Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes
Walker Art Center,
February 16 - August 17, 2008
Carnegie Museum of Art,
October 4, 2008 - January 18, 2009
Yale School of Architecture
March 2 - May 10, 2009
Because suburbia occupies a dominant presence in so many lives—a place of not only residence but also of work, commerce, worship, education, and leisure—it has become a focal point for competing interests and viewpoints. The suburbs have always been a fertile space for imagining both the best and the worst of modern social life. more
Exhibition Photos
Related Events
Lecture
Drawn Here: Sean Griffiths of FAT
Target Free Thursday Nights
Thursday, March 6 7:00 pm
Family Program
Escape to the Suburbs!
Free First Saturday
Saturday, April 5 10:00 am to 3:00 pm
Film
Next Exit: The Shifting Landscape of Suburbia
Target Free Thursday Nights
Thursday, April 24 7:00 pm
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Essays
- Worlds Away and the World Next Door
Andrew Blauvelt - A Conversation with Andrew Blauvelt and Tracy Myers
Katherine Solomonson - The View through the Picture Window
Robert Beuka (excerpt) - Intermediate Landscapes
Holley Wlodarczyk (excerpt) - Suburban Aesthetics Is Not an Oxymoron
John Archer (excerpt) - Learning from Sprawl
Robert Bruegmann (excerpt)
All essays are originally from the companion book for this exhibition, Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes. Some essays appear in excerpted form where noted.
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Artists
- Chris Ballantyne
- Kim Beck
- Andrew Bush
- Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI)
- Julia Christensen
- Coen+Partners
- Gregory Crewdson
- Adam Cvijanovic
- Benjamin Edwards
- Estudio Teddy Cruz
- FAT (Fashion Architecture Taste)
- Chris Faust
- Floto+Warner
- Dan Graham
- INABA
- Interboro
- Lateral Architecture
- John Lehr
- LTL Architects
- Paho Mann
- Sarah McKenzie
- Laura E. Migliorino
- Matthew Moore
- Stefanie Nagorka
- Catherine Opie
- Edward Ruscha
- SITE (Sculpture in the Environment)
- Jessica Smith
- Greg Stimac
- Lee Stoetzel
- Angela Strassheim
- Larry Sultan
- Brian Ulrich
- Michael Vahrenwald
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Video
We asked people to make a video telling us about the suburbs and put it on YouTube. Selected videos are showing in the gallery at the Walker Art Center during the run of the exhibition.
Selected Videos
- West St. Paul, by mnwebb
- Suburban Opera, by echucho
- Continuous Fence, by lgilge
- Suburbs, by myspacesubby
- “The City of Tomorrow, Today” (a suburb of Detroit), by jtondera
- loopty, by gabrielbbrown
- My orange push reel mower,by bbqpope
- The Last Tree by rythom
- Suburban Satellites, by kditullo
- Problems With Suburbia, by joshoakhurst
- this was actually a nice place to grow up, part 2, by sonicmaneuver
- Westlake - Spot #10 Enter Sandman, by moresmc
Original Submission Call
Do you live in a suburb? Do you work or go to school in one? What is your experience of the “burbs? ”…
Whether you love them or hate them we’re interested in your thoughts on the phenomenon of the American suburb. We invite you to make a 5-minute video about strip malls, cul-de-sacs, office parks, and green lawns or whatever suburbia means to you. A select number of videos will be chosen to screen as part of the exhibition Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes in the Target Gallery from February 15 to May 18, 2008.
To participate, upload your video to YouTube and add the tag “walkerworldsaway” or post it as a response to our video above. We’ll feature all videos on the Walker’s YouTube page. To be considered for gallery screening, entries must be 5 minutes or less and be online by January 18, 2008.
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Lexicon
Alligator
On this page… (hide)
1. A real estate investment producing negative cash flow.
Land that is purchased by a developer, but divided into more subdivisions than are ever actually developed. “An alligator investment ‘eats’ equity because it lives on a diet of principal, interest, and property tax payments but does not produce income.” 1
2. A strip of tire tred found on the side of the road.
Trucker lingo for tires or retreads that have flown off of wheels and are scattered on the road.2
3. A broad-snouted crocodilian that occasionally plagues suburban areas.
As suburban areas that encroach on wetlands in places such as Tampa3 and Houston4, alligators have wandered into new developments. Alligators have also been found in the suburbs of Los Angeles5, Washington D.C.6 and Cleveland7, where police suspect they were kept as pets.
1 Dolores Hayden, with photographs by Jim Wark. A Field Guide to Sprawl. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2004:? (↑)
2 Zeke Barlow. “Gators Lurk on Interstate 81 They Look Like Huge Reptiles and Can Bite Just As Hard.” Roanoke Times & World News, Va. (July 3, 1999): A1. (↑)
3 Geoff Fox. “Gator Visits Suburb.” The Tampa Tribune (May 25, 2007). http://www.tbo.com/news/metro/MGBB0HMZ32F.html (↑)
4 “Authorities Suggest Ways for Living with Alligators.” Press Release from Texas Parks and Wildlife (May 3, 2004). http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/newsmedia/releases/?req=20040503a (↑)
5 “Los Angeles Urban Gator Finally Nabbed by Gator Wranglers.” Buzzle.com (September 17, 2005). http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/9-16-2005-76950.asp (↑)
6 Amy Orndorff. “Reston Woman Wrangles and Errant Alligator into Captivity.” Washington Post (June 29, 2007): B3. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/28/AR2007062801343.html (↑)
7 “Police Capture Loose Alligator in Cleveland Suburb.” Associated Press (June 15, 2007) http://www.wdtn.com/global/story.asp?s=6662980&ClientType=Printable (↑)