Transect: 31˚52′11″ N, 111˚07′29″ W to 37˚04′42″ N, 116˚01′49″ W

This work was developed in response to an invitation from David Salomon to contribute to a curated exhibition entitled “Section as Cosmogram: From the Heavens to the Earth”. The exhibition assembles section drawings by ca range of contemporary architects and landscape architects depicting the real and imaginary relationships between the heavens and the earth. These two categories are broadly conceived to encompass phenomenon that include: the universe and the underworld, the environment and the economy, the atmosphere and the soil, the microscopic and the mythological, the ephemeral and the eternal, the scientific and the spiritual. In other words, it assembles sections that perform as cosmograms.

RVTR’s contribution Transect: 31˚52′11″ N, 111˚07′29″ W to 37˚04′42″ N, 116˚01′49″ W builds on our high desert research and assembles a layered transect through sites distributed across Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada, spanning the Sonoran, Chihuahuan, and Great Basin deserts of the southwest US. It reveals the occupations of desert lands, underlands, and skies by scientific, techno-industrial, and military agents, by sites of extraction, surveillance, experimentation, and planetary control. From the deep extraction of copper resources necessary to advance the electric systems undergirding this complex, we pass through a series of composite hybrid section / elevations: Intercontinental Ballistic Missile silos, surficial displays of airfortress disassembly, the Very Large Array scanning the heavens for life, the Starfire Optical Range defending against aerial attack, landscapes manipulated via detonation to shape proving grounds for off-world exploration, observatories built to discover new planets and sites for terraforming, and the test sites where atoms were split and from which radioactive ash was distributed across the territory. As the full moon rises, aerial choreographies unfold: mechanical raptors traversing training routes and operations areas, the hovering and tethered Aerostat system scanning for low level movements and crossings, and the now ubiquitous Starlink network controlling digital airspace. Above, the ancient constellations trace mythic rivalries, militaristic symbols, and encoded surveillance.

PDF Cosmogram Exhibition Catalog for Download