Robert Smithson's Toxic Tour of Passaic, New Jersey

2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 1019-1040 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREW MENARD

No land artist of the 1960s was more influential at the time than Robert Smithson. If anything, earthworks such as theSpiral Jettyand essays such as “Frederick Law Olmsted and the Dialectical Landscape” have only added to his importance over the years. One of the reasons Smithson still seems so relevant is that his work responded so directly to a nostalgic trend that arose in both American studies and American environmentalism during the 1950s and 1960s. On the whole, it was a nostalgia for nineteenth-century pastoralism, but it also led to a revival of interest in such figures as Thomas Cole, Timothy O'Sullivan, and Olmsted himself. To counteract this elegiac tendency Smithson developed a “toxic discourse” in which he treated the nineteenth-century landscape as a totally engineered prototype for the twentieth. The first fully formed expression of this toxic discourse was an essay he published in 1967, “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey.” It was there that Smithson began to elaborate an aesthetic that treated the open-pit mine, the suburb, and the desert as mirror images of each other.

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 379-390
Author(s):  
Visa Immonen ◽  
Elina Räsänen

Abstract The Finnish diplomat Harri Holma and his wife Alli, along with their son, art historian Klaus, created a private collection of 554 items. They acquired antique pieces and works of art in Berlin, Paris and Rome from the 1920s to the 1950s. The collection consists of Western and Southern European paintings, sculpture, furniture, textiles and tableware, dating from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century. Initially the objects were acquired by the Holmas to decorate diplomatic residences, but eventually they came to form a deliberately assembled collection. Following Klaus’s death, Harri and Alli Holma donated the collection to the Lahti City Museum in the 1950s and the 1960s. Here the creation of the collection is first traced then followed on its journey to Finland, with a focus on the developing relationship between objects, family history and museum institution. The shifts in the collection’s narrative from hobby to an expression of grief, and finally to a formal museum assemblage and a subject of academic research generate epistemological tensions.


Author(s):  
Athol McCredie

The term ‘photobook’ is very recent, yet numerous studies now survey histories of its development right back to the invention of photography. This article examines photographic books in New Zealand up to 1970 and concurrently explores definitions of the ‘photobook’ and whether, or to what extent, they can be applied to any of these publications. It considers nineteenth century albums, early scientific publications, and in particular, the books of scenery that have become such a stock item of New Zealand photographic book production. It also looks at a handful of books in the 1950s and 1960s that reacted against the scenic, as well as books of the 1960s inspired by photojournalism.


Author(s):  
Nancy Woloch

This chapter traces the changes in federal and state protective policies from the New Deal through the 1950s. In contrast to the setbacks of the 1920s, the New Deal revived the prospects of protective laws and of their proponents. The victory of the minimum wage for women workers in federal court in 1937 and the passage in 1938 of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which extended labor standards to men, represented a peak of protectionist achievement. This achievement rested firmly on the precedent of single-sex labor laws for which social feminists—led by the NCL—had long campaigned. However, “equal rights” gained momentum in the postwar years, 1945–60. By the start of the 1960s, single-sex protective laws had resumed their role as a focus of contention in the women's movement.


Author(s):  
G. N. Shapovalenko ◽  
S. N. Radionov ◽  
V. V. Gorbunov ◽  
V. A. Khazhiev ◽  
V. Yu. Zalyadnov ◽  
...  

Chernogosky open pit mine integrates truck-and-shovel system of mining with overburden rehandling to internal dump with a set of walking excavators for rehandling of overburden to mined-out area of the pit. It is possible to improve efficiency of stripping in the conditions of Chernogorsky OPM by reducing percentage of stripping with more expensive handling system. The relevant research and solutions to this effect are presented in this article. Comparative characterization of mining conditions and parameters of mining systems applied is given for open pit mines Chernogorsky, Turnui, Nazarovsky, Vostochno-Beisky and Izykh. The comparative analysis points at the need to account for difficulty of mining and process sites in comparison of equipment productivity. High concentration of mining machines, which is conditioned by narrow mining front and simultaneous operation of five faces, as well as blasting operation implemented every 1-2 days, are recognized as the main constraints of excavator capacity in mining with direct dumping in Chernogorsky open pit mine. The management and engineering solutions implemented in the mine and resulted in higher efficiency of draglines are described.


Author(s):  
E. A. Vakulin ◽  
V. A. Ivashkevich ◽  
E. I.I. Gnitsak ◽  
V. S. Baikin ◽  
S. P. Maslyukov

Uniform schedule maintenance of mining and haulage machines is one of the key conditions for increasing productive time of maintenance personnel and decreasing monthly average servicing time. Currently, Russian mines infringe regulated maintenance schedule aimed to improve output per shift. The loss of time of maintenance personnel and equipment as a consequence maintenance irregularity is never assessed. This article presents assessment results on maintenance schedule uniformity in terms of dump trucks BelAZ-7513 and BelAZ-7530 at Chernogorsky open pit mine, SUEK-Khakassia. A variant of calculation of time loss owing to inconsistent maintenance schedule for dump trucks is proposed. The loss of time by maintenance personnel and by mining/haulage machines is assessed. The fleet of dump trucks BelAZ-7513 and BelAZ-7530 is analyzed depending on overtime of operation between maintenance periods. It is recommended to improve uniformity of maintenance schedule for mining and haulage equipment.


Author(s):  
E. A. Vakulin ◽  
A. I. Zayats ◽  
V. A. Beklemeshev ◽  
V. A. Ivashkevich ◽  
V. A. Khazhiev ◽  
...  

Investigation of failures is one of the critical activities of mining and haulage equipment operability assurance in mining. Maintaining failure investigation at the required quality level, it is possible to identify provisions, rules and procedures that should be revised or changed, operation conditions that should be improved, additional personnel training, if required, etc. Investigation of failures in mines is under responsibility of machine men and electricians of maintenance and operation services. In reality, factory management and setup for production condition weak concernment of these workers in quality investigation aimed at finding of sources of equipment failures. This article describes real-life results achieved in development and use of maintenance service operation, technology and management monitoring. The requirements are substantiated for quality improvement in failure cause finding and removal in mining and haulage equipment at Chernogorsky open pit mine, SUEK-Khakassia. Causes of the present quality of failure investigation by machine men of Chernogorsky Repair and Engineering Works and Chernogorsky open pit mine are revealed. The proposed recommended practices will improve quality of mining and haulage equipment failure investigation.


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