Non-Site Unseen: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
A discussion related to the September 2002 In Print article:
Re: Non-Site Unseen: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by kittyking (09.05.02 08:17 pm)
Someone, anyone....Buehler?
Spiral Jetty: it's art but nobody owns it
Re: Non-Site Unseen: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by CLEM (09.05.02 08:27 pm)
Its Art if you buy into all the BS I wrote in the early 60s
Re: Non-Site Unseen: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by gregallen (09.08.02 11:10 pm)
It's art, and the Dia owns it.
It's also visible now, and my little sister's visit is more interesting than NI's non-visit.
Re: Non-Site Unseen: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by Gravedigger (09.20.02 05:35 pm)
So what is art? What does it mean? Is it ment to move people in thought or action? Apparently Professor Israel was moved to act by the Jetty. His writings have move us in thought. This must be art.
Re: Non-Site Unseen: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by gregallen (09.20.02 06:41 pm)
Give that woman an A.
I'm visiting UT, just got back from the Spiral Jetty, and just reread Israel's article. His writings moved ME to think he is making up big chunks of his article and got caught up in precisely the kind of overly romanticised pilgrimage he says the Jetty is "not about."
The map at the Golden Spike center is dated 1996 and clearly discusses the non-Jetty. It's also got excrutiating detail about how far, down what road, over which rut and rock the Jetty is to be found.
There's no mystery about the non-jetty, and there should be no mystery about the Spiral Jetty. In addition to the map, which is hand-drawn but accurate, there are various shrine-like, art-like responses to Smithson on the shore, which mark the SJ. In the six intervening years since I first visited, the fetish-like pile of rocks and sticks has grown immensely, and there is even a mini-SJ made out of football-size rocks, all directly proximate to the site.
We ran into two local college professors and photographers, who have been shooting the lake for 17 years. They confirmed that even if it is submerged, the SJ can be spotted easily by climbing the hill. Perhaps the occasional piles of manure left by roaming cattle dettered Israel and his buddy.
My theory is that the real mystery confronting Israel was how ever could he cover his ass while meeting his editor's required word count. He can put theoretical frosting on it and call it a cinnamon roll if he wants to, but the experience he gives us is still a cow pie.
Re: Non-Site Unseen: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by maxherman (09.20.02 09:21 pm)
Ah, there's a personal url in this thread, just not mine. Keep it up champs!
Re: Non-Site Unseen: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by nicoisrael (09.30.02 03:16 pm)
In reply to "gregallen"'s comments:
The map I received from Golden Spike was not a detailed one, and it did not mention the oil jetty. (The map I received is pictured in the article.) As I mention in the article, I did have detailed directions from Matt Coolidge, but by the time we got to Utah they were crumpled and torn and not entirely legible. Still, there was no mention of the oil jetty, so it was a surprise to me.
In any case, I did not (and do not) claim to have "discovered" the oil jetty. I did, however, find it interesting that Smithson never mentioned it, that no one from DIA knew about it, that the Golden Spike people were rather evasive about its origins, and that the guy who was responsible for building it didn't seem to know about Spiral Jetty. To me, what was particularly intriguing was the relation between the elegance of the (then invisible) spiral and the utility of the partially visible oil jetty. Obviously you think there's no story there; thankfully you were not my editor. (And by the way, regarding your comments about "word count" and the suggestion that I needed to fill up the article—the piece was actually cut down from something longer, I was not paid by the word, and if you wrote about art you'd know that you don't do this kind of journalism for the money.
The afternoon I was there was overcast and rainy. There is a picture in the magazine (on p.175, bottom photo) that shows the view from the bluff. As I mention in the piece, we imagined this to be Spiral Jetty. Thinking back, it probably was Spiral Jetty. Unfotunately, it existed mostly in our imaginations.
I understand that Spiral Jetty is now visible again, but surely you can't blame me for the drought, too?
Perhaps if your sister had an interesting trip, she should write about it herself.
