The Illuminated Thread is an ongoing bicycle-mounted research project with five primary objectives:

1. Document and interpret the contraction phase of the industrial age with an emphasis on the landscapes and structures left behind.

Industrial ruins, refineries, power plants, heroic water diversion projects, mines, chemical dumps, megastructures, container ports, heavy industry, and boneyards: a long last look at the industrial world.

2. Piece together a viable image of a stable low-energy future.

I’ll take a look at improvised ground-up support systems as they emerge in the cracks of the old industrial model. Expect images of organic farms, co-ops, innovative recycling, repurposing and retrofitting efforts, intentional or lifeboat communities, sustainable building models, squatting, alternative modes of exchange including gift and barter economies, decentralized energy production, technological garage tinkering, and sites of ecological recovery.

3. Identify and refine a skill set necessary to thrive in the transition to a new paradigm: practical techniques for living on the margins.

Defecating outdoors, sleeping in marginal places, living on an extreme shoestring budget, being a good houseguest, dumpster diving, time management, situational awareness, intuitive navigation, the effect of transience on relationships, working with the weather and the seasons, and bicycle maintenance all fall into this category.

4. Offer potential symbols and narratives of a new spirituality emerging on the heels of growing disillusion in the religion of progress.

5. Encourage readers to accept the impossibility of preventing the industrial age’s conclusion, face the coming age with courage and begin mitigation activities in earnest.

This Q & A section fills in the details.

The sites below are the remaining waypoints for Stage Three: Los Angeles, CA to Houston, TX. I'm open to additions so let me know if there's someplace you think I should see.

[Note: rollover satellite imagery to reveal ground level photographs.]

White Sands Missile Range Museum

The museum associated with one of the largest military facilities in the country, 4,000 square mile White Sands Missile Range, has a large collection of vintage projectiles.

wikipedia page

Asarco Copper Smelter

The most conspicuous feature of this 123-acre plant site is its 828-foot sack. That black line in the satellite photo is the towering structure’s shadow.

El Paso Copper Refinery

Employing continuous-casting methods, this sprawling complex is one of the world’s largest electrolytic copper refineries.

Sierra Blanca Sludge Ranch

If you took a shit in Manhattan between 1992 and 2001, there’s a good chance it ended up at this remote 80,000-acre property in West Texas. What’s likely the world’s largest sludge dump is currently idle.

NY Times article

Marfa/Valentine, Texas

The existence of this weird little artist’s colony in the middle of the West Texas desert can be traced back to Donald Judd’s relocation here in 1971. The nearby town of Valentine is home to a sealed time capsule Prada store with “luxury goods from the fall 2005 collection.”

wikipedia page

Texas Petrochemical Patch

From Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us:

The Industrial megaplex that begins on the east side of Houston and continues uninterrupted to the Gulf of Mexico, 50 miles away, is the largest concentration of petroleum refineries, petrochemical companies, and storage structures on earth.

Tentative Future Stages:

stage four: Houston, TX to New York, NY via the deep south and the Eastern seaboard

stage five: The Rust Belt: New York, NY to Chicago, IL

stage six: England’s Industrial Legacy

Welcome to the Deindustrial Revolution

We are at a historic inflection point—the ending of decades of expansion and the beginning of an inevitable period of contraction that will continue until humanity is once again living within the limits of Earth’s regenerative systems.
--Richard Heinberg

On 18 February 1979, frozen atmospheric water vapor fell from the sky over southern Algeria. The freak weather event, lasting only thirty minutes, brought the Sahara’s only snowfall in recorded history. In June of the same year, a blowout at an exploratory oil well leaked 600,000 tons of crude into the tepid waters of the southern Gulf of Mexico: more than any other unintentional spill to date. But while snow was falling in the world’s largest desert, and thousands of endangered sea turtles were being airlifted out of the path of an oncoming oil slick, a pivotal event in human history was occurring unnoticed in the background.

Sociologists commonly look at per capita energy use to gauge how far a culture has progressed along its evolutionary trajectory. Economists refer to the same statistic as a measure of economic development. What the ratio provides on a planetary scale, global energy use divided by the earth’s population, is an annual report on the progress of industrial civilization. After increasing exponentially for some sixty years, global per capita oil production (synonymous with energy use) reached an historic peak in 1979. Healthy population growth then sent the figure across a bumpy plateau to the present. The inability to drive oil production beyond current levels will soon find it arcing steeply downward, ushering in the final chapters of humanity’s industrial phase. The long view will reveal the industrial age to be a non-repeating bell curve with those aforementioned desert snows dusting its lofty summit.

