Imagining the Lagoon in Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison’s The Lagoon Cycle
This article addresses the representations and practices of space in American artists Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison’s The Lagoon Cycle, a pioneering multimedia work of environmental art completed between 1972 and 1985, currently in the collection of the Centre Pompidou. The work explores...
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| Pubblicato in: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ranam, |
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| Autore principale: | |
| Natura: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Lingua: | Anglais |
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Recherches anglaises et nord-américaines
2024
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| Accesso online: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Riassunto: | This article addresses the representations and practices of space in American artists Helen Mayer Harrison and Newton Harrison’s The Lagoon Cycle, a pioneering multimedia work of environmental art completed between 1972 and 1985, currently in the collection of the Centre Pompidou. The work explores the lagoon as topos that stands in between the concreteness of site and the abstraction of metaphor. The article discusses the genealogies of the artists in relation to their use of site and their inscription in a critical reflection on landscape, it elucidates their use of fieldwork as a cultural practice and it uncovers the performative and conceptual dimensions of the lagoon. The main objective of The Lagoon Cycle is not to successfully restore degradation, even if a lot of speculative energy is channelled towards imagining the technological, economic and pragmatic frameworks that would make it possible. As a conceptual project whose utopian ambitions prevent it from materializing, The Lagoon Cycle asserts the role of art in elaborating an ethics and aesthetics of attention, in reflecting critically on the present and in projecting the future that might result from perpetuating the current situation. |
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