Situating the Field-based Artist Residency: An Ecocritical and Art Historical Analysis of Signal Fire
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Date
2020-09-24
Authors
Schoenfelder, Cassidy
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
This thesis analyzes Signal Fire, a Portland-based arts organization founded in 2008. The organization produces extended, reading-intensive, and practice-oriented backpacking artist residencies in wild places. My own participation as both artist and researcher in a summer 2019 program called “Waiting for Salmon” informs my analysis of specific artworks made by fellow participants in order to situate and contextualize the residency. I focus on Signal Fire’s pedagogical framework the organization’s ecologically-driven public lands advocacy and collaboration with tribal communities and Indigenous perspectives. Signal Fire adheres to certain aspects of the American wilderness ideal and preservationist environmentalist ethics while simultaneously engaging with the tensions between settler colonial and decolonial approaches to the landscape. By observing Signal Fire, this thesis aims to provide an ecocritical and art historical framework for assessing the significance of other site-specific residencies within contemporary art, environmental humanities, and decolonial studies more broadly.
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Keywords
artist residency, contemporary art, environmental art, indigenous, outdoor recreation, social practice