The Fifth Lagoon From the Salton Sea to the Pacific From the Salton Sea to the Gulf
In 1975, John Goodyear invited us to Rutgers University to put up a piece in their exhibition A Response to the Environment and to talk to students. We offered the Fifth Lagoon which was in part funded by a University of California, San Diego (UCSD) research grant and in part by the Rutgers honorarium.
In our first version of the Fifth Lagoon, we proposed to cut an input-output channel from the Salton Sea to the Pacific Ocean or through the Colorado River delta to the Gulf of California. Water would be exchanged through a system of pumps and pipes, and the salinity and pollution of the Salton Sea would decrease, so that it would become in effect an estuarial lagoon that could support a large-scale crab farm.
One day, as the exhibition approached, we were contemplating the three 2.4 meter-by-2.4 meter images on the wall that were then the Fifth Lagoon. They didn’t look so great to us: unclear in some ways, unfinished in others. Eleanor Antin had the studio across the hall and was working away on one of her ballerina pieces; David Antin, the poet and art critic (and UCSD colleague, like Eleanor), often passed by to look and talk. So we asked him what he thought. “David, this work doesn’t look good enough to us. Will you give an opinion?” He spent about five minutes reading it, got close, backed away, and then began to laugh. “You call this work the Fifth Lagoon,” he said. “How many people in the world do you know who are making lagoons?” We replied that we were the only ones we knew. “Then how would anybody know that this was not your best lagoon?” Convinced, we sent the piece off to Rutgers, and everyone thought it was pretty good work—in fact, some were amazed. After the exhibition, when we brought the work back to San Diego, we rolled it up and made an entirely new lagoon, and then were satisfied.
It was late 1976. We were living in a large sprawling house in Del Mar on the beach. The telephone rings. A voice with an Italian accent says he would like to come down and discuss the Lagoon Cycle. I reply that of course he can come, and set a date. A week later a very large limousine pulls up to the house. Out steps the Italian critic who reintroduces himself as Carlo Amato. Then out steps an older man, perhaps in his late sixties. He says his name is John. I, Newton, pull the Italian critic aside, thinking he is the most important; I, Helen, pull the older man aside, knowing better. It turns out that this is John Kluge, the president of the multi-media conglomerate called MetroMedia, which produces rather original shows that feature characters like Archie Bunker and at the time supports the oceanographic research of Jacques Cousteau. We bring them to the studio. Kluge looks at the Fourth Lagoon and then reads the Fifth Lagoon. He is actually understanding them! There is kind of a joke in the Fifth Lagoon text and Kluge laughs at it. Carlo turns out to be Kluge’s art buyer and consultant. He had seen the Fourth Lagoon in 1974 at an exhibition in Cologne and concluded that John who has a degree in geology and was interested in ecological issues might want this work. Kluge who loves the scale and complexity that we work with has his lawyers make us a contract. There were seven Lagoons. MetroMedia contracts to buy the Lagoon Cycle, Lagoon by Lagoon, as we produce them. Kluge is a profoundly considerate patron. He instructs us to charge enough money so that we do not get into trouble at the end. John is known to have a golden touch. He comes to visit the studio to check our progress once a year, sometimes more often. Each time, it is in a bigger airplane. Finally, at the completion of the Lagoon Cycle, John shows up in a 747: very Air Force One.
Two years later, after the arrival of our patron for the Lagoon Cycle John Kluge, the voices of the Lagoonmaker and the Witness were formally introduced. In the resulting new version of the Fourth Lagoon, it is the Witness who convinces the Lagoonmaker that the Salton Sea waters are too polluted and salty to function as habitat for the vast crab farm that the Lagoonmaker desires. And of course it had been the Lagoonmaker, taking the role of a megalomaniacal technologist, who proposed in the Fifth Lagoon to cut a channel either to the Gulf of California or across the mountains to the Pacific and flush the Salton Sea with fresh seawater while flushing the polluted waters into the ocean. In the second version of the Fifth Lagoon, the Witness poses the questions that lead to the abandonment of the scheme: Who will flush the ocean? Who will flush the gulf?
Nevertheless, our proposal to make the Salton Sea into a giant fish farm seemed so attractive to others that it was eventually forwarded to Governor Jerry Brown’s office, with the idea of enacting it on the ground. Because we had concluded that it was an environmentally unethical work to carry out, we forwarded the Witness’s questions to the governor, in order to forestall any action on our former proposal.
