Overlook: Exploring the Internal Fringes of America with the Center for Land Use Interpretation

by Matthew Coolidge, Ralph Rugoff (Foreword), Sarah Simons (Editor)

The Center for Land Use Interpretation is a research-based educational organization that produces public programs about the built landscape of the United States from its sites in Los Angeles, Utah and the Mojave desert, with an upstate New York location opening in 2006. The Center's aim is to increase and diffuse information about how the nation's lands are apportioned, utilized and perceived. Recent examples of their work include a two-day "Tour of the Monuments of the Great American Void" by bus and the exhibit Immersed Towns Submerged in America. This book takes readers on a tour through the strangely unfamiliar land that Americans live in, demonstrating that we can understand ourselves and the nation by examining the clues on display all around us, often clearly visible but ignored. Each chapter explores a different topic, from an in-depth look at Ohio ("the most all-American state"); through scale shifts in model landscapes, exemplified in the three largest hydraulic models in the world; and law-enforcement training environments that "simulate" public space. Readers can dive into the hidden and enchanting world of show caves, where America is on display underground; and come up into the Great Basin, a zone covering most of Nevada, and portions of Utah, California, Oregon, Idaho and Mexico, whose network of watersheds has no outlet to the ocean. Following lines and edges, through cities, suburbs, small towns and wide-open spaces, the Center guides us upstream, toward the heart of another America--the same, but different.

Genres: Nonfiction, Art, Photography, Geography, Travel

264 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2006

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a strange, beautiful, weird, disturbing, enlightening, trippy, odd book. Working your way through this tome is like lifting up America's skirt and finding something completely unexpected up there. The Center for Land Use Interpretation is a weird group of people doing weird stuff and showing you how weirdly we interact and interfere with the land around us. You had no idea how polluted America is, TRUST me you had NO IDEA! the section on sunken towns is probably my favorite. but really all the sections were my favorite, learning about how amazingly full of radiation Ohio is, learning about the astonishing use of caves and the way they reflect local environmental pollution, oh man the section on scale models was FASCINATING! I want to travel to all of these places now, forget finding the world's largest ball of twine I want to explore the Mississippi watershed model, or at least go visit Cathedral Canyon or Thunder Mountain. Like Wisconsin death trip but about land usage...

[Kitap Yakıcı · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightfully quirky book about some rather surreal roadside "attractions." I agree with another reviewer that the images and text are somewhat dull, and yet I think that those aesthetic choices enhance the endearing oddness of this book, and of the Center for Land Use Interpretation in general. Overlook is somewhat like Matt Bergstrom's series of View-Master reels depicting an Americana in decline.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

An awesome adventure in alternative geography. Particularly the parts about the Great Basin.

[Ichor · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Centre for Land Use Interpretation is “dedicated to the increase and diffusion of knowledge about how the nation’s lands are apportioned, utilized and perceived”. The name and mission statement have an official air to them—almost scientific. Despite this they’re actually a non-profit research organisation, exploring how we use land through conceptual art, exhibitions and archiving.

Overlook is an attempt to give a panoramic overview of the Centre’s interests and findings. The book sweeps across the United States, paying equal attention to the colourfully mundane (open cast mines and steel foundries) and the extraordinary (large scale models of water systems built to simulate various hydrodynamic phenomena and toxic waste dumps).

Although the Centre’s methods and intentions are artistic, their presentation in Overlook is oddly empirical. Hundreds of examples of the ways land is being used are offered with beautiful documentary photography accompanied only by short descriptive texts.

The journey starts slow and steady, looking at a range of land uses in Ohio—a state which embodies and exemplifies all others.

It’s got big cities, small towns; it’s got agriculture, mining, suburban sprawl, and heavy industry. It’s white, black, brown and yellow; cosmopolitan in some places, less so in others.

Then we’re taken to less familiar territory–terrestrial miniaturisations, show caves, intentionally drowned towns and places playing places—before arriving in Federaland, America’s internal fringe. Here, in the Great Basin, the Centre walk us through munitions manufacturing facilities, dried up lakes and the communities, living and dead, who try to subsist in America’s “desiccated hothouse of America’s [physiogeographical] extremes”.

In spite of their sterile reportage and press association-style photography, there’s still something oddly provocative about the Centre’s work. The very idea that land use is something we should not take as a given—that it is something we should study and interrogate—is itself inherently radical.

[Denver Public Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a strange, beautiful, weird, disturbing, enlightening, trippy, odd book. Working your way through this tome is like lifting up America's skirt and finding something completely unexpected up there. The Center for Land Use Interpretation is a weird group of people doing weird stuff and showing you how weirdly we interact and interfere with the land around us. You had no idea how polluted America is, TRUST me you had NO IDEA! the section on sunken towns is probably my favorite. but really all the sections were my favorite, learning about how amazingly full of radiation Ohio is, learning about the astonishing use of caves and the way they reflect local environmental pollution, oh man the section on scale models was FASCINATING! I want to travel to all of these places now, forget finding the world's largest ball of twine I want to explore the Mississippi watershed model, or at least go visit Cathedral Canyon or Thunder Mountain. Like Wisconsin death trip but about land usage...

Get Overlook from the Denver Public Library

- Emily

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although the concept is great, and I am totally down for their documentation endeavor,
The realization could use some improvement.

The photographs are not stellar quality,
And the narration is dry.

I understand that some of this is intentional -
but I want the CLUI to go beyond database-filling and begin synthesizing some meaning from all of these fringe places which they are documenting.

Nonetheless, the material is rich, and I am glad for this esoteric exploration of the backwater USA.
The depth of material begs for some synthesis, which is missing from this catalog.

[Brokenshoelace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Places. It is all about places. Wherever you go there you are. But along the way, you may just pass by the most interesting of locales. This book is chock full the interesting. Places that may not even register as such. You never know what is right around the corner, or behind a chain link fence, or just a bit of the beaten path.

[David]

A good overview of some projects by the Center for Land Use Interpretation...

[Amar Pai · Rating 4 out of 5]

To get a taste, try searching the Land Use Database. Example queries: "cave", "disaster training", "lightning field"

[Mills College Library]

917.302 O965 2006