Landscapes of Quarantine at the Storefront for Art and Architecture

Landscapes of Quarantine
Mar 10 2010 - Apr 17 2010
Opening reception: Tuesday, March 9, 7pm


Group exhibition exploring the spaces of quarantine, from Level 4 biocontainment labs to underground nuclear waste repositories.


Curated by: Future Plural
Geoff Manaugh, BLDGBLOG
Nicola Twilley, Edible Geography

Designed by:
Glen Cummings, MTWTF


Landscapes of Quarantine features new works by a multi-disciplinary group of eighteen artists, designers, and architects, each of whom was inspired by one or more of the physical, biological, ethical, architectural, social, political, temporal, and even astronomical dimensions of quarantine.

At its most basic, quarantine is a strategy of separation and containment—the creation of a hygienic boundary between two or more things, for the purpose of protecting one from exposure to the other. It is a spatial response to suspicion, threat, and uncertainty. From Chernobyl’s Zone of Exclusion and the artificial quarantine islands of the New York archipelago to camp beds set up to house HIV-positive Haitian refugees detained at Guantánamo and the modified Airstream trailer from within which Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins once waved at President Nixon, the landscapes of quarantine are various, mutable, and often unexpected.

Typically, quarantine is thought of in the context of disease control. It is used to isolate people who have been exposed to a contagious virus or bacteria and, as a result, may (or may not) be carrying the infection themselves. But quarantine does not apply only to people and animals. Its boundaries can be set up for as long as needed, creating spatial separation between clean and dirty, safe and dangerous, healthy and sick, foreign and native—however those labels are defined.

As a result, the practice of quarantine extends far beyond questions of epidemic control and pest-containment strategies to touch on issues of urban planning, geopolitics, international trade, ethics, immigration, and more. And although the practice dates back at least to the arrival of the Black Death in medieval Venice, if not to Christ’s 40 days in the desert, quarantine has re-emerged as an issue of urgency and importance in today’s era of globalization, antibiotic resistance, emerging diseases, pandemic flu, and bio-terrorism.

Landscapes of Quarantine began with an eight-week independent design studio directed by Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley of Future Plural. Each Tuesday evening, from October to December 2009, a multi-disciplinary group of studio participants met to discuss the spatial implications of quarantine and develop their own creative response: the resulting work forms the core of the Landscapes of Quarantine exhibition.

Works on display:

Pages 179 – 187, Joe Alterio

Q-CITY: An Investigation, Front Studio | Yen Ha & Michi Yanagishita

MAP 002 QUARANTINE, David Garcia Studio

Did We Build The Frontier To Keep It Closed?, Scott Geiger

Field Notes from Quarantine, Katie Holten

Hotel III, Camp II, Lab IV, Cell V, Mimi Lien

Cordon Sanitaire, Kevin Slavin

Context/Shift, Brian Slocum

Containing Uncertainty, Smudge Studio | Jamie Kruse & Elizabeth Ellsworth

NYCQ, Amanda Spielman & Jordan Spielman

Quick, Richard Mosse

Thermal Scanner and Body Temperature Alert System, Daniel Perlin

Precious Isolation: A Pair of Invasive Species, Thomas Pollman

-from the Storefront

LANDSCAPES OF QUARANTINE with GEOFF MANAUGH AND NICOLA TWILLY

from the BLDG BLOG

Studio participants have been announced (we are thrilled to be included).

Landscapes of Quarantine is an independent, multi-disciplinary design studio, based in New York City, consisting of eight Tuesday evening workshops, from October 6 to December 5, 2009, in which up to 14 participants will gather to discuss the spatial implications of quarantine. Quarantine is an ancient spatial practice characterized by a state of enforced immobility, decontamination, and sequestration; yet it is increasingly relevant—and difficult to monitor—in an era of global trade, bio-engineering, and mass tourism.

Studio participants will explore a wide variety of spatial and historical examples, including airport quarantine facilities, Level 5 biohazard wards, invasive species, agricultural regulations, swine-flu infected tourists confined to their hotel rooms, lawsuits over citizens' rights to resist involuntary quarantine, horror films, World Health Organization plans for controlling the spread of pandemics, lunar soil samples, and more.

During the studio, participants will develop individual design projects in response to the problem of quarantine, with guidance and inspiration provided by readings, screenings, group discussions, and an evolving line-up of guest speakers and critics. These projects will then be eligible for inclusion in "Landscapes of Quarantine,” an exhibition hosted by the internationally renowned Storefront for Art and Architecture in early 2010.

