Chicago Land Use, Interpreted

Ever wonder where your “shit, condoms, and dead pet gerbils” wind up after you’ve flushed them down the toilet?

Well, wonder no more. The folks at Pruned have mapped it all out for you in a project titled “A Fantasy Itinerary for a CLUImidwest Tour of Peripheral Chicago” on their website. The project is inspired by L.A.’s Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI).

I’m so glad Modern Art Notes‘ Tyler Green linked this; I wouldn’t have known about it otherwise. CLUI is one of Los Angeles’ most interesting exhibition spaces/think tanks/collectives/hybrid projects involving land use and urban theory (there is so much fascinating work being done in this area in Los Angeles, but that’s for another post).  Pruned has taken up some of CLUI’s ideas and applied them to their home base and ours, the city of Chicago. Here’s what Pruned has to say about the project:

“Inspired by a Dwell article published last summer, wherein Geoff Manaugh, in his temporary guise as the magazine’s Senior Editor, asked Matthew Coolidge, of The Center for Landscape Use Interpretation (CLUI), what makes his favorite city work, we set out to concoct a similar infrastructural tour of Pruned HQ a.k.a. Chicago, a fantasy itinerary to better understand what makes it function. Because we, too, wanted to know from where does Chicago get its water and electricity. What happens to our shit? What about our trash? Where is the nerve center overseeing all that traffic?”

Check out the links above for answers. The blog is also asking readers to contribute their own infrastructural insight on the subject in their comments section. (via Modern Art Notes).

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Claudine Isé

Claudine Isé has worked in the field of contemporary art as a writer and curator for the past decade, and currently serves as the Editor of the Art21 Blog. Claudine regularly writes for Artforum.com and Chicago magazine, and has also worked as an art critic for the Los Angeles Times. Before moving to Chicago in 2008, she worked at the Wexner Center in Columbus, OH as associate curator of exhibitions, and at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles as assistant curator of contemporary art, where she curated a number of Hammer Projects. She has Ph.D. in Film, Literature and Culture from the University of Southern California.

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