PROCESSION FOR FUTURE ARTIFACTS

PROCESSION FOR THE EXTRACTED
FOR-SITE FOUNDATION, NEVADA CITY
2014

Procession For The Extracted, organized and edited by David Burns and Ranu Mukherjee, is a commissioned project that opens a critical dialogue in the fields of social and public practice. and brings the work of outstanding emerging artists into dialogue with the legacy of the terrain from which their work arises.  Beginning in the town of Nevada City, infamous for some of the most destructive gold mining practices in the history of the United States, Burns and Mukherjee organized 9 socially framed projects by emerging artists with support from the For Site Foundation and gathered critical texts from prominent and influential social/historical thinkers and writers. 

This collected work is being compiled into a book intended to generate a collective exploration, for participants, readers and local audiences, of western expansion and the narratives that become extrapolated by the discovery and reckless mining of gold from the California landscape in the mid-late 19th century. The work is both critical and experimental, invoking issues of economics and trade, displaced indigenous cultures, outlaw culture, slavery and prostitution and decimated natural resources. Procession For The Extracted shows how the nuanced and complex guest/host relationships that often occur in context specific art practices is aligned with the larger history of the West in the US.

Artist projects created by Jesus Barraza, Daniel Bouthot, Matthew Contos, Irina Contreras, Nina Adrianna Diaz,  Lex Kodieraski, Nicole Lavelle and Omar Mismar  Text projects by Legier Biederman, Candice Hopkins, Joseph Meade, Hank Meals, Janet Owen-Driggs, Ted Purves, Sue Bell Yank and Quintan Ana Wikswo.