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Second Natures

The Department of Design | Media arts exhibition curated by Christiane Paul, curator of new media arts at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, features work by senate faculty members Rebecca Allen, Robert Israel, Rebeca Méndez, Vasa Mihich, Christian Moeller, C.E.B. Reas, Jennifer Steinkamp and Victoria Vesna. Faculty who teach theory in the department—Erkki Huhtamo and Katherine Hayles—contributed essays to the catalogue. Curator Christiane Paul, in her introduction essay writes: “While we casually continue to use the word nature to refer to the “outdoors� as a living habitat, it is highly debatable whether nature, in the sense of a realm untouched and uninfluenced by civilization or artificiality, still exists. Every aspect of our environment has been profoundly affected by centuries of civilization and our use (or exploitation) of natural resources. Nature has become “processed� or even designed. Moreover, we increasingly understand the world surrounding us through data sets that represent an “actuality� and, at the same time, are mediated.�

“Méndez, in her Homeland # 2 series, explores this sense of ambivalence—while her panoramic images allude to the sublime in nature, they simultaneously reveal their synthetic process of construction. Incorporated in each landscape is a short line of text capturing a sensation, memory, or experience triggered by the landscape, including references to sustenance—for example, the words “till the last tree� over an image of cows grassing. The texts thus refer back to the core theme of landscapes being farmed, drilled, eroded, and melted for our “convenience.� The processing of nature unfolds both on the level of mediation—in a photographic, panoramic landscape—and the actual harvesting of resources.

The titles of the Homeland series and its individual panels introduce yet another layer of meaning, establishing a connection between current discussions surrounding environmental destruction and a more specific political context, that of “homeland security.� Each of the six landscapes has a dominating, key colour: red, orange, yellow, blue, green and white. The first five of these colors correspond to the United States’ Department of Homeland Security’s “National Alert Threat Levels,� from green indicating a low threat level to red representing a severe one. Realizing that the concept of peace was missing from the chart, Méndez created a sixth, white mural symbolizing peace as the most important ambition of humanity. Her murals occupy an ambiguous space without a clear horizon line—a space that raises questions about what constitutes security and what the cost of convenience might be. This mediated nature is embedded into meticulously constructed sculptural objects, whose material—thin sheets of anodized aluminum—seem to have just been milled right then, revealing their mechanical and industrial processes.� — Christiane Paul.