Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West

In this brilliant and penetrating fantasia on land use and exploitation, writer, activist, and curator Lippard (Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object) invites readers to join her stream of consciousness, taking off from her home “in one of the lower levels of a pit, an arid ancient seabed in northern New Mexico called the Galisto Basin.” The book gives equal weight to the verbal and visual, with words flowing along the bottom half of each page and photographs that blur the lines among documentation, journalism, and art along the top, traversing “cultural history and cultural geography” through the archeology and social politics of mineral rights, native rights, adobe, petroglyphs and graffiti; the glamour and exploitation of “cultural tourism” and earthworks/land art; and the oblivious actions of development and capitalism against water, ecological, and climate. She lands in exhilarating fashion on art as a catalyst for change: the political power of photography in the social landscape; the bravery of artists navigating stubborn and archaic bureaucracies to creatively remediate and regenerate superfund sites and brownfields; and new interdisciplinary programs and projects bridging art, science, city planning, and land use. This singular book will stir the “creative energies” of veteran Lippard fans and environmentalists as well as a new generation of artist-activists. 200 color photos. (Apr.)