Tuesday, April 24, 2018

The Spectacles of the Spectacular West


On Tuesday the class discussed spectacles of the spectacular west. The class talked about destruction in relation to the atomic bomb, art and entertainment, and Las Vegas. We discussed how destruction has become a spectacle and a form of entertainment as seen in art by such artists as Gustav Metzger and shows like The Twilight Zone. The topic of destruction was also discussed in terms of atomic bombs and their testing sites in the Southwest, which became spectacles due to their exciting and mysterious qualities. Las Vegas also applies to this topic due to destruction being part of the culture of the city as well as a means of spectacle and entertainment. We examined these topics in depth by supplementing our discussion with Julia Hell and George Steinmetz’s “Ruinopolis: Post-Imperial Theory and Learning from Las Vegas,” Kerry Brougher’s “Atomic Theater,” Peter Goin’s “The Nuclear Past in the Landscape Present,” and Geoff Dyer’s “Richard Misrach,” as well as the questions that our classmates asked in their reading responses.

Sedan Nuclear Test, Nevada Test Site, 1962, photo from Wikipedia

The class discussed the topic of desensitization. We talked about how we have been relatively desensitized to various types of destruction, crime, and tragedies. We came to the conclusion that we have desensitized ourselves in order to get through the day. If we mourned over every tragic incident that happened, we would never stop mourning. The class agreed that desensitizing ourselves is a way of survival. Some people also argued that the reason it seems like society is desensitized is because we feel like we can’t do anything about the tragedies that happen. We related these ideas back to the artists discussed in Kerry Brougher’s “Atomic Theater.” We looked at Bruce Conner’s use of destruction as spectacle by watching his film “A Movie.”

When it came to discussing the creation that comes from destruction and subtractive tendencies in relation to landscape, the class had split opinions on whether or not the test sites around the west were a strange kind of governmental land-art. One side of the discussion mentioned that the government did not create this landscape for the purpose of art. The other side said that although the intention was not there at the beginning, artists often came along to the land afterwards and imposed a story and divinity for the land therefore giving a bit of artistic credit to the government.

Richard Misrach, Aerial Target ("Dart"), Wendover Air Base, Utah, 1990, from Desert Cantos, photo from Fraenkel Gallery

Richard Misrach photographed a site known as Bravo 20 for a project called Desert Cantos. Bravo 20 is a chunk of land that the Navy used as a bombing range since 1944. Dyer talks about his experience traveling with Misrach to different places he photographed and compared his work to other photographers such as Timothy O’Sullivan. They traveled from Bravo to Pyramid Lake, Gerlach, and Black Desert Rock. Misrach’s photos were very vulnerable and had an overall theme of human destruction.

Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas, photo from Yelp

Hell & Steinmetz made a post-imperial analysis of Las Vegas based on the reconstruction of its history in regards to architecture and how it is presented in pop culture, specifically highlighting sites of ruin. They discussed the dimensions and crumbling empire of the United States, focusing specifically on Las Vegas as one of the main examples of collapsing imperialism. There was mention of Friedrich Ratzel’s theories of ruins and empires, further making comparisons to the empires of Europe and Rome in comparison of that found in America. Overall, it was summarized that America is seen as an empire that is seeing its current decay. Las Vegas, in particular, has an imperial territoriality to it as it is seeing destruction over time. Much like Detroit, Las Vegas has followed a similar boom-and-bust pattern. There was also a discussion of Native American tribes that had formerly thrived in the Southwestern United States, highlighting how the atomic age greatly impacted their sacred lands while also impacting the city and its casinos as well. What once was seen as sacred quickly turned to sacrificial land. Finally, casinos themselves were highlighted as the architecture and theme of them could be seen as a parody or mimicry of imperial Rome in a stylistic sense. Caesars Palace is one of the biggest examples. The architecture seemed to carry the message that it is a place where the populist representation of a self-confident empire has changed into the brutalist forms of a hyper-militarized empire in crisis.

Holly Osbourne, Alix Peters, Jake Bobeck, and Kaiti Sullivan

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