By the end of the studio, each participant will have produced a complete design project. This could range from the speculative (plug-in biosecurity rooms for the American suburbs) to the documentary (recording the items and animals detained for quarantine on the U.S./Mexico border), and from the fantastical (plans for extra-planetary quarantine facilities) to the instructional (a field guide to invasive species control). -from the BLDG BLOG

things aren't as they seem--even when they are

Geoff Manaugh and a post terrestrial, post-natural arch
image: Elizabeth Ellsworth

Geoff Manaugh (BLDG BLOG) presented work in New York City at the School of Visual Arts, as part of their Design Criticism program, on Tuesday, April 14. We met Geoff briefly while live blogging at the Nevada Museum of Art Art + Environment" Conference, and we've been following his blog--and now his new book--ever since. (It was a blast to watch the Postopolis! presentations by Geoff and others--including Matt Coolidge--webcast by the Storefront for Art and Architecture March 31-April 4, 2009.)

Geoff's presentation at SVA was titled "Designing the Post-Terrestrial," which he defined as designing technical stand-ins for the planet--earth simulations and replicants or replacements for Earth.

The "natural" arch in the image above is a case in point. Geoff told a story of how the federal government experimented with "transforming the geology of the American West into a permanently shellaced presence" via the "Arch Stabilization Project," using a product made by B.F. Goodrich in its test on several "natural arches."

This true story propelled Geoff into an evening of speculation (much of it also "true") about the built environment's relationship to the earth's surface. For example, what if the built environment is not something simply constructed on top of the "real" earth--but something that is continuously becoming the planet itself. In other words, what if the surface of the Earth was not really the surface of the Earth at all? What if what appears at first glance to be hills are actually buildings? What if a path that seems to go underground is actually going further into an architectural construct that precedes you? What if cities such as London developed glass bottomed buses, complete with ground penetrating radar capable of displaying to tourists the buried ruins beneath London's streets? What if--as Geoff actually experienced--you're walking along a surface street in Berlin only to realize suddenly that you're no longer on the earth's surface at all--you've crossed a seamless threshold onto an elevated walkway/bridge and you're high in the air but didn't notice because everything around you is designed to look as if it's still part of the earth's surface?

Geoff used the word "speculative" several times in his presentation. It left us wondering where speculation blurs into the purely "imaginative" (like the glass bottom bus). Regardless, speculation is an extremely useful and playful rhetorical device. Its active address keeps an audience's imagination in motion, offers a position from which one can project creative ideas, perceptions, and dreams in the name of shaking up the sometimes seemingly static world of theory and criticism.

This deliberate address of wondering "what if", even when standing before solid architectural structures, the landscape, or even the geologic depths of the earth, breaks new ground and dramatically departs from some academic approaches of more cannon-ized fields.

Acts of speculation keep the environment around us unfixed, unfinished, and always potentially more than what it seems on the surface.

Geoff's "things aren't what they seem--even when they are" perspective is actually a key conceptual frame getting wide use within the emerging field of Art/Design + Environments.

In Geoff's presentation, this perspective took the form of pointing out how sometimes we think we're walking on the surface of the earth, say, on a hill--only to find out that it isn't (just) a hill--it's a burial mound or an overgrown pyramid. In the Center for Land Use Interpretation's current installation for Parson's "Into the Open" exhibition (Post Consumed: The Landscape of Waste in Los Angeles), this perspective takes the form of pointing out that Los Angeles' trash removal infrastructure has also become monumental elements of the landscape.

from the CLUI's Post Consumed: The Landscape of Waste in Los Angeles

In Chris Taylor's recent presentation about the Land Arts of the American West's field work with Incubo in the Atacama desert, it took the form of pointing out that what looks like the unimaginably huge empty space of the Atacama desert is actually filled with traces and remnants of human history, mineral extraction, political terror, aesthetic practice and powerful geo-forces.

In fact, in the Q&A session after Geoff's talk, an audience member hit it on the head when it comes to naming a gesture that is at the heart of the emerging field of Art/Design + Environments. This expanding field is very much about that shift in experience that comes when what one thought was (of) the earth is suddenly perceived/understood to be a building ... or infrastructure ... or an earthwork ... or a manufactured landscape ... or a human-altered weather event ... or not a shooting star at all but a top secret surveillance satellite falling back to earth. And, in the other direction--what looks at first glance to be a "painted desert" is suddenly perceived/understood to be the results of monumental and microscopic processes, flows, and dynamics taking place across unimaginably deep time.

The audience member asked: "what's at stake in this shift in experience?"

One thing that appears to be at stake is the current emergence and expansion of an entire interdisciplinary field of study and creative response. In an effort to make something of that shift, bloggers, scholars, artists, designers, art educators, land use interpreters and curators are chasing it, provoking it, inviting it, desiring it--and using it as the starting point for all sorts of trandisciplinary innovations, including speculative design.