Matthew Coolidge: An Interview

Matthew Coolidge is a founder and director of The Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), an organization dedicated to raising awareness about how land is apportioned, used and perceived by its inhabitants. Through exhibitions, publications, and guided tours, Coolidge and the CLUI seek to foster and encourage a heightened sense of awareness of natural surroundings. In this interview, Coolidge defines a ‘land art spillover effect,’ in which the perceived significance of the landscape seems to increase the closer people get to a piece of environmental art.

Seeking to avoid this fetishization of the land only when in association with a spectacular object, Coolidge and CLUI use various projects to activate their audience’s desire to form their own site-based interpretations. By creating scenarios through which the audience can examine and experiment, Coolidge hopes to foster an awareness of how beliefs about the land are mediated by scientific, artistic, and cinematic narratives. - Kyle Riley

Interview by Romi Crawford in November 2004, edited in 2014.