Re: Non-Site Unseen: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by nicoisrael (09.30.02 03:28 pm)
PS.
If there were shrine-like objects, we didn't see them, though we kept imagining that we did. I did mention in the article that we thought a green plastic arrow was pointing to Spiral Jetty, but it points instead to the Oil Jetty.
I agree that Spiral Jetty is not romantic, and that it ought not to be romanticized. If you sensed romanticism in the piece, you're probably imagining it.
Re: Non-Site Unseen: responding to Nico Israel's response
by gregallen (09.30.02 06:43 pm)
My response is based on the assumption that the real Nico Israel posted above (cf. Charlie Finch)
1) Welcome to talkback, Nico, where the void left by benevolent editors has been filled with self-righteous indignation and/or bitterness, in varying proportion (cf margarethelen, et al). Result: an actual discussion of what you actually wrote is a fresh (but rare) opportunity.
2) re the non-jetty on the map. We actually printed your published map and took it with us as a backup, in case the Golden Spike wasn't open. It, and the "precise" directions you got from Matt Coolidge, were nearly identical to the map the ranger gave us, which may very well be the one you cited later from the Utah Arts Council. It definitely had the non-jetty on it.
I'll accept that you could have followed second-hand directions that actually set you up for a surprise with the non-jetty. The map that we received at the GS, which matches your quoted directions, shows the non-jetty.
3) Your refutation that you didn't claim to "discover" the non-jetty is something of a non-sequitur. I said there's no mystery. The detective work you detailed is not uninteresting, but it's an answer to a question with no basis. (no basis, that is, if the non-jetty's listed and described on the map.)
4) Setting aside the (albeit crucial) detail of the map and the surprise/mystery non-jetty, the issue of the article's romanticization remains. If you don't romanticism in your piece, you're probably imagining (at least).
Two urbane artworlders (and a dog!) setting off on an "entropic" cross-country roadtrip? Across the Badlands to the Spiral Jetty and Double Negative? Bushwhacking your way through homogenous "slurbs" and disdaining "local color...cuisine or culture" along the way? Only to be denied the holy art grails you seek, not once but twice? Dude, you can live off that story for WEEKS in Williamsburg.
But my original point and criticism of your article still stands: it's not as interesting as my little sister's trip (which I did write about and linked to above).
Here's what I mean: I find it much more interesting that a conservative college student from BYU, the Mormon-owned university 3 hours south from the SJ would use a trip to the Jetty as a screening device/litmus test for a first date.
I find it more interesting that, after the Jetty reappeared this year and was covered extensively by the local news, people like my mother's nice-but-way-mainstream Salt Lake friends are fascinated by the Jetty and feel a sense of ownership/stewardship for it. THAT's what surprises ME.
That the flyovers (or drivebys, as the case may be) may actually/finally be engaging the contemporary art that drove you and me to the cities IS more interesting than a jaded artworld-weary tale of trying to get straight answers from the hicks and drones.
Re: Non-Site Unseen: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by gregallen (09.30.02 06:51 pm)
PS
The word count thing was a cheap shot, granted, but it's survival of the pithiest/snarkiest here at talkback.
And as for writing about art, I DO, and, like you, it's NOT for the money.
Here's a link to something I wrote when I first started my weblog, a year ago. It's about visiting the Venice Bienale; wondering if a chair belongs to the guards or to the Gober installation; and finding out that the only art you liked had been so altered by festival organizers that the artists disowned it.
Re: Non-Site Unseen: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by BPrevidi (09.30.02 07:17 pm)
G-
Welcome back.
-B
Re: Non-Site Unseen: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by nicoisrael (09.30.02 08:15 pm)
Another response to Greg Allen:
In some ways, it is a pleasure to know that someone out there is reading my writing. On the other hand, it is a little dismaying that what you are taking away from the piece is the opposite of what I had intended.
