Thoughts on the Desire to Not Exist, Land Art, and the Spiral Jetty

To preface the desire to not exist does not necessarily imply the desire to die, I don't want to die or experience violence. Death implies a memory and a leftover pain. The desire to not exist implies peace in a lack of control.

The Spiral Jetty is an installation piece of land art created by Robert Smithson made up of basalt rocks, mud, and salt it stretches 1,500 feet from the shoreline of Utah's Great Salt Lake and is at times entirely submerged. It's not a fixed medium, since its conception it has gradually been worn away by the means of the lake. Smithson died shortly after construction was finished but the work lives on in a sense entirely without the memory of the artist. Such is the understanding of land art that the distinction between what's manmade and naturally occurring becomes muddled over time. There is a kind of perfect symmetry in the work that leaves you questioning how intentional nature is in its actions and materials. You could make the argument that it was merely fate that the rocks and salt and crystals along the shoreline had a singular purpose in being arranged by Smithson, that every time we influence nature there's a predeterminate motive involved although that can be a dangerous precedent to set. The potential for destruction and or erasure by naturally occurring mechanisms is possibly an integral aspect of the work itself. A work that becomes inseparable from its host, that has the potential to outlast the conservators dedicating their lives in documenting it, yet it holds no memory or identity. I wouldn't consider Spiral Jetty to be a portrait of Smithson in a traditional sense although the shape is very purposeful. A spiral being representative of a cycle that before long exists only in spite of itself constantly wedged between being absorbed or rejected by the Great Salt Lake and who has the authority to input themselves as a decider between these two states? This in-between period is representative of a desire to not exist, not to die but to not be here either. To be stuck in an arrested development with no memory of the before and no desires for the after but just attentive to the process. What we can't accomplish through the physical limitations of our bodies we're able to reach towards through creating something purposely to allow it to withstand the elements. Smithson was acutely interested in how the destruction of an environment or the remnants of such showcased how the world wasn't stagnant. Particularly how the difference between man's manipulation and nature's own impulse can be lost. I don't think many people would consider Spiral Jetty to be destructive, but it is. Regardless of using natural materials Smithson dramatically altered the northern shore of the lake.

Michael Heizer is another land artist who at times creates work that straddles the divide between impulses of the earth and man. His "Double Negative" work includes two massive manmade trenches built parallel on opposing sides of a canyon creating a disruption in the landscape that seeks to understand and appreciate the patience of nature's effort in eroding itself. To our unconscious the cycle of death and rebirth is a concept that we can see in nature but can't seem to understand in ourselves for better or worse, a lack of control is the closest thing we can achieve to death and in that there's some hope at finding peace in our senses.