THE WITNESS, 2023
The artist, broom, jumpsuit and hat, landfill, earth; 5 min. 38 sec.
I performed this piece at the site of an indiscernible mixed waste inactive landfill, at 7th Street and The Rio Salgado in Phoenix, Arizona. My impossible task: removing the landfill. I was inspired by Susanna Battin’s, Leave No Trace and Francis Alÿs’, When Faith Moves Mountains. The title, The Witness, references the role of historical landscape paintings that depicted a lone figure looking out into the wilderness. Jonathan Bordo writes,”The specular witness performs a rather special and dual role. It exalts a picture that testifies to an unpicturable condition-the wilderness sublime-while simultaneously legitimating, as a landscape picture, terrain violently seized, dispossessed of its indigenous inhabitants, and reconstituted as territory. ” (Picture and Witness at the Site of the Wilderness)