Landscapes of Extraction
︎ Tags: GSAPP, 2018
Columbia GSAPP Spring 2018
Critic: James Graham
Partners: Michael Mc Dowell, Max St.Pierre
The industries of extraction have long thought themselves heroes of the modern era by powering the electric grid and consequently the industry and western economies. This type of heroism, to us, was most clearly illustrated in the drawings and representational style of John Perez .
Examining three sites, the Cerrejon Coal mine in Colombia, a fracking camp west of Tioga, North Dakota, and a SunCor strip mine in Fort McMurray, Canada, we wanted to take on the way that John Perez represents earth and fracking/drilling operations. First, Perez’s abstraction of the ground allows the viewer to dislocate the earth condition from reality. Perez paints pastoral scenes, plains - forests - and oceans, that remain untouched by man. These places, in reality, are usually transformed into bustling, black, areas of scarred earth. Roads are cleared to allow for machines to enter the site, trees are felled to allow for leveling and expansion of the earth, the sea floor is drilled into and anchors are cast into the sea bed to fix large platforms above.
We were also interested in how Perez shows the insertion of industry upon
Examining three sites, the Cerrejon Coal mine in Colombia, a fracking camp west of Tioga, North Dakota, and a SunCor strip mine in Fort McMurray, Canada, we wanted to take on the way that John Perez represents earth and fracking/drilling operations. First, Perez’s abstraction of the ground allows the viewer to dislocate the earth condition from reality. Perez paints pastoral scenes, plains - forests - and oceans, that remain untouched by man. These places, in reality, are usually transformed into bustling, black, areas of scarred earth. Roads are cleared to allow for machines to enter the site, trees are felled to allow for leveling and expansion of the earth, the sea floor is drilled into and anchors are cast into the sea bed to fix large platforms above.
We were also interested in how Perez shows the insertion of industry upon
the land as a surgical operation. A truck arrives, a pipe is sent down thousands of feet, the oil comes out, and when they are done they remove the pipe. Perez shows this in selective levels of detail in the section of earth they cut. The earth is drawn with an extreme level of detail, conveying precision and scientific know-how. Yet the armatures of the oil industry are often represented as simple grey pipes that shoot thousands of feet below the earth. This dichotomy of hyper-real and abstraction creates a kind of soup from which the viewer is left both trusting Perez but also allows the viewer to cast their own sense of reality into the drawings. Lastly, we wanted to take on the human effect of extraction. Throughout the world when these types of industries arrive there is almost always some amount of human displacement involved. We used the strata of earth shown in the ‘core samples’ to show levels of displacement and permanence of the mines. Beyond the sectional qualities, we also draw lines between places of habitation and dislocation.
