On Sunday, October 9, 2022 from X to X, Ballroom Marfa invites the public to join us and the Land Arts program for coffee and conversation with Dr. C.J. Alvarez. In this special expanded classroom session at Ballroom Marfa, Dr. Alvarez will guide students and public participants in thoughtful discourse in response to The Blessings of the Mystery by Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas. Participants will have the opportunity to walk through the exhibition with Dr. Alvarez, Daisy Nam, Ballroom Marfa Executive Director and Curator, and Chris Taylor, Land Arts Director. Following the walkthrough, a conversation will take place with Dr. Alvarez, Chris Taylor, and the Land Arts students who will expand upon the environmental and art historical themes of the exhibition. This program will be the final day of The Blessings of the Mystery at Ballroom Marfa; we hope you’ll join us.
Dr. C.J. Alvarez is an Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin in the Department of Mexican American & Latina/o Studies. Dr. Alvarez is an environmental historian who writes about deserts, the built environment, and the U.S.-Mexico border.
Land Arts of the American West at Texas Tech University is a transdisciplinary field program dedicated to expanding awareness of the intersection of human construction and the evolving nature of our planet. The program leverages immersive field experience in the desert southwest as a primary pedagogic agent to support research that opens horizons of perception, probes depths of inquiry and advances understanding of human actions shaping environments. Land Arts attracts architects, artists, and writers from across the university and beyond to a “semester abroad in our own backyard” that travels 6,000 miles overland while camping for two months to experience major land art monuments—Double Negative, Spiral Jetty, Sun Tunnels, The Lightning Field—while also visiting sites to expand understanding of what land art might be, such as pre-contact archeology, military-industrial infrastructure, and sites of contemporary wilderness and waste. Throughout the travels, and on-campus, participants make work in response to their experience, which is exhibited at the Museum of Texas Tech University to conclude the field season.
Chris Taylor is the director of Land Arts of the American West at Texas Tech University and an Associate Professor of Architecture. He studied architecture at the University of Florida and the Graduate School of Design at Harvard and has been with the College of Architecture since 2008.