This 360 foot long and eight foot tall mural is an extended semi-autobiographical dialogue, with stories and anecdotes, plays between two characters, a ‘Lagoon Maker’ and a ‘witness’, and serves to establish the philosophical basis for the ecological argument in many later works. Beginning in Sri Lanka with an edible crab and ending in the Pacific with the greenhouse effect, it seeks ever-larger frames for a consideration of survival. It looks at experimental science, the marketplace and megatechnology, finally posing the question, “What are the conditions necessary for Survival” and concluding that it is necessary to reorient consciousness around a different database.
A work in over 50 parts, partially commissioned by and in the collection of John Kluge, Metromedia. Extensive catalog with 45 color plates, essays by Carter Ratcliff and Michel de Certeau and biography and bibliography. Main exhibitions at the Johnson Museum of Cornell University and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Lavilette Amazon. French Translation, Jacques Leenhardt, Collection Centre Pompidou.
The Lagoon Cycle was also recreated as a complex hand-made book. The Lagoon Cycle was designed to envelop. The Book of the Lagoons was designed to be intimate and accessible.
Description from the artist’s website: The Lagoon Cycle — The Harrison Studio