In 1975, John Goodyear invited us to Rutgers University to put up a piece in their exhibition A Response to the Environment and to talk to students. We offered the Fifth Lagoon which was in part funded by a University of California, San Diego (UCSD) research grant and in part by the Rutgers honorarium.
In our first version of the Fifth Lagoon, we proposed to cut an input-output channel from the Salton Sea to the Pacific Ocean or through the Colorado River delta to the Gulf of California. Water would be exchanged through a system of pumps and pipes, and the salinity and pollution of the Salton Sea would decrease, so that it would become in effect an estuarial lagoon that could support a large-scale crab farm.
One day, as the exhibition approached, we were contemplating the three 2.4 meter-by-2.4 meter images on the wall that were then the Fifth Lagoon. They didn’t look so great to us: unclear in some ways, unfinished in others. Eleanor Antin had the studio across the hall and was working away on one of her ballerina pieces; David Antin, the poet and art critic (and UCSD colleague, like Eleanor), often passed by to look and talk. So we asked him what he thought. “David, this work doesn’t look good enough to us. Will you give an opinion?” He spent about five minutes reading it, got close, backed away, and then began to laugh. “You call this work the Fifth Lagoon,” he said. “How many people in the world do you know who are making lagoons?” We replied that we were the only ones we knew. “Then how would anybody know that this was not your best lagoon?” Convinced, we sent the piece off to Rutgers, and everyone thought it was pretty good work—in fact, some were amazed. After the exhibition, when we brought the work back to San Diego, we rolled it up and made an entirely new lagoon, and then were satisfied.
It was late 1976. We were living in a large sprawling house in Del Mar on the beach. The telephone rings. A voice with an Italian accent says he would like to come down and discuss the Lagoon Cycle. I reply that of course he can come, and set a date. A week later a very large limousine pulls up to the house. Out steps the Italian critic who reintroduces himself as Carlo Amato. Then out steps an older man, perhaps in his late sixties. He says his name is John. I, Newton, pull the Italian critic aside, thinking he is the most important; I, Helen, pull the older man aside, knowing better. It turns out that this is John Kluge, the president of the multi-media conglomerate called MetroMedia, which produces rather original shows that feature characters like Archie Bunker and at the time supports the oceanographic research of Jacques Cousteau. We bring them to the studio. Kluge looks at the Fourth Lagoon and then reads the Fifth Lagoon. He is actually understanding them! There is kind of a joke in the Fifth Lagoon text and Kluge laughs at it. Carlo turns out to be Kluge’s art buyer and consultant. He had seen the Fourth Lagoon in 1974 at an exhibition in Cologne and concluded that John who has a degree in geology and was interested in ecological issues might want this work. Kluge who loves the scale and complexity that we work with has his lawyers make us a contract. There were seven Lagoons. MetroMedia contracts to buy the Lagoon Cycle, Lagoon by Lagoon, as we produce them. Kluge is a profoundly considerate patron. He instructs us to charge enough money so that we do not get into trouble at the end. John is known to have a golden touch. He comes to visit the studio to check our progress once a year, sometimes more often. Each time, it is in a bigger airplane. Finally, at the completion of the Lagoon Cycle, John shows up in a 747: very Air Force One.
Two years later, after the arrival of our patron for the Lagoon Cycle John Kluge, the voices of the Lagoonmaker and the Witness were formally introduced. In the resulting new version of the Fourth Lagoon, it is the Witness who convinces the Lagoonmaker that the Salton Sea waters are too polluted and salty to function as habitat for the vast crab farm that the Lagoonmaker desires. And of course it had been the Lagoonmaker, taking the role of a megalomaniacal technologist, who proposed in the Fifth Lagoon to cut a channel either to the Gulf of California or across the mountains to the Pacific and flush the Salton Sea with fresh seawater while flushing the polluted waters into the ocean. In the second version of the Fifth Lagoon, the Witness poses the questions that lead to the abandonment of the scheme: Who will flush the ocean? Who will flush the gulf?
Nevertheless, our proposal to make the Salton Sea into a giant fish farm seemed so attractive to others that it was eventually forwarded to Governor Jerry Brown’s office, with the idea of enacting it on the ground. Because we had concluded that it was an environmentally unethical work to carry out, we forwarded the Witness’s questions to the governor, in order to forestall any action on our former proposal.
