A Metaphysics of Sight: Mapping the (In)Visible

The most enjoyable part of Robert Smithson's approach to art for me (whether it be structures, maps, diagrams, etc.) was its attempt to redirect vision towards "blind spots," making the otherwise invisible visible again. Smithson's consideration of vision as not simply a retinal operation always already apprehending the truth of a sight/site, but rather as a stratification (a learned way of seeing via cultural (re)production) that sees accordingly, lends itself to our project rather poignantly. As Smithson would change sight by changing a site (and vice versa), perhaps our project should look towards strategies that induce an aesthetic undergoing that makes visible the Cabot Koppers Superfund site in a way that actually urges (urgently) a re-cognition of the site in the service of well-being (a return to goodness, joy, fulfillment of capacities). Indeed, our job, it seems, is not to tell people what to do about their community; rather, by shifting the manner in which they are able to see their community and themselves within it (the knot of desire in which one's personal singularity is linked to the plurality), we can render otherwise blind spots visible.

So the question remains: How can we approach Smithson’s artistic methods of mapping and re-mapping, of presenting and re-presenting sites/non-sites in a manner that is conducive with ubicomp/ubimage, fits our disciplinary expertise, and that can effectively bring forth and make visual (and urgent) the “accident” of Cabot Koppers SuperFund (in the service of general well-being)? Certainly, the answer is an endless multiple (in application), so long as we hone in on effectively appropriating the general strategy. After all, lest we forget, Smithson was brought in to work on the Dallas Fort Worth Airport Terminal as an “artist-consultant” (133). How can we Konsult in a manner that appropriates some of Smithson’s strategies, while remaining focused on our own particular strengths (since we are not engineers, artists, programmers, etc.)? 

One experiment or possible application is posted below. 

This is Smithson's "Earthmap of Gondwanaland Ice Cap." Here he makes a connection between two seemingly disparate sites, for the service of rethinking and shifting sight (I argue, or at least I argue that one could argue). 

This is a similar strategy/operation, linking the mapping of electricity poles (see: pine tar; one distinct site) to the Cabot Koppers Superfund site. Such a strategy might be useful for our project. For example, Reynolds notes: “When Smithson began working with TAMS, he wanted to make work that would accommodate and reveal the visual conditions of the air terminal as a working facility, and he also wanted to make art that would speak about the invisible materials and processes that helped to bring the terminal into existence as a visual form” (139). 

Within the institution of the internet/digitality, there is also the map meme, or the mapeme:

Considering Smithson, tourism, and the effective logic of advertisements, we might also consider his abandoned attempt at inserting a conceptual tour guide performance into his Passaic project, as noted in Reynolds: “Smithson appoints himself an ‘official’ guide to Passaic and its monuments in an advertisement he designed to accompany the publication of his Passaic article. Its proposed text reads as follows: SEE THE MONUMENT OF PASSAIC NEW JERSEY: What can you find in Passaic that you can not find in Paris, London or Rome? Find out for yourself. Discover (if you dare) the breathtaking Passaic River and the eternal monuments on its enchanted banks. Ride in Rent-a-Car comfort to the land that time forgot. Only minutes from N.Y.C. Robert Smithson will guide you through this fabled series of sites…and don’t forget your camera. Special maps come with each tour. For more information visit Dawn Gallery, 29 West 57^th Street” (104) .

Other key considerations:

“All of these added elements would ‘expose’ the terminal as a coded environment, a ‘picturable situation’ that could be read in a number of different ways and from a number of points of view.” “These aerial sites would not only be visible from arriving and departing aircraft, but they would also define the terminal’s manmade perimeters in terms of landscaping” (156)

“In other words, [specific objects]…are never whole; in fact, they can be confined to minute fragments of primate traits of an object” (147). SEE: DIOXIN.

“In choosing to ‘map’ a site in New Jersey in his first nonsite, Smithson follows another one of the most basic conditions of map making: ‘start with your own home terrain’” (157).

“The local almost always indicates the global, just as the present exists only as a faint echo of the past” (175)