The container, or the thing contained?

In February, Matt Coolidge, of the Center for Land Use Interpretation, spoke before a reasonably packed house as part of PICA’s free Monday night arts lecture series. Coolidge’s organization, known as CLUI, is “dedicated to the increase and diffusion of information about how the nation’s lands are apportioned, utilized and perceived.”

Don’t be misled, however: CLUI is not a policy wonkery; it’s a loose collection of post-modernists inhabiting that peculiar DMZ between art making and curating. They maintain a searchable database of unique American places; design and install interpretive exhibits across the country —including the recent “Pavement Paradise: American Parking Spaces”; conduct bus tours of unlikely locations (such as the assortment of gravel pits which created Irwindale, CA); offer art residencies in such facilities as the (alleged) Enola Gay hangar; and carefully monitor water levels at Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty in the Great Salt Lake.

CLUI’s stance toward its subject matter is consistently wry, clever, and non-prescriptive, asking the viewer to experiment with unfamiliar viewpoints. Coolidge opens his talk with a still shot of two men in an unrecognizable terrain, standing before an interpretive display whose message is invisible to the audience. One man gestures toward the display, as if to interpret its interpretation, and the other films him, adding yet another layer of interpretation —which is then re-interpreted by Coolidge for his audience, each member of which harbors his or her own interpretation.

As Coolidge explains, the landscape has no meaning except whatever meaning is perceived or assigned by the observer. And each individual’s experience of a given landscape is mediated by unique expectations, experiences, cultural precepts and personal beliefs.

CLUI encourages thought-provoking exercises, and yet —is it thought which we most need to provoke? In this post-modern world where so many of us have lost our species-long identification with our physical surroundings, can reconnection be brought about solely through intellectual means? Is it not the heart rather than the head, which we long to engage, and might not a more visceral language of art serve us better?

CLUI’s work also begs the question: With what meaning is the landscape invested by its residents who are not human? I look out on “my yard,” but how do the local squirrels see it? As their hazelnut warehouse? The migratory songbirds, as an overgrown haven from predators? What meaning rises from the billions and billions of microorganisms which are, by immense orders of magnitude, the most numerous life forms on earth?



My father, when hospitalized, becomes disoriented and experiences delusions. The phenomenon is known as hospital-induced psychosis. It’s common in elderly patients but can occur in anyone deprived of familiar environmental cues; symptoms moderate with the presence of friends and family, and generally fade when patients return home.

In the hospital, of course, meals are often unrecognizable; nursing staff appear and disappear with shift changes; lights may be on all night and off all day. On Dad’s last visit he lost the ability to make sense out of the large clock on the opposite wall, but was perfectly capable of operating the telephone in his room. He called us at home at midnight wanting to know where the hell breakfast was, and again at 4a.m. to inform us he was ready to go home, and demanded to know why nothing was being done about it. The following morning he became convinced that hospital security was preventing his children from visiting him, so he called the police department.

I can’t say I blame him. Disoriented he might have been, but he knew he wasn’t where he was supposed to be. Every time I return home from a couple months caring for Dad in California, I experience a baffling period of “re-entry” which is surely similar in origin. There it is again when I’ve left home and returned to California: I’ve had just enough time to grow accustomed to a different repertoire of environmental cues.

Some years ago I was hospitalized myself for a medication reaction. Exhaustion and dehydration took their toll: often my eyes wouldn’t focus; nasal passages suffered such that I couldn’t smell at all, or taste my food, or hear well; my fingertips were so dessicated I couldn’t feel texture. In short, all five senses were impaired. Even back at home, without the usual sensory data, it was difficult to muster much interest in life.

Perhaps life in hospital or held hostage or in solitary confinement is traumatizing not only because familiar human contacts are missing, but also due to the of absence a rich externality. We require tangible sensation, complex energy, moving between us and what we think of as “environment”; without this it is difficult to be clear about who we are. In some sense, the landscape supplies us with meaning.