Contacts: Brad Cullen, (505) 277-5041 Steve Carr, (505) 277-1821

August 19, 2002 “THE POST-TECHNOLOGICAL WESTERN LANDSCAPE” TOPIC OF FIFTH LECTURE IN VISIONS OF AMERICAN WEST SERIES The interdisciplinary lecture series, “Visions for the American West,” organized by the Department of Geography at the University of New Mexico, opens the fall semester featuring landscape architect Alan Berger. The lecture, “The Post-Technological Western Landscape,” will be held Sunday, Sept. 8, in the Anthropology Building, room 163, beginning at 4:30 p.m. The hour-long lecture will discuss the reclamation and reuse of landscapes scarred by more than 200,000 active or abandoned open pit mines covering hundreds of thousands of acres in the western United States. Berger will utilize low-angle aerial photography, maps and other graphic material from a four-year study revealing the extent of the damage and show these sites are being reclaimed for post-mining land uses. “Like a cadaver’s entrails, mined landscapes expose their guts to us, their inner workings, to reveal new relationships and ways of seeing the environment,” said Berger. “The manner in which we represent the transformed landscape is critically important. Reclamation is as much about discovering ways to visualize and textualize landscapes as about suspending our judgement from preconceived aesthetic codes and languages.” Berger will also discuss the implications of vastly increased mining activity in the future, the role of local, state and federal legislation, the United States Superfund and the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act. Berger is on the faculty of the Landscape Architecture Department at the University of Colorado-Denver, and is a visiting assistant professor at Harvard University. # # #

The University of New Mexico
Public Affairs Department
Hodgin Hall, 2nd floor
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0011
Telephone: (505) 277-5813
Fax: (505) 277-1981