500 pounds of common earth, 1 metre cubed, Transylvania to Los Angeles

Vasseur, R

Abstract

Performative action and exhibition. The project 500 Pounds of Common Earth, 1 Metre Cubed, Transylvania to Los Angeles attempts to explore the limitations of representational apparatus and cultural paradigms both in an arts economy and in a broader socio-political arena. The importation of the Transylvanian earth from the Borgo Pass, Transylvania to the Southern Californian Desert via galleries in London, Dublin, New York and Los Angeles describes an east-west cultural paradigm by restaging and making 'real' part of a novel (Dracula by Bram Stoker) that is a late Victorian expression of anxieties concerning the ethical purity of the British Empire and its possible 'infection' by persons, economies and technologies fluid and seemingly unbound by notions of nationhood.

The action of transporting the earth from Transylvania led to discussions with academics specialising in Romantic and Gothic literature based in Romania, Canada and the USA in order to find suitable agents to carry out the work and format the project in accordance with turn of the century fashions for epistolary fiction. Before leaving Romania the project became a central exhibit at the World Dracula Conference held in Piona-Brasov. It was selected by Austrian Cultural Foundation (ACF), London for exhibition and consequent funding of the initial stages of the production. www.austria.org.uk/art/

The project website logged many of the documents, press and visual records resulting from the action. After being exhibited in New York and Los Angeles the project was adopted by the Centre for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), USA, an independent body funded by DIA and the Lanan Foundation's researching, purchasing and cataloguing 'abstracted sites' across the USA. The work is now permanently on display at the CLUI Desert Research Station, Southern California. (www.clui.org)

• Exhibition Performance Type: Exhibition
• Conference Name: 500 pounds of common earth, 1 metre cubed, Transylvania to Los Angeles
• Start Date: Sep 1, 2001
• End Date: Dec 31, 2005
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2005
• Keywords: Dracula
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/1436363