Where nothing is what it seems and everything makes perfect sense.

is research through observation: structures, installations, natural land-

forms, urban growth, and manipulated landforms constructed in the great

blank slate of the Southwest desert. A place where time stretches from

Planck’s constant—used to record the chain reactions that produce an

Atomic detonation—to Robert Smithson brushing up against the infinite

on the Great Salt Flats, all of which is tested and implemented under the

powerful spell of the Western landscape—a strange entity mixed in with

notions of nation and empire, bravery and myth, history and fiction.

The result of a six-week exploration in the form of a road trip lies before

you in an ambling, somewhat desultory first-hand narration of a nomadic

journey across the desert’s offensively vast spaces. Situated between the

region’s fragmented vignettes of activity, I attempt to resolve the disparate

nature of the desert’s strange, isolated events into a coherent narrative.

Hopefully.

Fast, Cheap, and Out-of-Control

Colonias

El Paso, Texas/Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua

(as I later found out), and hid a friendly smile underneath a well-manicured Pancho

Villa mustache. His name was Carlos, and I took his waving as a sign I could resist the

urge to hop into my car and quickly drive the 30 miles back to El Paso. I walked over

and, after brief introductions, we started talking about life in the Colonias —the unin-

corporated improvised settlements clutching to the eastern edge of the El Paso city

limits—specifically this one, named Dairyland after the nearby dairy farm.

I asked the obvious: “Don’t you find it difficult to live without running water?”

“No,” he responded. “You can get used to anything. But it’d be nice for my kids.”

He was short, born in Mexico

structures, abandoned plaster and tin. This is what affordable housing looks like in El

Paso County. Priced out of the middle class housing developments that are impos-

sible to tell apart and forever encroaching further out into the desert and up into the

Franklin Mountains, the Colonias—individually-erected and jury-rigged—perch atop

artificial plateaus. The homes themselves are fast, quickly assembled out of a mix of

cheap and readily-available materials. But to their owners, Colonias homes are the only

attainable slice of the American Dream that the region’s largely migrant population

can hope to afford.

The 2000 census put El Paso’s population at 563,000. A U.S. Department of Defense

study from July 2009 projects the county’s 2012 population to balloon to 994,000.

Some seem to welcome the implied reputability that a seven figure population affords.

“I can’t wait for us to hit 1 million. I think it will give us the respect we deserve,” native

El Pasoan Claudia Solis said. “I just hope we are ready for all the new people. I don’t

want us to be in trouble.” But the “trouble” that is bound to overwhelm El Paso’s

infrastructure can already be found in the Colonias.

Aging trailers, crumbling masonry

Water to the El Paso/Juárez region is supplied by two sources: the Hueco Bolson and

the Rio Grande River. Both sources are shared by both parties in a theoretically equal

partnership that overlooks issues of hyper-security and segregation between the sister

cities in order to coexist in a symbiotic, interdependent relationship. With unprec-

edented border growth though, the Hueco Bolson is predicted to dry up by 2020,

leading El Paso’s recent efforts to bring water in from the Antelope Valley 80 miles

to the east.

People in Dairyland get their water from only one place: a man with a truck comes by

every month and fills up their various containers with gray water. Adjacent to nearly

every home are industrial black cylinders with thousand-gallon capacity that store

water. They frequently fill with algae, require constant cleaning, and are inefficient in

a cost-per-dollar equation.

Drinking water is another issue, and has to be brought in almost daily from Horizon

City. It’s a tedious and often frustrating situation. But like Carlos said, you can get used

to anything. And it’s part of the inherent contradiction of the Colonias. He weighed

his options.

Home ownership outweighed the drawbacks.

Which brings us back to water.

The Western Edge

El Paso, Texas

Very Large Array

The Plains of San Augustin, New Mexico

Incongruous with the Desert Landscape but is Actually Perfect.

The VLA has to exist here. Sure, the satellites —which are constantly in motion, swing-

ing and traveling this way and that to ensure the clearest solar signals—necessitate

the flat, high landscape of the Plains of San Augustin. And, of course, the numerous

mountain ranges encircling the plains block terrestrial radio signals from interfering

with such delicate equipment.

The unlikely combination of radio astronomy and an otherwise untouched landscape

calls to mind Buzz Aldrin’s visual correlation between the high desert and the “mag-

nificent desolation” of the lunar landscape. But, not surprisingly, Cormac McCarthy

provides the strongest portrait of the landscape: “Below them in the paling light smol-

dered the plains of San Augustin stretching away to the northeast, the earth floating

off in a long curve silent under looms of smoke from the underground coal deposits

burning there a thousands years. The horses picked their way along the rim with care

and the riders cast varied glances out upon that ancient and naked land.”

Or: Weird Shit That In Theory Should Seem

3.

The Lightning Field

Long-term installation in Western New Mexico

This is how Walter De Maria intended The Lightning Field to be experienced. When you

go to The Lightning Field, you have plenty of time to think about The Lightning Field,

not only because the field certainly provokes and warrants rumination, but because 24

uninterrupted hours at the site are one of many conditions of admittance.

Equally important to the facts of the work (that is, 400 polished stainless poles mea-

suring 2 inches in diameter, plotted on a rectangular grid array measuring one mile

east-west, and one kilometer and six meters north-south, and arranged by height so as

to mimic the subtly rippling elevation and thus create a perfectly flat imaginary plane

at the tip of said poles) is the manner in which The Lightning Field must be viewed.

The Dia Foundation, per De Maria’s wishes, accepts up to six people at the site in

any 24-hour period just six months out of the year. That makes a maximum of 1,104

people per season. Following that logic, over its thirty year history, up to 33,000 people

have seen The Lightning Field. By way of comparison, every day 10,000 people walk

under the Sistine Chapel daily; which can’t even touch the 25,000 people who each day

make the trek to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North Carolina.

