The document discusses Klaus Hu's artistic exploration of landscapes, specifically through a residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute in New Mexico in 2013. It contrasts historical and contemporary perceptions of landscapes, addressing themes of ecological disaster, cultural conflicts, and the influence of historical art movements. The analysis also reflects on archival research and the potential of landscapes, including Martian landscapes, as artistic and critical subjects in the context of globalization and identity.

1. KLAUS HU
The Absent Landscape / Unsettled Landscapes
Historical!and experienced landscapes. Photographs of the archive are juxtaposed as
negative b/w!and digital images of the residence stay at the Santa Fe Art Institute in New
Mexico in March / April 2013.!The landscape of the American South West appears as an
ambient room as visual language of lived time. As visual translation, these opposites merge
into a symbiosis. Do I imagine landscape or does landscape reflect on me? Is landscape a
romantic topic of escape,!"inspired" by infinity or is it an ecological disaster? While landscape
was subject to the will and spirit of the late baroque period in European tradition and
degraded to geometric alignments of the nobility, the romantic period of the 19th century
projected!the "soul" of the author / artist on / into the canvas, and thus into / onto the real
landscape. Sometimes landscape disappeared as a longing as in Caspar David Friedrichs
paintings.!At the beginning of the 20th Century modernity opens the bridge to!non-European
traditions,!without examining in detail the various notions of landscape, the self, the projection,
the ritual and transformation.!Only the ignition of the first Atomic bomb in 1945 in New Mexico
threw an image on the dichotomy of dissolution versus unity!(of the self).!The result was the
counter-movement and the awakening of the 60's generation.! But everything vanished into a
daydream.!Another 40 years later, after several financial and ecological crises and disasters,
the exploitation of resources by transnational corporations, wars of intervention, after 9/11,
looking at "LANDSCAPE" is probably a marginal subject.!While land-art of the 60's in America
was dependent!(and still is - see Michael Heizer)!of immense production budgets of the
Foundations,!landscape submerged as backdrop into!the popular context.
Landschaft / Das abwesende Signifikat
Historische und erlebte Landschaften. Fotografien des Archivs stehen analogen schwarz-
weiß und digitalen Aufnahmen gegenüber, die während des Residency Aufenthaltes am
Santa Fe Art Institut in New Mexiko im März/April 2013 entstanden sind. Die Landschaft des
amerikanischen Süd-Westens als weiter umgebender Raum wird zur BildSprache von
gelebter Zeit. In der malerischen Übersetzung vermischen sich diese Gegensätze zu einer
Symbiose. Denke ich Landschaft oder denkt sie mich? Ist sie in der romantischen
Vorstellung eine Flucht, "beseelt" von Unendlichkeit, oder ist sie eine ökologische
Katastrophe? Während Landschaft in der europäischen Tradition dem Willen und dem Geist
des Spätbarock unterworfen und zu geometrischen Fluchtlinien der Adligen degradiert wurde,
projizierte die Romantik Ende des 19. Jahrh. die "Seele" des Autors/Künstlers auf / in die
Leinwand, und damit in / auf die reale Landschaft. Manchmal entschwand sie auch im
Jenseits einer Sehnsucht wie bei C.D. Friedrich. Zu Beginn des 20. Jahrh. öffnet die Moderne
die Brücke zu nicht europäischen Traditionen, ohne die verschiedenen Vorstellungen von
Landschaft, dem Selbst, der Projektion, dem Ritual / der Transformation näher zu
untersuchen. Erst die Zündung der 1. Atombombe 1945 in New Mexico warf ein Bild auf die
Dichotomie von Auflösung versus Einheit (des Selbst / des Subjekts). Die Folge war die
Gegenbewegung und der Aufbruch der 60-iger Generation. Doch alles verflog in einen
Tagtraum. Weitere 40 Jahre später, nach mehreren Finanz- und ökologischen Krisen und
Desastern, der Ausbeutung der Ressourcen durch transnationale Konzerne,
Interventionskriegen, nach 9/11, ist der Blick auf "LANDSCHAFT" scheinbar ein marginaler
(Blick). Während die Land-Art der 60-iger Jahre in Amerika von immensen
Produktionsbudgets der Foundations abhängig war (und immer noch ist - siehe Michael
Heizer), taucht Landschaft hie und da im populären Kontext als back drop auf.
2013/15

2. news
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BOOK / NEW MEXICAN TRAVELS 2013
a photographic research
into the vast expansive landscape of New Mexico, USA,!
made possible during residence stay
at Santa Fe Art Institute in March/April 2013.
While site-specific attempts were lingering in the back of my mind,
recalling Nancy Holt, Robert Smithson and Bruce Nauman,
I experienced a slow, but vast expansive landscape,
full of contradictions and full of colonial and cultural clashes,
that emptied my mind and my eyes from preconceptions,
making me drive out into the unknown, while on stay.
What I experienced was a mix of reservations,
clinging to casino build resorts for income,
the hispanic community living side by side of the old spanish settlers
and their decedent followers, all reclaiming own territories and land,
while some towns of the 60´s communities are driven to tourism and
real estate sales. New Mexico is the state of the first atomic bomb
explosion and of dry high altitude with mountains, valleys and resorts.
Being on my own, I enjoyed a photographic research,!that can be
called an artists journey, discovering a vast expansive landscape.