You perceive an "urbane artworlder" telling "a jaded artworld-weary tale of trying to get straight answers from the hicks and drones." Could this be evidence of some of the indignation and/or bitterness you mentioned? What do you know about me? I am neither particularly urbane nor especially jaded; in fact, this notion of "artworlder" strikes me as a necessary rhetorical device to portray yourself as an outsider, the way George Bush might portray himself as a political outsider. If you are responding to this, you are, in some way, inside. Or at least you are not "outside."
If anything, much of the mockery in the piece is self-directed, and not at all directed at the people who don’t know about Spiral Jetty. I really enjoyed meeting and talking to the rangers, government officials, oil explorers, biochemical researchers and defense industry-contractor p.r. people I interviewed for the piece, and had hoped that some of that pleasure came across: many were genuinely knowledgeable and/or curious about the Jetty. If there is humor, surely it is humor that implicates me, Andrew (who is a musician and web designer as well as filmmaker—in any case not an "artworlder"), you, your mother (who knows about the Jetty), my mother (who doesn’t), the workers at DIA, the workers at Toelle, and Smithson himself.
As for your insistence on unearthing my supposed romanticization: If the piece were written as an "on the road" tale, I would accede the point. But the vignettes (of not seeing the Jetty, of not getting to Double Negative) are precisely about failed attempts at "romance" and/or "quest." That said, despite its controlled nature (in both senses of the term), Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons, and in fact all of Wyoming, were totally sublime. No jadedness on that score at all. (I wonder, does quoting from Wallace Stevens somehow imply romanticism? If so, we might have to argue about your definition of the Romantic.)
I’m not going to argue with you any longer about the oil jetty; the point of the article (again) is not that no one ever mentioned the oil jetty, or that it couldn’t have been on any map, but rather that Andrew and I, who were aware of remnants of oil exploration, deluded ourselves into thinking that it was the Spiral Jetty.
I, too, find your sister’s story interesting. Can’t there be more than one interesting Spiral Jetty story? Does the fact that Artforum published mine somehow negate your sister’s story? Isn’t that another fable of outsidedness?
As for the snarkiness and cheap shots, I don’t like to play that way, Greg. So you can have the last word.
PS: Why wouldn't I be "the real" Nico Israel? If there's a "not-Nico Israel" out there, will you please stand up?
Re: Non-Site Unseen: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by maxherman (09.30.02 08:38 pm)
I don't get it, why does Gregallen get to post a personal url? I been doing some hype scannerpegs I would like to post.
You can see them and other interesting works by google: Gen—- 2—- Conference 2—2.
"Maximus" is a real nice one, but I didn't copy the idea from TTG, the idea is secret and I only tell people I deeply trust.
Re: Non-Site Unseen: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by Eric Banks (09.30.02 11:52 pm)
In response to this thread—and it's terrific to see a substantive conversation taking place in Talk Back—as the editor of the piece in question I would like to point out that Nico Israel's article is explicit as to the worsening weather at the time the "other jetty" was spotted. Regardless of how explicit the map was drawn, the circumstances of the visit (a road that is becoming unexpectedly unnavigable, poor visibility, a sick animal, etc.) all make it understandable how and why the misidentification might have occurred. Bad weather will do that—just ask the guy whose sailboat got caught in a storm off the California coast and who drifted for one hundred days, nearly to Costa Rica, before being rescued (NY Times 9/26/02).
Perhaps other respondents have interesting stories of Sprial Jetty visits to post—has anyone here been to see it since its reemergence?
Re: Non-Site Unseen: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by zipthwung (10.01.02 12:53 am)
>>and it's terrific to see a substantive conversation taking place in Talk Back
There goes the....
Re: Non-Site Unseen: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by poop_chute_II (10.01.02 02:16 am)
haw-haw! substantive! that's rich.
www.kissmachine.org/
push it real good,
poop_chute_II
Cecil Vyse & contemporary Grand Tour
by gregallen (10.01.02 10:48 am)
1)I, too, see the map/non-jetty as amply addressed.
