Series Title: Peninsula Europe (Pt. 1: The High Ground – Bringing Forth A Second Nature)
Timeframe: 2000–2003
Exhibitions:
- May 13 – Oct 13, 2000, Peninsula Europe Pt. 1: The High Ground, EXPO 2000 / Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, Dresden, Germany (commissioned installation for the World Exposition exhibition Mensch, Natur, Technik)
- Mar 3 – Apr 7, 2001, Peninsula Europe: The High Ground, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, NY (solo gallery exhibition featuring large-scale map collages, poetry, and proposals)
- Sept 17 – Dec 10, 2016, The Time of the Force Majeure, Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture (CADVC), UMBC, Baltimore, MD (retrospective survey exhibition featuring documentation of the Peninsula Europe series)
This work addresses the high grounds of Europe from the perspective of its drain basins, ecosystems and waters. For this work the alpine definition of high grounds as the place where the trees stop was abandoned, and instead, the high grounds were defined as the place where the rivers begin. Once so defined, a singular new shape emerged from the trans-European landscape. It turns out that 1000 billion cubic meters of water flows downhill from this shape. The work proposes the reforesting of the high grounds from the perspectives of conserving waters, purifying waters and generating biodiversity.
Seeing
The geophysical heartland of Europe
As a peninsula
Extending from the continent of Euraisa
With Ocean boundaries
Cojoined by the Dnestr and Vistula rivers
separating it from the Russian plain
making it almost an island
As a peninsula
Extending from the continent of Euraisa
With Ocean boundaries
Cojoined by the Dnestr and Vistula rivers
separating it from the Russian plain
making it almost an island
Peninsula Europe
Contemplating its domain
The high grounds emerge
As both pattern and icon
Contemplating its domain
The high grounds emerge
As both pattern and icon
Thinking
Contemplating the pattern
Reflecting on the properties of its domain I said, It’s an array of drain basins cradled by the mountains formed by the pouring forth of the rivers that begin in the high grounds. You said, If the forests were left to re-grow and the grasslands released from overgrazing Then the resulting bio-mass Could help purify The outpouring of water. And you said, Then bio-diversity ribbons again can grow across the high grounds, from the Pyrenees to the Carpathians I asked Where would you begin? And you said, Where the terrain permits and the will exists. Choose your mountain.
Reflecting on the properties of its domain I said, It’s an array of drain basins cradled by the mountains formed by the pouring forth of the rivers that begin in the high grounds. You said, If the forests were left to re-grow and the grasslands released from overgrazing Then the resulting bio-mass Could help purify The outpouring of water. And you said, Then bio-diversity ribbons again can grow across the high grounds, from the Pyrenees to the Carpathians I asked Where would you begin? And you said, Where the terrain permits and the will exists. Choose your mountain.
