[...]
What is the extended history of a place that is characterized by its blankness? What is the reality of geologic time for us, who have assigned ourselves the ridiculous title of “Landscape Architects”? To understand your total world conception is but one frame of Empire? That mountains will rise and fall, seas will fill and empty, I’m standing in Wal-Mart selecting ethically-correct dish soap, what even matters? That this vastness you are projecting all of your critical theory upon, which has been deemed so fragile, has been underwater, exploded in the air, built up and broken down. That you are standing on the fucking ocean floor and meanwhile there’s a burn ban in effect because of a two year drought and you can’t even have a goddamn campfire on your goddamn camping trip, so instead you just sip whiskey and catch the obscured gestures of your companions laughing heartily in the thin and opaque air.
[...]
from "Field Transmissions from West Texas", MANIFEST: A Journal of American Architecture and Urbanism, fall 2013.
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