City commuting
In our last text, I talked a little about the process of visiting City, a mile-long contemporary artwork in the Nevada desert. This text is about the artwork itself.
We left off with a brief mention of nature. I spent the two days prior to visiting City hiking state parks around Vegas. I was used to being outside, going far distances, working with my body. This is good because visiting City is an essentially continuous experience of walking across coarse terrain.
City is not the sort of artwork that is exactly ADA-compliant. You have to sign a waiver, and the waiver is long. You cannot build railings on the sides of the thing or put signs everywhere to keep off of certain parts, both of which would probably need to be required in order to allow more people to visit. Plus, the landscape itself is pretty hard: you’re hiking for 3 hours in full sun at 5,000+ feet elevation and 0% humidity, and the terrain is coarse gravel sourced from the surrounding landscape. Hiking boots and a basic level of fitness are required, full stop. My knees hurt two days later after visiting it once. I’m 43. Do not even think of visiting City if you’re old, infirm, or bringing children. If you fit the bill, though, you’re in for a memorable day.
There are two main sculptures that don’t look much like one another, one at each end, built about a decade apart from one another. Around each sculpture are a pair of ramps that you can walk up to get the most comprehensive view across the piece. The rest of City is a series of paths, ramps, and hills made of gravel that have been graded to the angle of repose, like an elaborate, multi-story-tall zen garden that you can walk within. Nevada brushland has been carved out of one region, somewhat like a park.
Look up at any point and you’ll see the mountains of the surrounding valley peeking over your field of vision, reminding you of where you are. City is not in a dug-out valley, preventing you from understanding its context. It is clearly there, of its place, existing in conversation with its surroundings. I found myself asking about how City exists in conversation with nature, often, which is probably some part of the point.
Having only 3 hours there, it is hard to stop and pause. At one point I ate a sandwich on one of the sculptures, remarking on how unlikely and strange it was to do so, watching a red ant scurry away with a tiny fleck of turkey. At another point I found a hidden ramp and climbed it. I stopped at least five times to remark on some form of pleasing geometry. I used the portapotty and found the experience of opening its door to be one of the most surreal of my life, confronted with all that. I created my own story with the thing.
The thing is called “City,” and while it’s probably dangerous to read too much into any words that come out of Michael Heizer, the idea suggested itself the whole time: commuting long distances, slowly finding a relationship with something bigger, meditating on the connection between the natural and the man-made.
I’m sure everybody will take their own thing from it, though. Halfway through I asked my partner is City minimalist? and got a thoughtful answer back about what it might be minimalist relative to. On the one hand, looking into the distance every so often, the soft-contoured geometric paths had a habit of clearing my brain. On the other, the thing is over a mile wide and took 50 years to build. Its hills are visible on satellite maps. You may not be able to take pictures of it, but there is nowhere for City to hide.
Eventually, we drove back. Kept talking. Asked more questions of Ed. Saw a coyote in the darkness. We all hugged and went our separate ways. Got back to Vegas at 9:30p and mauled a burger at In-N-Out, like you do, and nobody around us knew or cared where we had just been.