May 2 – 6, 2018
Gallery M, CICA Museum
Statement
“As to scenery, while I know the standard claim is that Yosemite, Niagara Falls, the Upper Yellowstone and the like afford the greatest natural shows, I am not so sure but the prairies and plains, while less stunning at first sight, last longer, fill the esthetic sense fuller, precede all the rest, and make North America’s characteristic landscape.”
–Walt Whitman
This body of work is composited together from photos and video taken in the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve of the Osage, in Oklahoma. The region is called “The Osage” by Oklahomans, referring to the name of the county and the Native American tribe to which the land belonged.
The Tallgrass Prairie was an important hunting ground for Native American tribes such as the Wichita, Osage, and Kaw. Originally spanning portions of fourteen states from Texas to Minnesota, urban sprawl and the conversion of the prairie to crops and grazing land for cattle have left less than 10% of this magnificent American landscape intact. The Tallgrass Prairie Preserve is the largest remaining protected expanse of tallgrass prairie left on earth.
The Preserve is owned and managed by The Nature Conservancy, a leading conservation organization working around the world to protect ecologically important lands and waters for posterity. Since 1989, the organization has proven successful in restoring this fully functioning portion of the tallgrass prairie ecosystem with the use of nearly 2500 freeroaming bison and a “patch-burn” model approach to prescribed burning.
I find it interesting that conservation efforts (led by The Nature Conservancy), in effect, are recreating the American landscape of the tallgrass prairies on the preserve by reintroducing bison, eliminating invasive plant species, prescribed burns, etc. A landscape, curated and preserved, shaped by man’s intervention dating back to pre-history.
I imagine the prairie in a reverie of sorts, these videos at first appear natural, but are a façade. The work expands a moment with moving image and sound, and includes icons of the region such as scissor-tailed flycatchers, Oklahoma’s state bird, and American Bison which once roamed the vast prairie in massive herds. Imagery is highly composed, I view this as “recreating” the landscape, or recreating an idealized version of the landscape. However, there seems to be something uncanny and subtly confrontational about the work. Immersed in dream-like composites of the tallgrass landscape, augmented with ethereal soundscapes by Norbert Herber, viewers move through the space and nature seems to be interrupted by their presence.
Born in the U.S. and working in Oklahoma, Higgins earned BFA & MFA degrees from The Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Art, at Indiana University, in his hometown of Bloomington. Investigating time-based media as an art form through lens-based representation, digital compositing methods, and interactivity, Higgins explores abstracting source material into aesthetic expressions that focus more on experience than representation. His work has exhibited nationally and internationally, including exhibitions in: Chicago, Detroit,
Houston, Indianapolis, New Jersey, New York, Portland (OR), Tulsa, and South Korea, as well as film and media festivals in Sweden, and the Netherlands.
Aaron presently serves as Assistant Professor and Area Head of Digital Media in the School of Art, Design, and Art History, at The University of Tulsa, OK.
In collaboration with:
Norbert Herber_ sound artist
Norbert Herber is a musician and sound artist. His work explores the relationship between people and sound within mediated environments—spaces created by software, sensors, speakers, and other mediating technologies. Field recordings, live instruments, and electronics are brought together in an ever-changing, generative mix of texture and tone that leverages the processing capabilities of
contemporary technology to create music specific to a place and time. His works have been performed and exhibited in Europe, Asia, South America, and the United States.
Norbert is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Media at Indiana University Bloomington.
Aaron Higgins “American Bison” (2018)