. Once one’s initial delight at finding such a neat little treasure in the web of webs subsides, one is confronted with the absence of many factors that would seem essential to such a collection. There is no mention of some obvious choices for any list of Iranian photographers. Abbas, one of the most accomplished Iranian photographers and a prominent member of Magnum Photo, who fell out of favor with the Islamic government from the early years of the revolution, is one such name. Visiting Fanoos, it is possible for one to assume that the new generation of Iranian photographers are increasingly leaning away from politics toward lighter subjects. The illusion, however, is the result of the particular selection of works which has pragmatically excluded most political pieces. There is no biographical information offered on any of the artists, which may be due to the unorthodox backgrounds of quite a few of them, who, like Shirin Neshat (her work is well-represented in the image to the right), walk the thin line between disapproval and total ban by the government.

The most immediately felt absence, however, is that of works portraying modern women in intimate settings, where they would normally not appear in traditional Islamic clothing. The selection, in other words, has excluded all photography that cannot be openly displayed in Iran. Keeping in mind the vast culture of underground and expatriate Iranian art and the prominence of many dissident artists, the handicap can be considered a serious one. As political parties ban unfair elections, so would many Iranian artists and intellectuals rather forgo participation in an artistic environment that excludes some of its best based on a political agenda.

The Fanoos sponsored slide-show exhibition in Tehran represents a sort of triumph for a more pragmatic, participatory approach. It is no small feat to reach both the unlimited world of the web and the tightly controlled canvas of artistic exhibition in Iran. After years of extremely successful activity outside of Iran, Mitra Tabrizian had a chance to display her photographs in her own country. Her theme of desperation and depression among middle-aged professionals in Europe who are losing their jobs to the younger generation (as in the image to the left) must have struck a subtle chord with the Iranian viewers. Reza Paydari in his collection explored the destruction of green space in Tehran, one of the world's most polluted metropolis. Oshin Zakarian and Amir Yegane presented their visually astounding take on Iranian landscapes and ancient architecture. And having passed through the cracks, the restrained, political photography of Mohammad Kheyr-khah, such as the photograph of Iranian women in uniform featured at the top of the post, attracted the most attention from the visitors. Uncaptioned, Kheyr-khah’s photographs depict the seemingly commonplace process of military parades and daily marching of the soldiers.

In my latest visit to Iran, I was surprised by a new tendency in young filmmakers, some of whom are close friends and acquaintances, to seriously consider positions in the state-run television. A few years ago even the thought of such an occupation would have been considered heresy among intellectuals. It is certain that the country is undergoing quiet, yet drastic changes. In a country that in the last decade has lost an entire generation of its most influential artists, the younger generation may choose to test its creativity within the oppressive boundaries inside the country, rather than to maintain a rebellious silence.

Battle Fields Revisited: Vietnam War in Los Angeles

What a difference an extra memory card can make on the last day of a month-long stay in Vietnam! Touched by his multiple visits to the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Min City, Portland artist Harrell Fletcher returned to the museum one last time in June of 2005. Thanks to his digital camera and a surprisingly lenient museum security, he was able to re-photograph all of the one hundred documentary photos of the main museum (two of Fletcher's images featured below), covering the devastation of a ten-year war, what the Vietnamese call the American War, along with more recent images of individuals affected by birth defects and war wounds. The result has been a number of exhibitions in galleries throughout America, including the current show entitled The American War at LAX Art on La Cienega, “re-presenting” the contents of the museum in Ho Chi Min City.

Confronted with flash glares, slanted camera angles and, what Fletcher calls, “ the oddly casual” quality of the photographs of photographs that have already been created and curated by other unnamed individuals, at first, one cannot help but question the artistic merit of Fletcher’s “re-presentation” as a work of art. Fortunately, however, once absorbed into the imagery, the question of artistic merit quickly dissipates. Thus the question becomes the work’s merit as an action. Standing before images of the utter cruelty and destruction of a war fueled here at home, one cannot help but agree that indeed the action is of merit. Perhaps, Chas Bowie of The Portland Mercury is right in simply stating that “it helps if you don’t take Fletcher as an artist.” However, at the risk of falling into a Duchampian discussion, I had to wonder whether Fletcher’s decision of "re-presentation" within a fine arts context best serves his purpose.

With all the critical praise that the exhibitions have received within the past few months, even I, as a skeptic, must agree that the gallery setting does in fact have its benefits. What I was personally most struck by was my own ability to examine. Images that would normally have me switching channels were suddenly objects demanding scrutiny. What is it that the artist has done? Why these captions? Why these photographs? Why this war? Programmed to dissect the contents of a gallery, I not only spent time with the images, but also caught details that would otherwise not have survived my general sense of panic. I found that the captions were familiar (“victim of Orange Bomb,” “her father was a soldier. She has many skin diseases.”), whereas the images were not. Looking around the gallery at other quietly observing viewers I knew that Fletcher’s "re-presentation" invites a particular kind of examination that allows for his project to function in the first place.

The examination that a gallery space promotes, however, is not only of the object, but of the artist’s intentions as well. The earlier question of “why this war?” arises once again. There is no doubt that Fletcher’s work is meant to function as a commentary on the war in Iraq. In his statement, he writes “I encourage everyone to do their own research and find out more about The American War in Vietnam and… the current situation in the Middle East.” However, while in the space, I could not help but fear that the kind of parallel Fletcher hopes and critics such as D.K. Row assume the American viewer will draw between the two wars, simply is not brought about by this form of “re-presentation.”

Most notable is the fact that the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Min City was not created in order to draw parallels with the Iraq War. Furthermore, it does not anticipate the American mentality, as it was not established for an American audience. The collection of photographs in this museum, or at least what Fletcher has chosen to present in his exhibition, focuses largely on the effects of Agent Orange and Napalm, spraying of pesticides, and other methods of environmental destruction. In this sense, the horrifying images do not recall Iraq. They specifically recall Vietnam. In fact, when confronted with them, the American audience is somewhat relieved that Agent Orange is no longer utilized and that chemical warfare is perhaps something of the past. Unfortunately, Fletcher’s re-photographs, though powerful, in a sense, further remove us from Vietnam’s American War, placing it in the realm of ancient history, so distant and from a land so far away that only terrible digital reproductions can bring us somewhat closer to its reality. The truth is that the Vietnam War does not belong in the ancient past, and to treat it as such is a betrayal of Fletcher’s very purpose in bringing the exhibition to America.