City
City is a two-mile strip of land art in the middle of absolute nowhere in central Nevada, a state in the middle of absolute nowhere, that an artist named Michael Heizer spent a half-century systematically destroying himself to make. It just opened to 6 visitors a day. Meanwhile, Heizer is dying. I could link that article and be done with it, but now that wouldn’t be fun, would it?
Michael Heizer has worked the earth in brutal, absurd fashion over his career, from a piece where he dug a couple of trenches in the ground to Levitated Mass, a massive boulder that he placed on top of a trench next to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, perfect for the ‘gram. But these were all résumé pieces for City. Heizer asked an art foundation for millions of dollars to build City, and then he asked Harry Reid to federally protect the land around it so that it could endure for generations.
It is hard to hide any of this, but still, hardly anyone has seen this thing in person. Why did anyone choose to trust him with so much money and time, especially since the tag cloud of adjectives to describe him usually involve “prickly,” “difficult,” “horrible,” et. al.?
Who cares? Does it matter anymore? Dude is gonna be dead soon, and he’s said almost nothing about what City signifies. All we really have is this insane monument that defies description and lacks wall text or bathrooms, on federally protected land, into perpetuity. I’m not thinking about the guy, or his life history, or even the fact that Levitated Mass utterly wrecked me when I saw it in person. I’m thinking about when I can book a flight to Vegas and drive six hours into a barren place that laughs at the merest idea of cell reception.
And so I don’t want to regurgitate anything that has already been said about City. I want to talk about how I’m experiencing the idea of this thing opening, and what it means to me. I have a very short bucket list, partly because I don’t have many real needs and partly because I already knocked out the entire thing before I turned 40. City is on my bucket list now, near the top.
Why do I feel so drawn to this? Because I go to art openings, galleries, and museums all the time? That can’t be it. I have seen enough amazing art in my lifetime. I’ve seen enough room-filling, vision-filling installation pieces. I’m writing this, coincidentally, after spending the afternoon at an art fair.
And I’ve been to enough national parks. Nature does a pretty great job of blowing my mind as it is. The idea of City slots into the same part of my brain, but in a baffling, uncanny valley way. Something like this shouldn’t be man-made, or maybe even made by man. City is a way of touching the void around what is possible in a way that is safe and reasonably approachable. It asks questions of us: what are we capable of? What are the stakes? Why do we feel a need to build something that endures?
I feel a deep, soul-level need to live richly, with as much of a variety of experiences as possible. There is nothing in the world like City. Pictures are banned. You are present, fully, for a day, within the life’s work of a single person. I think of the life’s work of a single person when I hold a tea canister with 400 years of familial history, or go to a sushi restaurant run by the same guy for 60 years. The goal is to do this, or something like this, with Draft, come hell or high water.
After that article came out, I sent an email saying I wanted to visit, and received the following reply:
Thank you for your interest in visiting Michael Heizer’s City.
Visitation for 2022 has officially closed but we encourage you to reapply for next year. The Triple Aught Foundation will begin to accept reservations for the 2023 season on January 2, 2023. Reservation requests must be made in writing. To make a reservation and for more information, please visit our website. In your query, please include the number of guests in your party (up to 6), a preferred reservation date, between May 16 and November 9, 2023, and several alternate reservation dates. Reservations are handled on a first-come, first-served basis. Please note that reservations should not be considered final until you receive confirmation via email.
So now I have a calendar reminder to check a website on January 02, and I guess I’ll be competing with the entire art world for the privilege. This is the sort of thing for which I will try to get a reservation, and then nothing else will take precedence. Nothing. Did my parents die? That is awful, my god, don’t even insinuate such a thing. Move the funeral date. Or maybe get buried in City?