“Isolation is the essence of land art.”

by which one must abide in order to view The Lightning Field has been accused of

crossing the threshold into authoritarianism. Perhaps De Maria is too overconfident in

his work to demand such a pilgrimage from its admirers. This immense exertion for a

single piece of artwork leads one to expect a certain level of payoff and, some would

argue, thereby in itself, influences and unduly affects any objective response to the

work. It’s like a giant arrow pointing at “Art” with a capital “A” saying “you will have a

glorious response here!”

This is worlds away from a subway ride to the Museum of Modern Art and 30-90 sec-

onds in front of a Monet, which quickly devolves into a broader discussion about the

optimal setting for experiencing art, and the somewhat narrower concept of what role

the museum as a repository or archive of artistic achievements plays. Land art was cer-

tainly a reaction against the confines of the museum, and De Maria saw, well, land, as the

proper enclosure for art. Be aware though, what the museum also provides is access. So

the question becomes, is this central conceit of curatorial control something of a cheat?

For example, would your experience at the Sistine Chapel have been different if you

weren’t jockeying for prime positioning among literally 8,000 Germans in short pants?

Probably. So then shouldn’t all works of art demand isolation to be appreciated?

To paraphrase the late David Foster Wallace, by their very presence, tourists spoil the

previously unspoiled place they came to see. And make no mistake—whether high

brow Dia art-traveler or flip-flop-clad Midwesterner—you are a tourist. People aren’t

always discerning and can and will consume what they can’t control. And that’s why the

harsh arithmetic of 1,100 people per year makes sense. Any more and we’d be spend-

ing a mere 30-90 seconds taking the same picture of 400 poles as the guy next to us.

We need De Maria to force us to slow down.

Such precise control over the experience

as the sky in the East began to glow. The poles were rather building to a crescendo. A

chorus of subtle hues, constantly morphing pinks, oranges, blood reds. My back was to

the sun, but the field was exploding in front of me. At this point, the poles and landscape

were working in perfect harmony, playing off of each other. Inextricably linked, every-

thing belonging, I became the interloper, the solitary, ascetic figure in a Friedrich painting,

engaged in seemingly profound thought. At 6:14 the sun crested the ridge line and, as if on

cue, the silence was shattered by screaming and chortling from coyotes inside the valley. By

6:47 the sun was high enough that the poles were again fading as they were the day before,

silently waiting for the next group of tourists.

Oh yeah, and no, there wasn’t any lightning.

They came alive again at 6:02 a.m.,

4.

Monument ValleyUtah

5.

Spiral JettyThe Great Salt Lake, Utah

like salt deposits. Canonized as the epitome of land art, it is “the quintessential heroic

gesture in the landscape.” Time and art history texts have relegated it to the status of

masterpiece, unquestioningly titling it the iconic post-war artwork, classified as the

ultimate embrace of the Western landscape, with a direct link to the primal, prehistoric

apologue of life and death. As an art object, Spiral Jetty traffics in myth in spades.

Case in point:

About two years after it was completed, Spiral Jetty was swallowed up by the waters of

the Great Salt Lake, unwittingly creating a small cabal of people—those who had actu-

ally seen it—to fan the art world and spread its gospel. At the height of its popularity,

it no longer existed as a physical entity, but rather as an idea and media object that was

disseminated through film, photography, drawings, diagrams, and writing. Having all

but faded from memory by the late 1990s, Spiral Jetty and its creator Robert Smithson

experienced a resurgence in 2002 when the Museum of Contemporary Art and the

Whitney debuted a major Smithson retrospective that was fortuitously staged simulta-

neously with the reemergence of the jetty itself. After 30 years, it rose again out of the

lake like an Authurian legend, almost as if the waterline of the Great Salt Lake itself

was under the museums’ command.

Hyperbole crystallizes on Spiral Jetty

right now is ‘emergence,’ a topic which, although vague, I would argue is inherent to

Spiral Jetty as the concept that process is more important that the final piece, and time

produces interesting and unexpected results that are outside the reach of the creator.

The crystallization of the salt particles, the ever-shifting water levels, the dissolution of

the pure form to something a little fuzzier, the way the water gets all foamy as it laps up

against the rocks—these are all things that Smithson could have neither planned nor

predicted. Object and site move forward together as something new. Construction is

also destruction, and the built-in obsolescence of Spiral Jetty is paralleled and alluded

to in the fate of the dinosaurs. Even at its conception, the clock was ticking.

You can walk the spiral in less than five minutes. It’s smaller than you think (vaguely

disappointing). And with the recession of the water level, you can cut back across the

coils, leaving footprints in the white salt. It crackles and hums as the microscopic salt

crystals break (delightful). And absorbing the bizarre atmosphere of the place, dangling

my feet in the surprisingly warm water, the salt already crystallizing between my toes,

while pondering the peculiar evening redness of the place (exhilarating), I thought back

to Smithson’s quote that “a great artist can make art by simply casting a glance.”

A hot topic in the architectural world

5.

Pahrump, Nevada

to Pahrump when the roadside billboards start advertising the “legal delights” that

lie ahead. The signs have a back-of-the-newspaper-strip-club-ad aesthetic (think black

background, lots of fonts, prominent use of the letter “x”) complete with stock photo

image of a sultry (lazy-eyed), pouty-lipped (sleepy) blonde with a generic nom-de-sex

like Mandy. But the town itself, located 50 miles east of Las Vegas, carries an air of

self-referential irony.

Pahrump bills itself as “The New Old West,” and seems to be shooting for something

along the lines of a kitschy Wild West saloon re-enactment, complete with swinging

doors populated by straight-from-central-casting whisky-swiggin’ cowboys and sweet-

natured high-kicking gals. It’s all rendered in an innocuous, Disneyfied version of the

actual West, never mind the fact that, you know, actual sex is happening out back and

the less said about mandatory HIV testing, condom distribution, bombed-out trailer

homes, and wage disputes, the better.

