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Iain Baxter& |
| project: Arctic Circle |
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Arctic Circle Project, 1969 |
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This
expedition organized by Bill Kirby, director of
the Edmonton Art Gallery brought Lawrence Weiner,
Harry Savage, as well as Iain Baxter& and Ingrid
Baxter together in Inuvik, for the purpose of producing
specific on-site interventions. Virgil Hammock and
Lucy Lippard was also a participant, charged with
documenting its spirit, the artists’ discussions
and the works created. The following is part of
the Lippard report, excerpted from the article “Art
Within the Arctic Circle,” which appeared
in The Hudson Review of February 1970:
Baxter is little interested in Art per se and NETCo
has no “style”; different departments
deal with different areas of “Visual Sensitivity
Information.” This trip deals with Arctic
VSI and ranges, typically and exuberantly, all over
the place; from communications pieces dependent
upon electronic technology, to the walking piece
(Iain and Elaine [Ingrid] Baxter circled Inuvik
wearing a pedometer and stepcounting device—some
3/4 mile, 10,314 steps) which recorded the experience
of a town […], and the works executed that
afternoon alone: Elaine [Ingrid] did a water exchange
between the Seymour River, B.C., and the Mackenzie,
adding the first, subtracting the second; we placed
a large black and white sign reading “You
Are Now in the Middle of a N.E. Thing Co. Landscape”
in the taiga-tundra; I took a quarter mile walk
due North through the bush, compass in hand; Iain
sprayed an East-West white paint line in the tundra
parallel to the latitudes…”
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