As we lose our ability to increase energy inputs into the global economy, the growth that’s characterized the previous two centuries will sputter out and an extended period of contraction will set in. Localism will gradually replace globalism and the scale of nearly all human enterprises will diminish. We are entering the age of limits: the age of numbers getting smaller.

If such a bleak prognosis for industrial civilization sounds rash, it’s because we grew up during a century that produced what one author described as “majestic quantum leaps in the quality of life.” There was no reason to believe that this trend wouldn’t continue indefinitely since it appeared to be supported by “wondrous advances in the storehouse of human knowledge.” In reality, the industrial world wasn’t built with knowledge, but with phenomenal amounts of fossil energy. Since the lifestyles we’ve come to treat as normal are entirely a product of our prodigious use of the earth’s onetime allotment of hydrocarbons, the waning of those resources has tremendous implications.

While it’s easy to find poetic resonance in peak worldwide per capita oil production occurring the same year as a massive oil spill, tying in Saharan snowfall is another matter. I like thinking of the singular event as a subtle herald of monumental change. Of course the desert dwellers who felt the icy chill of those unlikely flakes couldn’t have known that a slow disintegration was about to supplant two hundred years of exuberant progress. Still, it’s a potent image with which to mark the onset of industrial civilization’s long winter.

Q and A

What documentation tools do you use?

An HD camcorder, a pair of binaural microphones, a high-resolution audio recorder and a laptop are all part of my current toolkit. The computer makes it possible to edit images and sound as well as write and post content to the project’s site, all while on the road. Additional tools may be added (or upgrades made) as the need arises while others may be voted off the bike if they fall out of regular use.

In general, I try to keep high technology out of the project: paper maps instead of GPS and no speedometer/odometer. The rule is: if I can’t figure out how it works by looking at it, it doesn’t belong on the ride. The use of high technology shortcuts, effectively magic, means neglecting the innate human skills they’re meant to augment or replace. For example, my intuitive navigation would suffer if a GPS unit were introduced. Developing a dependence on a particular technology means committing to continued use of it. Since high technology is supported by an industrial base of questionable stability, such alliances are unwise.

Obviously an exception is being made for audio/video equipment. Superficially, it may appear hypocritical to use anything with strong ties to a crumbling industrial world. I’m no purist and, believing video to be the medium most capable of revealing the subject—of reflecting our own image back at us, embrace its use and the associated paradox.

Why power plants and refineries?

Industrialization was spread right across the world, carried forward mainly by the power of oil. When the supply of oil wanes that power will subside and industrialization will begin its long retreat.
--E. F. Schumacher

Oil refineries as well as coal and natural gas fired power plants are the most visible points in the hydrocarbon-based systems that built and sustain the industrial world. There’s no way to overemphasize their role in allowing us to run things at the scale we do. In many parts of the world it’s likely to be access to fresh water that first curtails growth, but for the industrialized nations, cheap energy will be the limiting factor. It’s this role as the glass ceiling above further industrial and economic expansion that puts fossil energy in its many manifestations at the forefront of this project.

Why abandonments?

Documenting the ruins left in the wake of industrial civilization’s long retreat is one of the project’s core objectives. They provide a glimpse of the world we are entering and a reminder of the one we’re leaving behind. Abandonment is a powerful cultural motif and I’d like to delve deep into the ruin’s significance in the modern world.

Framing abandonments as symbols of renewal and rebirth will be a common theme here. My hope is that witnessing them be reclaimed by a diversity of plants and animals may prove a rewarding experience more widely shared. When ruined, places once antithetical to life are returned to nature and inherently drift toward greater complexity and beauty. As barometers of local ecological recovery, they may even temper the eco-guilt that will follow us into the future.

I’m drawn to the industrial ruin’s potential to subvert the persistent myth of progress. Demonstrating the transience of all earthly things, they crumble despite utopian promises of endless social advancement. Each is a tangible reminder of the process of succession as it applies to our human communities and living patterns.

A lot of artists are photographing ruins—so many that it’s become its own genre. (There’s even a sort of dark tourism emerging around sites of ruination.) While I doubt any of these artists are working within the context of a multi-year bicycle tour, it’s my positioning of the images within the narrative of an epochal global contraction that really sets them apart. Additionally, I intend to evoke certain moods and emotions that may be outside the typical urban explorer’s set of concerns.