The myth of the West is played out in the realities of this best little desert town where

casinos outnumber schools, the number of brothels and street lights are equal (two),

muscle cars have replaced horses, and everyone goes about life with a half-concealed

smile because they are in on the joke. Reminding you that southern hospitality is alive

and well is a sign dripping with innuendos thanking you one last time as you ride out

into the sunset. That Michael Jackson lived and home-schooled his kids in Pahrump is

one of the least interesting things about it.

You know you are getting close

7.

Death Valley282 feet below sea level, California

8.

Double NegativeMormon Mesa, Nevada

was the description given by the waitress at Overton’s Sugars Home Plate Restaurant

and Sports Memorabilia fine dining establishment in response to my query as to whether

she knew the way to Double Negative. I received the distinct impression that the folks

of Overton had either never been out to Double Negative, and/or didn’t hold it in very

high regard. Instead, the two other patrons enjoying an afternoon meal at SHPRandSM

suggested I look at the “tank that is parked in front of the old post office” or the “house

that looks like a castle” as being more interesting (both of which I did indeed end up

seeing but I must admit I still found Double Negative to be far superior).

The dirt road out of the nearby town of Overton, Nevada, is monotonously flat, until

you reach the edge of an embankment where the road shoots up, a sight that when

viewed through the front windshield of a four-cylinder Grand Am seems impossibly

steep with dirt that is treacherously loose. Atop the Mormon Mesa one finds Double

Negative, where Michael Heizer removed 244,800 tons of sandstone and rhyolite from

the mesa’s edge to create two trenches facing each other on opposite sides of the cliff.

The channels are around 50 feet deep and 30 feet wide, as well as approximately 750

feet and 325 feet in length, respectively. The Museum of Contemporary Art describes

the work as a 1500 x 50 x 30 foot “sculpture”. (Aside: how can something this remote

and this huge, be considered part of a Los Angeles museum’s collection? Is that anti-

thetical to the staunchly anti-gallery ethos espoused by some land art practitioners?)

Geologists measure the processes that formed the Mormon Mesa in epochal time

scales, formed by the twin processes of weathering and erosion. The same geological

history can be observed in a smaller, vastly accelerated scale as the once-crisp, man-

made edges of Michael Heizer’s Double Negative deteriorate. The 1969 artwork is like

a tiny artificial blip in the geological history as the incontrovertible mass of the desert

moves back in to reclaim the void which was removed.

“That old cut out on the mesa”

what is most interesting about Double Negative is the power of the void—a place

where a slit in the desert can hold and command your eye in the panoramic expanse

of the desert. This is also singular in being the first place on my trip where something

wasn’t sticking out of the desert scrub, but rather bringing the sky down into the

earth. Think about the Twin Towers (or even the Petronas Towers): what really made

them powerful was the slot of void between them and the way the blue sky captured

between them felt different from the blue sky around it. It held the void the same way

the two trenches hold space. It’s so powerful you can almost hear the light moving

between the embrace.

That Heizer is letting Double Negative deteriorate and erode to the point where

original intent is hidden allows it to become a further enigmatic, more primitive part

of the landscape. The disintegration of the boundaries allows the softer indentation

to achieve a greater continuity of experience from inside the event to outside—for

example, from landscape to art. It becomes a compound object, something language

doesn’t necessarily give us the luxury to “know” well enough to describe, and opens

the possibility of allowing the object to “just be.”

Unable to stand still, I had no choice but to run through them—even while panting in

the brutal 110-degree August heat.

At least from an architectural standpoint,

12.

Mesa VerdeNational Park, Colorado

has to be one of the most malleable concepts in our history. Wrapped up in fear

and guilt, modern-day renditions have been everything from exterminable threat, to

endangered noble savage, to hippie-like ecological warrior. Never mind that none of

these precepts are at all accurate, but at least the active placement of Indian culture

somewhere in the annals of American thought is preferable to their current status as

an invisible afterthought. Walking around on a ranger-led tour of the abandoned cliff-

dwellings at Mesa Verde, I latched on to two big takeaways. First: architecturally and

tectonically Mesa Verde is beautiful, Cliff Palace especially. And second: A palpable

sense of unreality distances the visitor from having any meaningful connection to the

people who lived there.

The Park Service museum isn’t much help. The ’70s-era dioramas of Indian life in

the museum were rendered pretty ridiculous by their blatant attempts to Westernize

13th-century Pueblo life. (Barbecues around the kiva and playing fetch with the dog?

For shame.) But in the end, it’s all speculation. The last Pueblo cliff-dwellers who left

around 1400 weren’t big on keeping any type of written historical record. Their only

references to Mesa Verde are proclamations that it was simply time to leave, which, to

an archeologist, must be frustratingly inadequate. To the Pueblo, however, time is the

answer. Time is like the seasons. Not Western linear time – where this event happened

at this time which in turn caused this proceeding thing to happen—but a circular, con-

tinual infinity. So, conceivably, Mesa Verde could be inhabited again.

I wish I could imagine that. But as the steady stream of buses unloaded another batch

of brightly-colored tourists, nothing could have seemed farther from reality.

The popular perception of the American Indian

9.

Mount Christo Rey

El Paso, Texas

of the economic health of El Paso is found in the number of stores tucked into the Sun-

land Park Mall that deal in only one type of good (clothing) that, storewide, all ring up for

the same price (a price less than a student-discounted movie ticket in New York City); as

it stands that number is at least three. Think dollar stores. There’s the store where every

clothing item is $8.80 (but not $8.88!), the store that only sells Mexican-flavored cowboy

hats for $7 (where the arcade used to be), and the store that is basically Puff ’s $12 Zoo

but now has a different, less-cool name. Most of the national chains left the uniquely

predetermined claustrophobia that defines the enclosed-mall for the cheap, ample and

available land around the desert that was waiting for strip malls.