3. On Landscape
The Archive
And Escape
2012/13
by Klaus Hu
presented at Santa Fe Art Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico
March 2013

4. On landscape, the archive and escape. by Klaus Hu.
(Klaus Hu is an artist / researcher working within studio based practice and for site-
specific concepts and currently researches maps and cartographies, invited for
Santa Fe Art Institute Residency Feb/April 2013)
I
What is landscape today?
What is an archive?
Close to my eyes and far away in the distance, I see a void, a horizon of infinite
stories, zooming back and forth like a flickering whirlwind.
The archive [16] and its multiple references are at one point static, from another
perspective, begin to move and linger in the back of my mind.
This static and at the same time revolving memory provides source and inspiration
and expects to be fed like a hungry child.
Handling the archive as an experiential container, selecting and judging, re-
orchestrating its elements into unexpected relational nodes, rendering its ´facts"
and ´objective truths´ into fictitious elements to construct another reality.
This reenactment of archival research and recombination provides the same joy, as
dealing with color on the canvas.
The topic ´landscape´ used in painting for several hundred years, whether as
historical, political, social, economic, cultural or as romantic topic has failed for
todays global unrest and unease.
The topic has to be emptied out like a void. While I research the database of
NASA's martian rover "Spirit", landscape as data transfer and as uninhibited
territory becomes a projection either as fictive or as real vision of how the future
may interact with its presence.
Looking at martian landscape evolves an escapist attitude, echoing back Robert
Smithsons land art projects and his sci-fi obsessions. It distances its metaphor as
untouchable realm for todays human visions and clings to a near future may be out
of touch or in touch.
And this touch of a ´may be´ near future of uninhibited landscape, implies a
subjective view on territory seemingly erased of psychological conflicts.
This opens a critical approach towards landscape, echoing multiple references
from "Space, Site Intervention", by Erika Sunderborg [1] , across "The Beaten Track"
by Lucy Lippard [2] , "Site-specifity, The Ethnographic Turn" by Alex Coles [3] ,
across Michel Foucault "Les Hétérotopies" [4] towards "Rethinking The Map" by
Dennis Wood [5], from Alighiero Boetti "Mappa" [6] project towards Irit Rogoff "Terra
Infirma" [7] and re-combinations, that combine artistic practice with research inside
the global forum and inside the archive.

5. The martian landscape opens a possible spiritual projection, which artistic practice
and critical discourse has neglected and forbidden for almost 50 years, since
Greenbergs evaluation of modernism.
The emptied landscape (of identity and of national heritages) denies any colonial
interest (but admits, that the search for resources may play an essential part in
current space missions). It thus presents a multiple fold of phenomenological views,
and connects Merleau Ponty's [8] "The Visible and the Invisible" with Henry
Bergson's "Matter and Memory" [9] as a model of escapist notion, of projection, of
memory and of phenomenology.
Intuition and Instinct, landscape and projection, the void and the single self are
possible recombinations as outcome of looking at martian landscape and as
possible interior screen.
II
TURTLE ISLANDs.
A SHIP NAMED ODYSSEUS.
Fiction and science-fiction have been capable of envisioning worlds, with the
negative effect, that some have drawn an apocalyptic or technoid scenario.
Robert Smithson [10] had a deep interest in science-fiction. He connected it with
site, territory and images, that drew a future impact for possible alien visitors. He
also had an idea of how to juxtapose the american industrial landscape with his
vision of territory and fiction.
In "Hotel Palenque", not only the decaying hotel is playing a role model and
delivers a scenario, but also the turtles, he found at the entrance of this unfinished
building are metaphors of a n-dimensional timeframe. It is comparable to a search
for traces. His anarchic sci-fi also constructs a prenatal condition inside mythical
time for himself and the viewer.
Other artists, like Jan Bas Ader [12] choosed voluntarily or involuntarily to
disappear during a sailing trip.
Sonic Youth proclaimed "The Disappearer" [11] 1990.
Aboriginal artists were dreaming their honey ant dream [13] dOCUMENTA 13.
For all of them (except Sonic Youth), territory and land speaks and spoke for itself.
And that may be the vision. Choosing a territory, that is outside of ones own.
Or inside a dream. Dreaming the land.
,

