Illana Halperin, Boiling Milk (Solfataras), 2000, c-print on board

Experimental Geography
June 28 – September 20, 2009
Reception Sunday, June 28, 2-4pm, part of LAND/ART Symposium Weekend
Panel Discussion Sunday, June 28, 1pm

Experimental Geography was a group exhibition exploring the distinctions between geographical study and artistic experience of the earth, as well as the juncture where the two realms collide and possibly make a new field altogether. The exhibition presented a panoptic view of this new practice through a wide range of mediums including interactive computer units, sound and video installations, photography, sculpture and experimental cartography created by 19 artists or artist teams from six countries as well as the United States.

Curated by Nato Thompson and organized and circulated by Independent Curators International, the exhibition was based on the notions that geography benefits from the study of specific histories, sites and memories, and that every estuary, landfill and cul-de-sac has a story to tell. The exhibition was accompanied by an illustrated catalogue co-published by iCI and Melville House Publishing, including essays by curator Nato Thompson, art historian Jeffrey Kastner, and artist Trevor Paglen.

Download map here for Experimental Geography participant project for Albuquerque or link to the official city web page here.
For more information about Experimental Geography and the tour through 2010 download press release

Programs for Experimental Geography
at the Albuquerque Museum

Mark C. Childs

Saturday, September 12, 3pm Urban Landscape Tour How do we understand our urban space? Does Albuquerque have a distinctive atmosphere? What part do we play in constructing a sense of place? Mark Childs, Director of the Town Design Program at UNM, led an exploration of a collection of public spaces in and around the Albuquerque Museum, to reflect upon our connections to the urban landscape. (Mark C. Childs, AIA, is director of the Town Design Certificate Program and Associate Director of Architecture at UNM. He is a Fulbright Scholar [Cyprus 2005] and author of Squares: A Public Place Design Guide, and the forthcoming Urban Composition).

Saturday, September 19, 2pm
Gallery Performance: Reading Landscape(s)

Modeled after the tradition of "El lector de tabaqueria", the Cuban cigar factory reader who spent each day reading aloud to fellow workers, this performance event combined contemporary writing with visual production to explore our connections to the land. Artist Ellen Rothenberg and a team of cultural workers fabricated bundles of excerpted texts and re-purposed camouflage clothing used in her cartographic wall drawings, while writers from New Mexico's diverse communities read works responding to landscape, geography and place. (Ellen Rothenberg is on the faculty at the Art Institute of Chicago. Her works have been presented throughout the U.S. and in Europe).

The Shape of Time: Photographs of Star Axis by Edward Ranney, 1979-2009.
June 28 – September 20, 2009
Reception Sunday, June 28, 2-4pm, part of LAND/ART Symposium Weekend
Panel Discussion Sunday, June 28, 1pm



Edward Ranney, Star Axis, 10/8/08, silver gelatin print


Edward Ranney has photographed the growth of the earth-sculpture Star Axis since 1979, when Charles Ross began excavation of the southern edge of Chupinas Mesa, near Las Vegas, New Mexico, for the construction of the site's eleven story Star Tunnel. The large-format photographs Ranney has taken each year since then reveal a major site growing out of its own rubble. For Ranney, with his extensive experience photographing pre-Columbian sites of ancient America, this process might be described as a kind of visual archaeology in reverse. Inherent in a project spanning a generation are visual observations of the power of a specific site as it grows and changes over time, as well as a poetic sense of the changing shape of time itself. Here photographic documentation speaks not only of architectural construction, but also of process and duration, intuition and aspiration and a shared desire to understand cosmic phenomena on a human scale.

Sunday, August 30, 1pm
Artist Talk with Edward Ranney & Charles Ross at the Albuquerque Museum. More details

For more information about the Albuquerque Museum visit www.cabq.gov/museum

The Albuquerque Museum
2000 Mountain Rd NW
Albuquerque, NM 87104
t. 505-243-7255