What qualities tie your sites together?

While nearly everything around us is somehow embedded in the legacy of the industrial age, the sites I select are extreme cases. They demonstrate heroic efforts to exploit the environment in pursuit of progress (the California Water Project, open pit mines), and/or the potential to outlast their original function (nuclear power plants, freeway interchanges). Many belong to megasystems that were only possible to build and operate during the period of cheap and abundant energy coming to an end. Embodying the values and pursuits of the industrial age, they’ll someday serve as monuments to this brief and exuberant period in our specie’s history.

Another common quality is restricted access. Fences and walls as well as security personnel equipped with surveillance systems make sites difficult and risky to photograph. I’ve found it of no use to request admittance (“not since 9/11”) and have learned to appreciate the view from just outside the fence. Where I can gain access, as is the case with most abandonments, I take my time and often spend the night.

Why the bicycle?

It could be asked why this travel-based research endeavor couldn’t be carried out with an automobile. While I could certainly cover more ground in less time, I’m in no hurry, and the added costs of maintaining a car would require funds in excess of what I’m prepared to request from my readers. You can completely overhaul a bicycle for as much as it costs to replace your car’s alternator. Perhaps more importantly, I’d lose the autonomy associated with being able to self-power and easily maintain my form of transportation.

The bicycle is an incredibly good device for converting human muscle power into mechanical energy and it’s still the most efficient way of moving a human body over relatively smooth terrain. The bicycle meets all the requirements of a technology well suited to the deindustrial age. It’s durable, independent, replicable, and transparent, meaning you can understand how it works just by looking at it. Not so with what’s under the hood of your Prius. In many ways it’s the quintessential form of post cheap energy transportation and should have no trouble perpetuating itself well into the future.

Unlike traveling while enclosed in a climate controlled glass and steel bubble, the bicycle forces you to contend with the elements. You must learn to move with the weather and the seasons which puts you in tune with nature’s rhythms. The sensual experiences of rain on one’s skin, food smells wafting from kitchens, or the hoot of an owl passing overhead are available to the cyclist while the driver is denied them.

The bicycle is human-scale and moves at human-scaled speeds: slow enough to take in the details yet fast enough to cover significant distances. No one who’s only flown or driven across the country has an accurate sense of its enormity. The massive scale and heavy development that describes many of the landscapes I pass through puts them in a category referred to as the industrial sublime. I’m drawn to finding myself that tiny figure in the industrial landscape that defines its dimensions and is witness to its grandeur. The Monk by the Sea becomes The Cyclist by the Copper Mine.

How long and how far?

We tend to be goal oriented, to expect a final payoff after putting in our time and energy. Rejecting this limiting precept, I adamantly reaffirm that the journey is indeed the destination. My hope is that the thread will evolve onto a sustainable organism, capable of continuing indefinitely. The world accommodates by offering effectively endless places to explore. If The Illuminated Thread were a game, the object would be to keep playing.

With that said, I anticipate it taking several years, perhaps as many as five, to visit and document relevant sites within the world’s industrialized nations. Beyond the US: England, Germany, Russia, the Post-Soviet states, Japan and China are each high on the list. At some point the thread will likely evolve into another project. Perhaps the best sites become shooting locations for a film, or maybe I’ll lead others on pilgrimage rides to abandoned power plants. It’s too early to rule anything out.

The project’s open-ended design does permit mini-goals to be embedded into its larger structure. Segments of the ride, dubbed stages, will serve as units of progress and break up the larger story into more digestible chapters. I’d like to periodically do events and gallery exhibitions to showcase visual and auditory material outside the confines of the Internet. Such happenings would also serve to measure headway.

You’re an artist. Is this Art?

Good artists will make love among the ruins…Good art will always take us by surprise.
--Dave Hickey

There are individuals in a variety of fields looking at the troubled period we’ve entered through the lens of their respective disciplines: geologists, ecologists, writers and policymakers, each with their own skill sets and approach. Having received my training in the language of images, my strength lies in coping with the visual world. If the process of making art involves imagination, a focused investigation, a tapping of the unconscious and the skillful deployment of images and sound to convey what cannot be said with words, then by at least one definition what you’ll find here qualifies.

What about your research process?

This project is built on a foundation of research and theory. I spend long hours sifting through the work of several authors, looking at maps and satellite imagery, corresponding with “experts,” watching geopolitical events and energy markets, synthesizing the information I take in and trying to form a general picture of what’s going on “out there.” In a very real sense, the café I’ve been working in almost daily for the last several months has become my artist’s studio.

