LAND ARTS OF THE AMERICAN WEST
home > projects > 2011 Clean Livin' Collaborative with artists Steve Badgett and Matt Lynch of Simparch

PROJECTS - 2011

Clean Livin' Collaboratives

South Base, Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), Wendover, UT - 2011

Steve Badgett and Matt Lynch of SIMPARCH established Clean Livin' as an evolving, off-grid residency unit in conjunction with the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), artists residency program. They invited Land Arts students to participate in collaborative efforts to improve and enhance existing infrastructure systems. Students focused on three projects: a greywater garden fountain and compost shower, a solar oven, and a metabolically active shade structure.

Land Arts of the American West
Steve Badgett and Matt Lynch discussing the tetra-tipi renovation

Journal Entry

Nina Dubois
September 06, 2011

Matt and Steve seem less interested in proposing solutions as they are in offering a context for experimenting with the notion of what it means to create an off-grid settlement here, in one of the most inhospitable places I know of. Not only is water scarce, the soil unfit for any kind vegetation and the sun and wind overwhelmingly strong, but the neighbouring land and buildings have historically and continue to be used for such non-generative activities as target practice, military training, and bomb testing. Yet what comes out of this experiment is surprisingly playful, pragmatic (it works), and alive.

Land Arts of the American West
Installing greywater distribution line for compost shower and labeling water flow systems

Land Arts of the American West
Student completing the greywater distribution to the compost shower

Land Arts of the American West
Greywater fountain feeding the 2010 Terraforming Garden Project

Land Arts of the American West
Demostrating the solar oven prototype

Land Arts of the American West
Students work on reflector plates for the solar oven

Land Arts of the American West
Solar Oven initial test phase

Land Arts of the American West
Students work on the tera-tipi retrofit, a metabolically active shade structure

Land Arts of the American West
Students take the tetra tipi for a drive around the defunk ammunition bunkers