location: lands end, san francisco
date: 23 june 2007
The ground we stand on is not stable. It is constantly being reformed and reformulated. Evolving societies manipulate their environments to suit their needs. During this process the ground is churned and histories are buried. Unless one looks carefully, it is easy to overlook the erased history of a place.
Lost in the Landscape is a site specific installation for Lands End Park in San Francisco. In its relatively short modern history, this section of land has been reinvented multiple times for military, shipping and leisure activities. The original, sparsely vegetated, wind swept dunes were first transformed by Adolph Sutro into a working class recreation complex of gardens, baths and midway amusements. The sensational and sublime crowd-drawing attractions eventually disappeared, replaced initially by military fortifications and then by a constructed wilderness, museum grounds and golf course.
The intention of Lost in the Landscape is to alert park visitor to the presence and possibility of these forgotten histories and fabricated landscapes. For this project I printed clues suggesting the preceding landscapes on modified golf balls. These message vessels were placed in their correlating locations within the park for visitors to find.
lost in the landscape