Touring the Archive, Archiving the Tour

Abstract

Based in Los Angeles, the Center for Land Use Interpretation describes itself as an independent, non-profit, educational organization “dedicated to the increase and diffusion of information about how the nation’s lands are apportioned, utilized, and perceived.” Through exhibits, publications, bus tours, an online database, and an artists’ residency program, CLUI has crafted a visually coherent and unaffected set of presentation and interpretive strategies drawn from the places where tourism, the archive, museum educational displays, and conceptual art intersect. While the organization refuses to state a clear position for or against particular ways land has been used, its body of work resists the notion that certain landscapes, especially ugly or utilitarian ones, are either unremarkable or inevitable.