A better indicator of the economic health of this border town is found in census data

which shows that the city’s poverty rate tops 27 percent, and the median income hov-

ers significantly below the national average of $48,000 at around $35,600. El Paso’s

population is also over three-quarters Hispanic, while a quarter of the population is

foreign-born.

If you’re a fan of talk radio, or are familiar with the rancorous fulminations over the

very existence of legal and illegal immigration —part of that broader, more general

right wing fear of the “other”—it must come as a surprise that El Paso is one of

the safest cities in the country, not to mention the happiest. El Paso is the third saf-

est urban center (after Honolulu and New York) with only 18 murders in 2007 in a

city over 700,000, and was recently ranked by Men’s Health magazine as the second

“happiest” place in America. The title of number one happiest place in the country

went to Laredo, Texas, another border town north of the river. That El Paso is safely

ensconced in an embrace of jocularity across a shallow river from blood-soaked Juárez

is another indicator that, in spite of seemingly contradictory evidence, the border pro-

vides a delicate alternate model for economic growth, one that is beset by constant

danger by overblown concerns of national security and ever-higher barriers.

A pretty good indicator

The WallEl Paso, Texas / Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua

2.

When former Juárez mayor Gustavo Elizando stated that the only way “the cities in this

region can make it, is to forget that a line and a river exist here,” he was referring to an

economic co-dependence. El Paso and Juárez have generated a series of overlapping

economic and functional circulation realities between the cities that circumvent the tradi-

tional gatekeeper role of boundaries. Culture, family, and a never ending supply of labor

pass back and forth in an asymmetrical relationship of twin cities—one twin richer, the

other bigger—that leads to a mutual beneficence. However, there is a constant danger

that the pass will be choked off, the doors will close, and the cities will drift.

By 2050, racial and ethnic minorities in the U.S. will outnumber non-Hispanic whites;

one out of every four will be Hispanic. With population growth comes greater political

influence. El Paso provides a handicapped preview of what the future will look like in

political and cultural reality. One that is, and was, avoidable in the post-2001 rush to

close the borders. A premonition of the mutual benefit to be had in monetary well-

being that comes from accepting that culture, economics, and politics are entwined,

and nurturing the open, cross-pollination of people and ideas—that the lowering of

the wall—can allow everyone along the border to thrive.

That belief is losing. The wall is winning.

The wall is winning.

Two neighbors are meeting at the terminus of their properties and inspecting a dam-

aged rock wall that divides their lots in Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall.” The narrator

is playful, almost goading, and pushing the neighbor into articulating the necessity of

rebuilding the wall. These are the last five lines of the poem:

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father’s saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well.

He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Immigration had become a national security priority. Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez grow

at an annual rate of 6.3 percent and 5.3 percent, respectively. Most of this growth is

attributed to immigration from within Latin America. It is estimated that over 33 percent

of the cities’ populations originated from outside the state of Chihuahua. Of those that

emigrate from Tijuana and Juárez, 95 percent go north to the United States. This has cre-

ated a nomadic class of people, with aspirations for a better life elsewhere. The Mexican

side of the fence is less a home, and more of a strategy for escape, which in turn creates

an American side “under siege.” So the U.S. builds increasingly higher walls.

The difficulty of justifying the walls’ existence does not preclude actual construction.

And a sign emphasizing the can in Mexican only becomes all the more inane when its

citizens add their own message: “No creo en el libre.” I don’t believe in freedom.

“No creo en el libre.”

10.

MaquiladorasTijuana, Baja California Mexico

Tijuana is easy. You don’t have to look very hard to find it. As soon as you walk over

the border you’re in the thick of it, a dust-encrusted Candyland where you can buy a

churro, pharmaceuticals, a miniature guitar, sit on a droopy-faced donkey painted to

look like a zebra, all while being serenaded by a group of hungry-looking mariachis-

for-hire in loud pants. (Literally—there are bells clipped to their outer seams.)

Lest you be lulled into complacency, New Tijuana, on the other hand, is a different

story. It’s everywhere to the east, in the pale masses of washed-out shantytowns and

factory housing. It is where there are estimated to be over one million people living,

comprising almost half the total population of Tijuana in a parallel zone primarily

occupied by factory workers, migrants, and laborers. In Tijuana 95 percent of the city’s

homes have a solid floor; in New Tijuana that number is closer to 25 percent. New

Tijuana is where nearly 80 percent of people lack running water and an operational

sewage system, but where simultaneously the unemployment rate is less than 1 per-

cent. It has been supposed that there are more jobs than available workers. The lack

of an adequate workforce provides opportunities for immigrants from all over South

America. Those people need housing. New Tijuana expands by five acres each day.

New Tijuana is the future.

They build 20,000 houses a year in New Tijuana, constructed from whatever mix of

available building materials and cast-off detritus that can be recycled and reconfigured

into something that vaguely resembles inhabitable space. Here, the only demand is that it

have a roof (and even that seems somewhat negotiable), and without regard for anything

so outmoded as building codes or permits, they build wherever and everywhere they

want, armed with only the most provisional of land ownership titles. The surplus piles

of tires become walls and fences; discarded vinyl advertisements become weatherproof

roofing; palettes, cinder block and plywood are mixed at will. In Tijuana, squatting is

considered an inalienable right. Architecture can’t compete with that. It’s too slow, too

dependent on ego and sponsorship. Tijuana is fast, self-determinate, and horizontal.