2) I see the citations as signs of self-righteousness, not bitterness.
3)I cannot address the issue of whether a 6-page article by "a regular contributor to Artforum" is insider or outsider.
I fondly recall a small panel discussion in the Trustees' Room at MoMA where Roberta Smith said she prefers writing for a newspaper because it was so inconsequential; it just appeared, on newsprint, then at the end of the day, it was just tossed out, wrapped around a fish head, with no real impact.
4) The contemporary art pilgrimage is as romantic in its own way as the Grand Tour. As Forster's Cecil Vyse confesses, "Such romance as I have is that of the Inglese Italianato."
With vintage articles from Artforum/Baedeker in the map pocket, stuffed cars and SUV's are heading, even as I type, to: the Jetty, Double Negative, The Lightning Field, Marfa (our minimalist Ravenna), Roden Crater, Afangar (ok, maybe no one's driving to Iceland...), Bilbao (ok, maybe no one's going to Bilbao anymore...), all in search of a view.
The trip has spawned its own literary genre, of which your article is the latest/most prominent example. (cf. the Documenta piece, too. And this event I missed a month ago: www.paulrodgers9w.com )
Now, in fact, I'm thinking I should option your article and make a contemporary version of "A Room With A View." I see Josh Hartnett as Nico. We'll have to change Andrew to Andrea, of course. What's Reese Witherspoon doing?
PS I know what it's like to be misread; I meant the "snarky" comment as an apology, not a gauntlet. (If I get too apologetic, though, the locals here at talkback will jump on me when you leave. Please don't leave! or, Please take me with you!)
Re: Non-Site Unseen: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by charlie finch (10.01.02 10:59 am)
What, did I hurt somebody's feelings?
Can anyone at Artforum write an article that does NOT mention a past issue of Artforum? Mr. Banks? It should be your job to get rid of those mentions-it's BoringBoring- when an artist starts to quote themself badly, you can be sure that they will lose the interest of their viewers. When TV shows begin to do it, it signals the end of their run.
Or are you the one putting them in? "Oh that sounds just like the article that we ran in .... how clever!"
At the time of his death, Smithson owned a copy of "The Crying of Lot 49" that is not hard to research. I imagine that you would have to get your hands on the book to know if he actually read it.
Going out there has some romanticism involved, as does most of the work artists make referencing Smithson. You were called on it, so what. From the looks of it to me, you also dropped a Britney Spears quote.
You're not so innocent.
Charlie.
Spiral Jelly vs. Woodstock, non-site vs. supersite or oversight
by mmuttt (10.01.02 11:55 am)
Smithson was a romantic cowboy like jackson pollock 'when I'm IN a painting.' The SP remember was never a product, a solution; smithson being a non-artist saw to that, his sci-fi fata morgana was a fata entropa of the highest order, concretization of gravity's rainbow with the rockets to boot. Ms. Israel why are you so in denial about being romantic? It seems you are another element in the jetty's process of cultural sedimentation with geological sedimentation, to use another favorite smithsologism, in building up the smithson myth. By the way you never mentioned the Indian legend which initiated the 'origins' of smithson's intention (or was it to match his buddy carl andre's interest in priapic works), the primitivizing appropriation of one more white man, are the "Indians" as nonplussed as the park rangers? And after all smithson's talk of holmstead did he in fact not make another park, entropic park since you were another flanuer at leisure?