6. III
MAPS
On symbolic language.
What is a map?
The american universe [14], the european universe. Two different perspectives.
Two different rerpresentations. While Center for Landuse (http://clui.org) [15] offers
an alternative view and interaction on mapping, models of the laboratory in Europe
are either linked to city-planning and corporate needs (Guggenheim Lab), or are
experimenting with collective models (http://raumlabor.net), that are dependent on
public funding.
On the one hand, artists like Andrea Zittel connect collective living and production
with the gallery system, to gain financial support (http://highdeserttestsite.org). On
the other side, most of the models of collective living and production or research
are excluded from the gallery system, compensated and positioned via extensive
online media presentation and social networks.
What is the symbolic language? What are the visions, that connect these singular
and collective models for the future?
MAPS and cartographies
While "the process of globalization results in a diversification and multiplication of
spaces, that are subject to new configurations and specific expansion and
contraction processes, the rise of inequalities, consequently, the linear and serial
space that determines our imagination as the basis of traditional map work melts
away. This (also) requires new forms of symbolic representation.” "Nations states
appear as a type of container,...., reflecting a 19th century constellation of
states" [17] , ....while lines of trade are being made visible.
What is the weather Forecast transgressing Rivers and Borders? There are some
examples of this analysis provided by Antonia Hirschs works, e.g. “Average
Country” of 2006, “Forecast” 2005 and “Blot” 2000, working with processes of
erasure, but remaining defiantly impersonal in displacing the familiar “world as
map”. In other works like “Artnews Top 200”, she only shows these countries, that
according to Artnews magazine are home to influential art collectors. [18]
Artists having worked in the 70s and 80s, like Marcel Broodthaers and Alighiero
Boetti have shown earlier the unease of upcoming globalization (see: Alighiero
Boetti / Mappa del Mondo and M. Broodthaers / The Conquest of Space: Atlas for
the Use of Artists and the military 1975). Whereas these historical lines inform
current debate and irritation, more and more fostered by social networks online, few
archives remain as searchable databases eg.www.clui.org / Center for Landuse
Interpretation, offering an alternative view on geographical and historical mapping
and access. Newer databases, like the NASA ś image database on Space missions
provide an escapist and distancing beauty, compensating the lack of differentiation
needed on earthly and human matters, opening a narrow black hole (of escapism)
on neoliberal globalization, Fordist capitalism and Taylorist mass production.

7. Lit/References:
[1] "Space, Site Intervention", Erika Sunderborg, University of Minnesota Press, 2000
[2] "The Beaten Track" Lucy Lippard, The New Press, NY 1999
[3] "Site-specifity, The Ethnographic Turrn" by Alex Coles, Black Dog Publishing Ltd
[4] "Les Hétérotopies", Michel Foucault, INA, Paris, 2004, 1966
[5] "Rethinking The Map" by Dennis Wood, The Guilford Press, 2010
[6] "Mappa" project Alighiero Boetti, Ed. Luca Cerizza, Afterall Books, 2008
Sauzeau, Annemarie: '100 Notes – 100 Thoughts No. 025', dOCUMENTA (13),
Hatje Cantz Verlag, Kassel.
[7] "Terra Infirma" Irit Rogoff, Routledge , London, 2000
[8] "The Visible and the Invisible", Merleau Ponty (1961), Trans. A. Lingis. Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1969 and "Phenomenology of Perception" (1945), Trans. C.
Smith. New York: Routledge & Keegan Paul Ltd, 1962.
[9] "Matter and Memory " Henry Bergson 1896: "Matière et mémoire. Essai sur la relation du corps
à l´esprit." Alcan, Paris dt: Materie und Gedächtnis. Eine Abhandlung über die Beziehung
zwischen Körper und Geist. Übers. Julius Frankenberger. Diederichs, Jena 1908, Nachdruck
dieser Übersetzung mit einer Einleitung von Erik Oger, Meiner, Hamburg 1991
[10] "Collected Writings / Gesammelte Schriften" Robert Smithson, ed. Eva Schmidt, Kai Völckler,
Kunsthalle Wien, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2000
[11] "The Disapperer" on "Goo" by Sonic Youth, Geffen Records, 1990
[12] Jan Bas Ader / see Jan Bas Ader via Kunstverein Braunschweig, 2000,
publication "Implosion"
[13] "Der Honigameisentraum" (The Honey Ant Dream) inside dOCUMENTA GUIDEBOOK, 2012,
on Doreen Reid Nakamarra p.112, & Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri, p. 126
[14 " The Map as Art ", Katherine Harmon, Princeton Architectural Press, 2009
[15] Center for Landuse: http://clui.org
[16] "The Future Archive" at NBK, 3.Juni - 29. Juli 2012, MIT CAVS, curated by Ute Meta Bauer,
via http://nbk.org
[17] Joachim Hirsch / based on a text first published by 69pender Gallery, Vancouver Canada, ©
Joachim Hirsch, May 2005 Joachim Hirsch is prof. emeritus at Political science at the J.W. Goethe
University in Frankfurt, Germany
[18] Antonia Hirsch / Artist / researcher / writer / Canada / Berlin co-publisher of Fillip / Canada.
"The world map project"/ http://antoniahirsch.com/projects/maps/1
http://antoniahirsch.com/projects/untitled-world-flag/1
contact KLAUS HU
Studio Berlin: Wildenbruch 77
12045 Berlin!
tel 49.(0)30.68081524
klaushu@yahoo.de
mobile: 49.(0)176.87577269
Skype: skypeklaushu
BLOG: !http://klaushu.blogspot.com
MARS c/o ArtistsSpace NY: http://local-artists.org/users/klaus-hu
CV c/o ARTNEWS: http://artnews.org/klaushu