Artists often find themselves a member of a group of practitioners with overlapping interests. Although not necessarily explicitly, they’re in dialogue with these individuals, pushing the conversation forward. My “group” consists of four contemporary writers/thinkers: Ran Prieur, James Howard Kunstler, John Michael Greer and Dimitri Orlov.

Because I’ve no official qualifications outside art, I’m (by default) a generalist: trying to connect the dots and construct a larger picture of what’s occurring. I consider this position a strength as I’m free to let my interests wander and educate myself in whatever subjects I should need to. It could be argued that hyper-specialization is contributing to our inability to make sense of what’s happening to us. Being an artist with the freedom to pick and choose where I focus my attention gives me an advantage in understanding our changing circumstances.

Who is your (ideal) audience?

My hope is to maintain a modestly sized group of intelligent readers. If you’ve read this far you’re probably perfect.

What are the videos about?

Without clearly defined narrative arcs or characters, the video vignettes fall within the realm of pure cinema. The approach is to simply document what’s there and let the visual compositions, editing, and sound-visual relationships deliver the emotional experience. The absence of constructed situations and scenarios leaves plenty of room for the viewer to arrive at his or her own meanings and insights. So how the videos function and what they convey will be largely determined by the subjective experience of the viewer.

While remaining open to many reads, the vignettes are designed to establish setting and mood, not unlike the opening shots of a film. But what’s beginning is no movie, but a new and unfamiliar time for mankind. This makes the videos stronger as a whole—as entries in a larger archive. They’re fragments that, as they grow in number, will coalesce into a detailed image of the industrial world at its most hectic and troubled moment, still chugging away on fumes. By photographically preserving these places, in a certain sense they are saved from death. Since periods of decline are historically not well documented, the record is a valuable resource.

By capturing the otherworldly, almost supernatural character of such places, especially sites of ruination, I hope to reveal their spiritual value. Far from being simply a place of decay, an industrial abandonment offers beauty and romance as well as a rare authentic experience for the visitor. Highlighting such qualities, the videos are concerned with the mystification of former industrial sites, transforming them into mythic ruins.

What are the donation gifts about?

If you’ve visited the Support section, you probably detected a hint of satire in the list of donation gifts and services. While the page is an appropriate place to exhibit a sense of humor, what might appear to originate from irony and cynicism is actually rooted in earnestness and sincerity. Also, the placement of gifts into hierarchical “donation levels” is an attempt to assign value to the objects the project produces—its artistic detritus.

While I would hope the ultimate reward would be watching the project flourish and enjoying the visual and auditory material produced as it penetrates new territory, it’s nice to get something tangible for one’s dollars. Fortunately, the tour provides a nearly continuous stream of found objects as well as digital content that lends itself to commodification for just such a purpose. For example, derelict sites are treasure troves of lost and abandoned objects that can be reframed as artifacts and reintroduced into the world as commodities. As Tim Edensor puts it, “they have already passed through the process of becoming waste but then are re-figured, re-categorized as valuable “found sculpture” proving obsolescence can be a somewhat fluid category.”

What isn’t this project about?

The Illuminated Thread is not a travel diary, a form of esoteric post-industrial tourism, a vacation or a pleasure ride. It’s difficult and lonely work I have no intention of romanticizing. The images I present are not intended to function as discrete aesthetic objects and should not be separated from the conceptual framework of the larger project.

While I enjoy testing the frontiers of highly secured environments and being in places I’m not supposed to be, I enter them in pursuit of much more than the thrill of transgression and a few illicit snapshots.

Are you afraid you’ll die?

Not any more than when I bike to the market. I take comfort in the thought that if I’m crushed under the wheels of a logging truck or bitten by a venomous snake, I’ll have died doing something I believed was worthwhile. I imagine burning to death in a car on the way home from a day at the hedge fund would be a far worse way to make one’s exit.

Can I find you on any social networking sites?

Working within the rigid templates of Facebook and the like would mean surrendering control of the look and functionality of my posted content. Additionally, their use would create a redundancy and introduce unwanted advertising into the project. I’m into networking and connecting with people in general, believing our human relationships will continue to be among our most valuable assets, but when it comes to large corporations, the desire to maintain a healthy distance form their advertising outweighs any benefits their services might provide.

Are you raising money for a cause?