Abstract

"Dedicated to the increase and diffusion of information about how the nation's lands are apportioned, utilized, and perceived," the Center for Land Use Interpretation (or CLUI, as it has come to be known) is a non-profit research organization that "aims to improve the collective understanding of the human/land dialectic." 1 Centering its gaze on human-altered landscapes, the Center scours, tours, charts and archives the land in search of clues that might elucidate the convoluted and conflicted relationship we have with the environment. This thesis delineates the particularities of CLUI's ecological perspective and demonstrates the extent of its interaction with an equally singular art legacy. While CLUI's polymorphous practice can be situated amidst a broader repertoire of environmental art, the Center's artistic underpinnings--that is, the complex merging of relational aesthetics and conceptualism--also lead to a postmodern form of tourism and a modulated ecological consciousness. Looking at CLUI's practice through the prism of what is sometimes called social ecology, this thesis affiliates the Center's liminal identity to a specific conception of ecology, one that is inclusive of human culture in the broad scheme of natural evolution. In conclusion, CLUI's art-informed criticality is presented as a vector for pushing social ecology toward more pragmatic and self-reflexive ends. In so doing, this thesis implicitly brings to light the critical agency of contemporary art--as exemplified by CLUI--and its potential contribution to the discursive development of ecological thought.