assemblage is a hybrid project: part book, part online installation, part map, all as an act of noticing. it represents a relatively small geographic area in the desert of Southern California (roughly 2360 km² around the coordinates 35.134027, -117.899947). the area contains, among other things, California City, the California City Correctional Facility, a section of the LA aqueduct, and the Rio Tinto borax mine. just outside of the area depicted in this project is the Edwards Air Force Base.

 

in Vibrant Matter, Jane Bennett introduces the ‘assemblage’ as a framework for the experience of thing-power, one mode in which what-we-might-otherwise-call-objects force us to notice their self-organization and internal vitality. it is my argument that there is a place-power (akin to thing-power) which we might define as the agency of a place, completely separate from human action or intention.

 

in my project, each place (aqueduct, prison, mine, and city) is illustrated on semi-transparent tracing paper. as with objects, it is easy to look straight through a place; invisibility-via-familiarity. but when the places come into an assemblage—when the sheets are stacked on top of each other—some semblance of opacity is achieved. in their co-presence, they become more than the sum of their parts.

 

creating the assemblage book and website was an attempt to participate in intentional noticing. as Anna Tsing writes, “noticing is just what is needed to appreciate the multiple temporal rhythms and trajectories of the assemblage” (24). i am also indebted to feral atlas for a significant amount of inspiration.