You made a quest, you documented the collective unconscious drive to make smithson's piece a fetish maybe we can turn it into kitsch with an edition of t-shirts? "I was there; I made the quest." This retailing might all be part of the process like the salt crystals fringing the outer rocks. A flip side to this black hole is my summer spent with my father dragging me to the 'original' site of woodstock. Now this was actually interesting since the bad parts of this thing are being erased and developers are trying to trade on its name but make it more of a multipurpose site for "clean" entertainment, Randy Travis for fuksake. It now looks more like a drive-in gone into hyperreality. Max Yasggur's (sp) son is attempting to 'preserve' the original site in a kind of living history kinda way, tie-die and spare dope. So can I write a piece for artborem, detailing ( I mean the mechanic's tools hitting the engine block, now that was corny colloquialism) my adventure to the Original Site: hitchhiking (dad insisted, since that's how he got there), riding with a guy who smoked so much dope and "dropped" so much acid he couldn't remember if he was going to or coming from the site and a woman who claims she was raped and ignored since it doesn't fit with the image of woodstock as clean wholesome debauchery? I'll research to see if there was anything technologically exotic like rocket building, or roach clip manufacturing to romanticize? Maybe some famous artist's were there. whatever ...
Re: Non-Site Unseen: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by thingsthatgo (10.01.02 12:03 pm)
Spiral, NOW, is a subjective temporal anomaly—an ANOMOLY. Temporal FETISH.
Plainly, the locomotion on such (a ) grand (scale) was the awareness of the unfulfilled heroics. 'Make it bigger knowing I till end smaller'. There were ‘simpler and less beautiful messages writ’ around at the same time dealing with land, hole, whole, and death. The structure, Spiral, on a primary level, is clumsy, almost appalling, yet born out of epoch.
Sure , hard to find, the symbolic, yet nothing to do with the structure or the leading up forming— I read an eloquent picnic
Any gain through the meadow, as I have read, registers a lack of care en part of the dilemmas that were active at the time
I can see, notwithstanding, the silver stream attraction. Doing something with it? I guess!
But then ignore because I am an artist and you are of taste.
Re: Non-Site Unseen: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by thingsthatgo (10.01.02 12:24 pm)
I loved V too! Informed me a lot of the rhetoric of Danto.
Re: Non-Site Unseen: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by gregallen (10.01.02 08:44 pm)
T-shirts are now available in both Spiral Jetty and Oil Jetty versions.
www.cafepress.com/gregdotorg
Re: Non-Site Unseen: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by poop_chute_II (10.02.02 12:30 am)
SEDAMENTATION OF MY CAT BOX
www.oz.net/
(well not poops' personal box but Big Dave's, sorry bruce)
party hard,
poop_chute_II
Re: Non-Site Unseen: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by BPrevidi (10.02.02 12:39 am)
Greg, Greg, Greg,
You know that kind of behavior is going to get this thread shut down.
Re: Non-Site Unseen: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by maxherman (10.02.02 10:45 am)
Well since I'm not doing anything bad anymore, why not let the real people play a game of cards? Greg and AB and other valuable guests should be able to post stuff, just not idjits like me, who should be off earning that rep instead of spamming. Si?
Re: Non-Site Unseen: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by gregallen (10.02.02 01:08 pm)
I'll give all the proceeds to DIA. Unless James Cohan sues me for them.
Re: Non-Site Unseen: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by jchesla (10.20.02 01:30 am)
You have go to be kidding? I have spent the last 7 years living in Utah (Logan) and have made a visit out to the site twice a year ... with knowledge of its emergence (usually lack there of). I find this article to be absolutely pointless. As one of the more important sculptural pieces of our time, the author handled this assignment with the aesthetic gloves of an elephant. I continually felt the errogance of the writer, who doesn't seem to know how to do research on a topic - checking with someone from LA? How about calling a local - with only 3 major universities (and a reputable Arts Council) within earshot - one would imagine he could have found his way through the telephone directory. I can only hope that this is redone now that the jetty is in view. And please, please send someone with vision, and a little less ego!
When you awake, you will buy me doughnuts....
by zipthwung (10.20.02 03:57 am)
Re: Non-Site Unseen: How I Spent My Summer Vacation
by maxherman (10.20.02 02:07 pm)
People at Thing.Net (see ad below) are talking Smithson re the "viractual object" (not my wording) last few days.