SERIES: ALL SIDEWALKS NOW (currently on exhibition)
Originally conceived on Choctaw Reservation Land in Roberta, Oklahoma, these pieces are meditations on displacement, land use, and land coverage. They show us the softness of what is missing in the form of a hard inversion.
I cast the ground upon which we walked.
This was once here.
Then we came.
All sidewalks now.
Viewed as horizontal, topographic ‘paintings’ these castings bring together the actual ground with the ‘ground of a painting’ – that first layer of support upon which the image is built. Yet as slabs, faithful to the vegetation and ground they cover, they produce a temporal record operating somewhere between a very slow photograph, and a very fast fossil. The accelerated speed of concrete (literally sped up by increased ratios of calcium and lyme) defies geological time, making it a happy partner of urbanism and industrialization. Within the casting process, actual vegetation becomes the waste-mold. The “instant fossil” memorializes a final moment of time for the natural landscape. Its time ends as the concrete crystallizes.
Each tablet is created by pouring industrial concrete over a section of ground, and once cured, slowly peeling away the layers of vegetation and soil to reveal the contoured image. The textural surface that remains is a geologic photograph, a fast-fossil.
This series moves between agricultural and urban industrialized settings.
Roberta, Oklahoma (Choctaw land)
Jersey City, NJ | adjacent to the former Morris Canal
[formerly Lenape land]
current site of Chromium soil rehabilitation
Pawling, NY [formerly Wappinge land]
Livingston Manor, NY [near a location formerly known as Wachankassik]
Between 1831 and 1838, during the Trail of Tears, the Choctaw tribe was removed from their ancestral homelands which spanned from most of central and southern Mississippi into parts of eastern Louisiana and western Alabama.
They were relocated to the arid environment of Oklahoma, originally inhabited by numerous plains tribes. Displacement upon displacement.
The Native Land Information System is an important resource linked here.
Their disclaimer is itself notable:
This site, including all data dashboards, maps, and raw data, is intended for reference purposes only. Much of the data housed on this site are from the United States Government and/or third-party sources. Therefore, Village Earth, the Native Lands Advocacy Project, and its partners make no warranties or claims about its accuracy or completeness. Additionally, the information presented here should not be considered authoritative or superior in any way to the data, knowledge, information, and oral histories of Native peoples and/or Tribes as it relates to their lands and communities.
The cement industry is responsible for about 7% of global carbon dioxide emissions, and is the third largest source of industrial air pollution (50% from chemical process, and 40% from burning fuel, 10% ++) . Moreover, the implementation of concrete landscapes results in the erosion of top soil, erasure of vegetative landscape, and increase in water pollution, and flooding.