I was invited to create a work for the 2013 conceptual on-line art exhibition, ENACT. This project was a response to a 1970 conceptual art exhibition, Art In the Mind, curated by Athena S. Tacha at Oberlin College in Ohio. As an invited artist, I was requested to examine how my own praxis corresponded with previous artists’ efforts and concepts.
In “Mt. Oberlins, Apology” I elected to explore the proposing of an heroic and complex apology, which would require an impossible and ridiculous array of physical and technological feats. The main elements involve recognizing human ego, and correlating it to two mountains called “Mount Oberlin.” The one in Oberlin OH is hardly a mountain, it is instead a pile of left over dirt covered in grass, that the students have dubbed “Mt Oberlin.” The other, is situated in Glacier Park in Montana, US. I require that a cast be made of the Glacier Park mountain, and brought to Oberlin OH, where it is placed over the enormous landfill, which is higher than their college’s “Mt Oberlin.” The methane gasses from the landfill can then fill this new mountain, and supply gas for air balloons to travel to the top of it. Oberlin residents are required to routinely travel to the top of the mountain and perform apologies to Nature, until the methane gas is ceased.