There is Tijuana and there is New Tijuana.

next to an open sewage canal is wearing a Kobe Bryant Lakers jersey and blasting

the Black Eyed Peas on a Panasonic boom box that was probably manufactured less

than a mile away. You can’t help thinking about all the other boom boxes that were

exported north, and all the people who then bought those same boom boxes, and the

relief and comfort all those people felt at seeing the same everyday low prices they’ve

grown accustomed to, and would probably angrily demand be provided back to them

if somehow the torrential flood of cheap goods were suddenly cut off.

Anybody can see that manufacturing a crate of boom boxes for $15 makes more sense

than shelling out $90 for a unionized, benefits-hogging American worker to do the

same. The twin cities of the border have always engaged in an exploitative economic

embrace. But when confronted with the overwhelming realization that this situation

is so inevitable, so completely entrenched and self-perpetuating, just bemoaning the

North’s entitled status seems too passive. Anger typically arises from the sight of the

slums, the Lakers jerseys, the Ford trucks, and the maquiladora housing all impossibly

coexisting, and the urgent thought that can’t be resisted: somehow, this is all our fault.

That the future is fast and cheap is unavoidable; that speed and ingenuity will supplant

history and the starchitect; that the amorphous and accidental will trump the defined and

planned has to all be taken as a given. In the end, we have to stop worrying and learn to

love the best of Tijuana-ization while overcoming the worst. In a world where the existing

urban environment is a prisoner of sorts to its own aging infrastructure, Tijuana’s notions

of quickly composing and re-composing urban space in response to future events seems

increasingly relevant. And the radical reimagining of the role of the architect, something

rooted in modesty and a sincere desire for change in keeping with the possibilities afforded

by technological advancements and popular participation, has to continue to provide new

possibilities for a profession that suffers from a dearth of bold ideas.

That kid walking down the street

AMARG BoneyardTucson, Arizona

ArcosantiMayer, Arizona

out of Phoenix along I-17 is less than promising. With the rise in elevation, you leave the

saguaros behind for a harder, rockier soil in a landscape of low desert scrub brush that

has none of the varied beauty found in the hybrid desert-forest area further north around

Sedona and Red Rock. The turn off to Corder Junction is another picture of desolation:

a washboard dirt road that passes a gas station, a sagging, clapboard house flying the Con-

federate flag, an abandoned Airstream, and then, finally, a six-foot-diameter circular metal

sign leaning against a cattle guard: “Welcome to Arcosanti: An Urban Laboratory.”

Conceived in 1970 by Italian émigré and brief Frank-Lloyd-Wright-trainee Paolo Soleri,

Arcosanti was a future vision of a heroic, hyper-dense, monumental city that would shel-

ter 5,000 people in a harmonious coexistence of architecture and ecology; also serving as

a reactionary alternative to the ubiquity of the sprawling suburbs that were beginning to

crop up at the time—and, it should also be said, an alternative to Wright’s own Broadacre

City plans. Each year, 50,000 people make the drive to Arcosanti to visit the future.

What you’ll find at the end of the dirt road is a seemingly random assortment of

concrete structures sited along the edge of a gentle canyon that, taken together, have

an almost mirage-like quality as seen in the waning evening light. The structures them-

selves are amazing, with balconies overlooking the canyon edge, a fascinating painted

apse, soaring vaults above semi-circular amphitheaters, and multiple levels of stacked

living cubes throughout. Each building is well-designed according to passive solar prin-

ciples, which, coupled with ample shaded public spaces, makes for an incredible place

to spend the day. Concrete pathways and stairwells weave through the disconnected

structures, and along with the simple landscape, start to connect the fragmented struc-

tures in a hierarchical sequence.

The tour guides at Arcosanti will tell you that “50,000 people a year come here, look

at it, say, ‘Wow, isn’t that interesting?’ and then drive away, because it requires a total

abandonment of what everyone has taken to be a given.” But how successful is the

vision produced by Arcosanti?

The view driving north

but this begs the question (especially in lieu of situations like Tijuana) that when one bil-

lion people live in slum-like conditions that are parasitically conjoined with existing urban

centers, does going off the grid to live in a state of self-exile in the previously unoccupied

desert seem like a viable option to combat the global housing crisis? While Arcosanti seeks

to engage the entire world, the vision comes off as less of a solution to sprawl and more

of a segregated defensive fortification. Reyner Banham called this desert fantasy “pure

creative will exercised against a defenseless landscape.”

But the Arcosanti alternative is, after all, still just a hypothetical. Funding problems, lack

of government support, and labor shortages have left the utopia approximately 4 percent

complete after nearly 40 years. A city designed to accommodate 6,000 people, has com-

pleted facilities for about 70. Wonky steps, cracked concrete, and a wheelbarrow lazily and

inexplicably swinging from a construction crane reveal a community built by semi-skilled

labor that seems to be in a losing battle with the desert.

And while Arcosanti positions itself as a social utopia, it is also an architecture of techno-

utopia, a place where advances in science and technology allow a hypothetical citizenry

to exist in an ideal state where scarcity and suffering become anachronisms. That may

partially explain why the construction at Arcosanti happens in fits and starts—they’re

advancing toward a future vision that is already anachronistic. There’s been some debate

within the community, but the cult of Paolo (it’s always “Paolo”—never Soleri) holds

sway, and instead of evolving organically, as you’d envision a city would grow, they’re

still building toward his singular 1970 vision. The whole place becomes more of a living

museum with a tenuous connection to the flower children of the ’70s, the liberal arts

drop-outs, the turned-on desert commune dwellers, and the middle class revolutionar-

ies. It’s still here, and you can detect the faint traces of hard-core believers in the air, still

fighting the good fight.

