Robert Smithson's Partially Buried Woodshed

At the risk of getting political, or self-indulgently artsy, I wanted to take a second to talk about Robert Smithson's partially buried woodshed -- a piece I have been thinking about a lot lately. in January of 1970, Smithson, with the help of students, unloaded 20 truckloads of earth onto a woodshed found on university property until its central beam cracked under the weight of the pressure. He intended for the piece to grow organically, swallowed by vegetation, and be tended to appropriately until it had run its course.

Following the Kent State shootings in May of that year, the words ‘MAY 4 KENT 70’ were painted onto the woodshed in white. The work had become a piece to commemorate the wounded and the dead, as well as a symbol of protest against gun violence, the war in Vietnam, and frustration with systems which had allowed for both.

The piece became a subject of controversy, but was allowed to remain for almost 14 years until someone, no one is quite sure who, quietly and quickly removed all evidence that the work was ever there -- save for the concrete foundation of the initial structure.

In the wake of so much systemic violence and sadness, I wonder how much pressure we can take before our central beams crack, and how long we will be permitted to remain before someone quietly cleans us away.

Last winter I wrote a very early Twine game (which is perhaps mostly a poem) from the perspective of Smithson's woodshed.

On Gamer Girls and "Exits North, South, and East"

My Friend Sophie wrote an article for Existential Gamer about what it means to be a girl who plays games, and how people have considered the "Girl Gamer" moniker over time. It's a great read, and so I've linked it here. She also writes an incredibly kind and thoughtful bit about my own game, Exits North, South, and East, which I wrote on Twine without any flourishes or extra code in a minor panic before presenting at the Association of Art Historians conference in April of this year. It's sparse and simple, and still has all the typos I didn't bother checking for. Because I'm an egotist and this is my website, I wanted to take a minute and talk a bit about Exits.

It's only been up for about month, but it feels like a lot of my friends and colleagues have played this game, and taken the time to tell me that they enjoyed it. This is both flattering, and always surprising for me. I often feel like I am just making things inside of a vacuum -- especially as a postgraduate student, when a lot of my work is done in solitude.* From reading and writing to banging my head against a wall, sharing is not generally on the menu. 

It's strange, then, to think that something I made for myself -- nervous, huddled under a blanket, and eating a vegan sausage sandwich -- then timidly shared on Facebook, has reached any kind of audience at all. Yes, it's an audience of my friends and a handful of colleagues and strangers, but it's an audience nonetheless who has been overwhelmingly kind in its reception.

The game is far from perfect, and if I wanted to, I'd go back and fix things like awkward sentence structures, word choices, shaky metaphors, typos, add new links, or take away ones that don't work with the overall theme. But I love it for what it is -- a snapshot of my mindset at a certain time in my life, sparse, spare, and unedited. It was meant to be a product of procrastination and an outlet for stress, but it seems to have managed to strike a chord with some people. I think we've all suffered a bit from imposter syndrome, or felt out of our depth, and it can be nice to be reminded that others feel that way, too. 

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*Unless you follow me on Twitter, in which case you have likely seen me simultaneously write an essay and die in real time.