“Was not their mistake once more bred of the life of slavery that they had been living?—a life which was always looking upon everything, except mankind, animate and inanimate—‘nature,’ as people used to call it—as one thing, and mankind as another, it was natural to people thinking in this way, that they should try to make ‘nature’ their slave, since they thought ‘nature’ was something outside them” — William Morris


Monday, November 28, 2011

Urban Land Project


By Tim Simmons. Very interesting idea. Huge billboards with photos of textures of nonhuman spaces. I wonder how much they are a cry of the heart in a heartless world—haunting reminders of the yonder of Nature within artifice. Maybe I'm reading them wrong. And I've only just started to see them. HT Sam Scott (@bigsagacity).

2 comments:

Christopher Schaberg said...

I think I'd rather see a billboard that is a big empty frame—and just as much revealing its contents to be nonhuman. But that's just me. Nothing against streams, moss, and waterfalls.

Anonymous said...

Its a bit like the end scene of Soylent green isn't it (nature images in world gone mad as an euthanasia extra) and I hear they are remaking that film, but why bother. Tim, enjoyed your book the Ecological Thought, will be re-reading it as tackling phd art enquiry into nature on screen - I like how you encourage artists into this area but see trouble ahead as find it hard enough to work out the settings on my camera :-(