Sprawl is an easy target,

Titan II Missile MuseumTucson, Arizona

buried beneath the desert hardpan, lies the most impressive of museums. The Titan II

Missile Museum, the only ICBM missile silo open to the public, takes tour groups, led

by former U.S. Air Force crew members, into the underground structures and explore

the facility comprising of the launch control center, the missile silo, and the blast lock

portal. Here, you pass through the 3-ton, 12-inch-thick blast doors that lead to 110 feet

of riveted steel and technological precision —a nuclear-tipped missile created with the

means to end not just war, but all existence, the world itself, at the push of a button.

But it is there that that missile remains peacefully cradled in the silo. The launch orders

were never received. The missile never needed to fly. Peace through deterrence.

That oft-spoken mantra —peace through deterrence—occurs with such frequency through-

out the retro introductory video and the subsequent guided-tour, that one gets the

distinct impression that the intonation references not just the geopolitical stalemate

condition that was mistakenly labeled as “peace,” but also some kind of internal medi-

tative state that allowed crew to function. No doubt a certain imperturbable compo-

sure is required for the type of person that volunteers for a job that requires a no-

questions-asked-yessir approach to a command to destroy not just a far-off city but,

most likely, civilization itself. I asked our tour guide, Chuck, whose wry sense of humor

and friendly composure gave the impression of an utterly reasonable human-being, if

he had undergone any especially rigorous psychological exams, or maybe if he even

had to undergo any false-positive drills in order to test his mettle and ensure unflinch-

ing compliance if the launch codes ever arrived. He responded that they were soldiers,

drilled to take orders. No extenuating psychological tests were necessary because the

overall “peace through deterrence”-ness of the mission guaranteed a clear conscious.

Granted, I didn’t grow up with the duck and cover films, the under-the-desk school

drills, or the stockpiling of supplies in my backyard bomb shelter, so I feel so far

removed from the general insanity of mutual assured destruction that the chasm of

time renders the whole situation even more unreal and makes me feel even more skep-

tical than some of the older patrons on our Titan Missile Tour. But as futile as it

probably is to try to find logic in strategic defense planning when nuclear weapons

come into play, the whole “peace through deterrence” thing he’s clinging to screams

of inconsistencies.

Twenty miles south of Tucson,

if the Soviets (or Chinese) launched a first strike, our deterrent capabilities were unsuc-

cessful, and any second strike would simply be retaliatory, launched out of spite. The

whole strategic defense mechanism was built around game theory—that a rational

opponent wouldn’t call an ever-escalating series of bluffs. It gets interesting because

deterrence doesn’t really require that anything actually functionally work —the missiles

could just be a feint. But it’s the perception, the illusion that becomes the truly fright-

ening reality that the other side believes we’re crazy enough to throw down with World

War III if the shit came down to it. That’s what makes “peace through deterrence” so

reassuring. Not because of its paradoxical ridiculousness as a viable Cold War nuclear

strategy (well, I guess it worked), but because it acknowledges that there is an inher-

ent consciousness in our nation’s psyche. We needed it and this guy who worked the

three-day shifts down in the silo needed it because, otherwise, we’d have to confront

the reality that the whole thing is a deranged facade. Or, as the nuclear engineer states

at the beginning of the Titan introductory film, “This is what it took to wage a nuclear

war. And this is what it took to wage nuclear peace.”

But none of that matters as we reach the climax to the Titan II Missile Museum

tour, the moment we’ve all been waiting for. The Mock Launch. Chuck asks for a

volunteer. A young kid, born after 1989, jumps up and hops into the commander’s

chair. An alarm sounds as Chuck, standing to the side, reads and validates the launch

code orders. Target 2 is selected. Chuck holds his key and the kid does the same. On

his mark, turn. Now the kid, sitting at the launch console, his hand on the key, waits

for Chuck to give him the signal to synchronously turn his key. Suddenly he seems to

feel it. There’s a hesitation in his movements, no longer the eager volunteer, uncer-

tain if this is really what he wants to do. Chuck gives the signal, the kid limply turns

his key. The button is pushed. The lights in the kiva-like command center change to

red. A piercing air-raid siren starts up. “Ready to launch” becomes “launch enabled.”

The missile batteries engage, liquid oxygen floods the missile chamber and activates

the launching mechanisms, “lift-off ” goes green, and 58 seconds after order received,

the missile is in the air. Thirty-five minutes after that, target strike. We’ll meet again

someday. No one breathes, a certain calmness washes over the group. Peace through

deterrence, peace through deterrence….

Simply put,

White Sands Missile Range and National ParrkWhite Sands, New Mexico

is where the nuclear era really began. Specifically here at the White Sands Missile Range

(WSMR), the country’s largest military installation. This is the ultimate war games

playground. Again, like the Titan II Missile Museum or the National Atomic Museum,

what was once classified as top-secret becomes a proudly public presentation, that is

not so much a museum, but rather stands as a monument to the ingenuity and abilities

of American scientists and engineers to construct the best missiles and send the great-

est payloads over the longest ranges.

The security checkpoint to get onto the base only serves to heighten the otherworldly

feel of the place. Almost welcoming, the base’s guards certainly don’t seem to deter

the steady stream of laughing families from arriving at the “park” to gleefully pose

for pictures in front of some of the more dramatic missiles. The sight of this crowd

walking along these pathways, stopping in front of Fat Man and Lance (by far, the

most popular photos ops) as if they were the Space Needle or the Mona Lisa would be

heartbreaking if it weren’t also hilarious. The eeriness and utter insanity that lurks in

the background of all these real-life sites is like an ironic ode to the facade of normality

that we all go through, living our lives in the shadow of not only these missiles but a

world that unquestioningly accepts their existence.

The missile park is a museum in the sense that the military is showing their past work,

but hinting at the greatness still to come. If you’ve seen a video of an invisible, air-

borne Advanced Tactical Laser burning through the hood of a car and disabling the

engine block, this is where it was filmed. Few can dispute that tactical laser weapons

are, well, pretty cool, but I only mourn that new killing instruments appear outside the

perception of the human eye, leaving future generations to walk through the WSMR

and miss the tangible quality of standing in the shadow of an Athena missile, touching

the metal and steel rivets, admiring the proportions of the radially arrayed fins. Then

again, maybe future progeny will be just as happy without the instruments of war so

proudly glistening in the desert sun.

