BEYOND BEATIFUL

Topics Studio: Future (Hi)Stories
Winter 2021
Location: Silver Peak, NV
Prof. Kutan Ayata + Partner Xavier Ramirez

It is 2021. Lithium brine pools have just begun to take off as a method for extracting lithium, and the industry will only continue to explode. In the future we will find these poisonous yet beautiful landscapes to be simultaneously necessary and repulsive. Our speculation proposes a new national monument to green energy as a national park on the location of one of these lithium brine mines. By 2041 the park’s official designation will have been made, and by 2061 the infrastructure for both industrial use and public travel will accommodate the park’s multiple purposes.

This studio’s intent is to explore realism through future narratives. Excluding narratives that near fantasy, research was done on likely areas of expansion. The creation and collection of research items was then compiled into a “factual” collection of the present and eventually concluded with a presentation from the position of 2061 where all shown work has already concluded.

Reconfiguration of existing buildings and source material into two image series finalized the work as an artists gallery exhibition and a documentary on the history of our site.

BEYOND BEATIFUL

Morgan Jacobs