New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment,

desert with the explosive force of 20 kilotons of TNT. Ground zero was 40 miles west

of Socorro but the 7.5-mile high mushroom cloud was still seen and felt over 150 miles

away in El Paso. It was the first successful nuclear detonation. Robert Oppenheimer

witnessed this at the South 10000-Shelter (10,000 yards south of Zero, that is). And,

after viewing the fireball he was led to famously state: “Now I am become death, the

destroyer of worlds.”

For good reason the quote became iconic. Taken from the Hindu Scripture, the Bhaga-

vad-Gita, Oppenheimer imbued the words with something mysterious, with some

pretty damn ominous overtones that also obliquely hinted at his own uncertainty at

his role as “the father of the atomic bomb.” Doubts which would of course lead to

charges of communism, public humiliation, and his security clearance being stripped

at the hands of McCarthyism in 1954. But on that morning in 1945, Trinity was a suc-

cess, and Oppenheimer had reason to feel self-congratulatory. The atmosphere didn’t

ignite, the oceans didn’t boil, and the fabric of space-time remained untorn. Sure, one

could argue that something nearly equally catastrophic was loosed upon the world that

morning, and it’s certainly clear that Oppenheimer understood that. But it’s a good

quote, and always makes for a strong point.

What’s less known, but no less interesting, is what he said the night before, as he stood

on one of the wooden observation towers, in the fading light of the New Mexico

evening, preparing for the climax of three years of relentless work. He surveyed the

Oscuras Mountains along the horizon and spoke the following to himself: “Funny how

the mountains always inspire our work.” He said this to no one in particular, almost

offhandedly, slightly above a whisper, but it was overheard and recorded by a nearby

metallurgist. Scientific discovery is an artistic act of creation where what is imagined in

the minds of men is made real. Coming from the creator of one of the most sublime

spectacles that few have ever seen, one that leveled cities and changed the course of

history, this is both incredible and terrifying.

Fire flashed in the pre-dawn New Mexico

Marfa, Texas

to Marfa, when you see amongst the desert scrub, derelict oil derricks, and lonesome

cows, a squat, free-standing Prada store along the highway. An entirely unwelcome,

un-Texan site along one of the greatest, most hauntingly empty drives in the country,

the window display of this Italian couture outpost is stocked with bejeweled leather

handbags and four-inch peep toes. But this isn’t Prada. Rather it is a 2005 art installa-

tion, a wink-wink one-line joke that is trying to say something about the current state

of Marfa as a nexus of art and commerce. You see, art came to Marfa, and the Pradas

weren’t far behind.

The best story ever told about Marfa was written by Molly Ivins. Like all tall tales, it

hints at a deeper truth. As the oil-soaked West Texas towns were drying up in the reces-

sion of the early 1980s, poverty and unemployment were threatening the existence of

a region built on the outdated, newly-modernized, and moved-away twin pillars of

ranching and oiling. That is, except for Marfa. Thanks to a transplanted New Yorker,

the minimalist sculptor Donald Judd, Marfa had a back-up revenue stream—minimal-

ist art, and lots of it—that had begun luring a steady flow of nascent tourist dollars

into the town. Word spread through the region that people from miles around, all over

the country even, were showing up in Marfa with open wallets. And some of these

new visitors were sticking around, fixing up old buildings, maybe even adding a coffee

shop here and there. Before you knew it, Marfa wasn’t an old dying town, but a thriving

one. As Ivins tells it, West Texans all over were intrigued by these foreign visitors and

wanted more of them, and a familiar sight began to occur at town meetings: “some old

rancher is apt to stand up—big old rough hands curlin’ up the brim of his cowboy hat

with embarrassment over having to speak in public, of course—and inquire earnestly,

‘How do we get them gay people to come?’”

Now, some 25 years later, the proverbial other shoe has dropped with a resounding

thud. For practical purposes, everyone knows what gentrification is. But in Marfa, it

is far more complicated than what’s happening on the Lower East Side and in the

downtowns of Your City, USA.

You know you’re getting close

An original adobe structure is typically seen as difficult to maintain due to the poor

state of wiring, lighting, and eroded material efficiency. Most Marfa residents are much

happier in a balloon framed, wood-siding house, if not a simple prefab trailer, and

see the decaying adobe as a blighted nuisance. But, of course, to an outsider, adobe

is authenticity personified, a rarity and something to be prized. No one wants to tell

their friends in San Francisco that they own a clapboard house in Marfa. In the West

of the imagination, adobe is king, and homes that were appraised at $40,000 are selling

for upwards of $300,000. Priced out are the 36 percent of county residents who live

below the poverty line, which has led to low-wage workers commuting long distances

to Marfa, a town whose population hovers around 2,000.

It was inevitable that this juxtaposition of Marfa over time would lead to unavoid-

able and overly sentimental questions of the proper means by which to achieve civic

renewal. The neighborhood cafés, feed stores, and groceries that have been supplanted

by coffee shops, art galleries, wine bars, and organic co-ops are a manifestation of the

notion that locality begins with social life. And social life is run by the artist class.

This class, made up of vacationing residents, lifestyle tourists, and MFA interns, is a

group whose closest attempt at civic engagement came when they banded together to

stop a planned big box development that would be within eyesight of the Chinati Art-

ist Foundation. Never mind that this big box was an attractive, affordable residential

and commercial development that may have provided housing for some of that same

36 percent. In the case of Marfa, gentrification leads to an anti-development stance that

keeps the town in a perpetual state of acceptable rusticity, producing new neighborhoods

equally as shallow and homogenous as blighted one. It’s a tough equilibrium that has to

be maintained to prevent the town from slipping into the anywhereness from which

Marfa’s many monied residents are so desperately running. So many monied elites, in

fact, that one local cattle rancher succinctly described the current state of Marfa as “fill-

ing up with triple A’s—artists, assholes and attorneys.” This finally leads to the ostensible

focus of Marfa, the one man who altered Marfa to such a widespread extent, and was

neither urban planner, architect, nor developer, but rather artist: Donald Judd.

Take the case of adobe homes.

but he made an honest effort to assimilate into the secluded ranching community he

found in Marfa when he moved from Manhattan in 1971. He always hired local work-

ers and paid a good wage. But the gulf between outsider and local was too vast, and

even Judd himself, the harbinger of the aesthetes, was unsatisfied with what he had

wrought. In a continuing, and ultimately futile quest for the frontier, he left Marfa for a

ranch further south near Terlingua, Texas, where he spent the majority of his last years.

He could never own enough land or buy enough property to attain whatever plateau

of assimilation he strived for, and the Chinati Foundation was left to manage his vast

holdings and artwork in Marfa.

Here’s the thing: it’s all about how you experience the art , especially land art. Amidst

reports of 20th century museum-goers who had wept in front of paintings, art

historian James Etkins set out to objectively classify a number of factors that would

induce an optimal setting to produce “strong encounters with works of art.” Among

them are seemingly obvious admonitions: go alone, don’t try to see everything, take

your time, minimize distractions; as well as more vague concepts: be faithful, do your

own thinking.

The Chinati Foundation disregards all of these guidelines. Firstly, being part of a large

group is a prerequisite for touring the grounds. Perhaps there are instances in which

moving through a museum as part of a group of strangers is a good thing, but here, as

our 10 o’clock rendezvous for the day’s tours began, a woman and her two young chil-

dren’s inquiry as to “how long this is going to take” set the tone. Those optimal “strong

encounters” instead make way for harried herding and disapproving looks when you

slow the group down for that second look in the Dan Flavin rooms.

By all accounts Judd was an asshole,

to start the tour with their best—Judd’s 100 untitled works in mill aluminum (1982-1986).

The boxes have a certain refinement and elegance about them that is impossible to deny.

But it is the boxes’ mere beauty that, to me, denied them true power. Notions of the

sublime and picturesque were first codified in Edmund Burke’s 1756 essay in which he

set out to differentiate that which is simply beautiful as opposed to that which is truly

great or sublime. Beautiful objects are those that are “comparatively small,” “smooth and

polished,” while the sublime object should be “vast in their dimensions…rugged and

negligent,” “dark and gloomy…solid and even massive.” To put it another way, de Maria’s

Lightning Field is sublime, Judd’s boxes are merely precious.

It is standard to discuss the critic Michael Fried and his critique of minimalism’s per-

ceived theatricality when talking about Judd—specifically his aluminum boxes. In

Fried’s view, Judd’s use of such coldly industrial materials in a banal array denies the

viewer the safety of a recognizable ‘art’ object and therefore requires the physical

participation of the viewer to activate the work. Chinati would seem to be denying

this interpretation by regulating that groups tour the boxes at approximately 10:45

every morning. The summer sun in West Texas is still relatively low at that hour, and,

in rejecting the opportunity to experience the metal as it changes with the day’s light,

Chinati ignores the theatricality of the objects, instead reinforcing the notion that the

Judd boxes need neither viewer nor gallery. They need only the space—the golden

light of dawn and the harsh high noon sun are inconsequential to the reading of the

work. Again, a comparison to The Lighting Field is in order. Where de Maria required

the visitor to spend 24 hours with the work, Chinati asserts that 15 minutes in harsh,

unchanging light is sufficient, and one is left to only wonder at the brilliance that could

be seen in the golden glow of a Texas sunrise. Walking amongst the mute stainless

boxes, I was reminded of the sunrise in New Mexico, and Marfa can only pale in com-

parison to that powerful experience.

Chinati is smart enough

in the 15 large-scale concrete works scattered across a field of tall prairie grass at the

edge of the Chinati grounds. Here the viewer is free to leisurely move about (the cubes

are , inexplicably, not part of the official Chinati tour), alone in the landscape. The

cubes are varied, massive, and fighting a battle with the environment. The struggling

chutes of weeds peeking from between the joints of the slabs produce the feeling of

vulnerability and a more symbiotic relationship with the landscape. Alone on the iso-

lated West Texas plains, with only the architectural scale cubes for companionship, you

briefly forget that you’re in the middle of a small town full of people struggling to live

their lives. You suddenly have faith that art can be great. Judd said “art has a purpose

of its own,” and you can’t imagine it existing anywhere but here. And if a Wal-Mart

threatened to appear across the highway in this last untouched paradise, it would be an

abomination worth fighting against.

But Judd also said that “society is basically not interested in art,” and he was wrong.

The last 25 years in Marfa prove him wrong. Regardless of society’s interest, art is

there, driving the market. In the end, one is again reminded of another box, the box

of the Marfa Prada along the highway. Because the Judd boxes aren’t really empty, they

are selling another product for consumption. The product that is for sale within the

concrete structures or the cool, steel boxes aligned in a row like a showroom is no less

real than that which is imprisoned within the ersatz Prada store up the road. Only what

Judd is selling is less tangible, more elusive, but still real: a lifestyle imbued with authen-

ticity, good taste, and affluence. I could feel the pull, the easy choice, but ultimately it

was something I couldn’t afford.

Judd’s latent power comes to the fore

photos: ©John Locke

text: ©John Locke

editing: Jackie Caradonio

design: ©Jackie Caradonio

Fast, Cheap, and Out-of-Control