TUMBLEWEED RODEO


Tumbleweed Rodeo is a multi-sensory, multi-species approach to understanding temporality, migration, and the arbitrary nature of borders by tracing the vectors of tumbleweeds’ movement from where they're from - the Caucus Region - to where they've ended up: America. Russian sailors smuggled the plant to America to regenerate the topsoil and create groundcover for combat after European settlers enacted agricultural practices incompatible with the colonized landscapes. The tumbleweed fulfills the final stages of its evolutionary life cycle in death. Once the plant reaches maturity, a bone-like connection anchoring it to the ground breaks, transmuting it into a traveling exodeisic armature for sprinkling the landscape with thousands of seeds.

Tumbleweeds speak to America and Caucasia’s complex histories of war, technology, immigration, and agriculture, from Thomas Jefferson's formation of the Public Land Survey System to create a nation of yeoman farmers to President Hoover's control over wheat prices in World War I and Georgia's steppe biome degradation during the Russo-Georgian War. These activities, among others, led to the removal of millions of acres of native grasses and plants in both America and Georgia, exposing new ground and leaving it vulnerable to invasive plant species and different forms of warfare. Since leaving Caucasia, tumbleweed has become ubiquitous in the US and synonymous with the American West. It defies almost all human-made borders and, in the process, asks new questions of indigeneity and invasiveness. These topics are central to the Southwestern US, which has faced multiple waves of conflict and ethnic succession.

Through a series of impromptu, Dadaesque performances and dinners, design-build projects, GPS-informed landscape drawings, and material explorations, the Rodeo attempts to comprehend the social dimension of an ecological catastrophe that, when considered from a different perspective, isn’t all that bad. It positions the question of invasive species (what came first, and what’s truly invasive?) not as disasters but as displays of the majesty of nature and of life.
Supported by:
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
MacDowell
Tbilisi Architecture Biennial
Texas Tech University, College of Architecture
The Arctic Circle Residency
The Residency Project
University of New Mexico, School of Architecture + Planning
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, School of Architecture and Urban Planning

Exhibited at:
CO+OPt Research and Projects (2019)
Space p11 (2020)
At’l Do Farms (2021)
Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts (2021)
ACSA & Pratt Institute (2022)
Untitled Gallery Tbilisi (2022)

Published in:
POOL Magazine
Southwest Contemporary

Collaborators:
Eric J. Simpson
Jack Craft

Facilitators:
Adam Farcus, Adrian Reyna, Alexa Rae Caves, Ana Skolnik, Bert Delgadillo, Brinton Freeze, Chris Taylor, Emma Bittner, Garrett Wiese, Grant Stewar, Llano Estacado Monad Band, Liam Kolstad, Logan Parker, Margaret Halquist, Natalie Kuehl, Nathan Rennich, Roundhouse Platform, Seth Duellman, Travis Rukamp, Victoria McReynolds

Photos by:
Adam Farcus, Eric J. Simpson, Nathan Keay, Sarah Aziz

TUMBLEWEED RODEO


Tumbleweed Rodeo is a multi-sensory, multi-species approach to understanding temporality, migration, and the arbitrary nature of borders by tracing the vectors of tumbleweeds’ movement from where they're from - the Caucus Region - to where they've ended up: America. Russian sailors smuggled the plant to America to regenerate the topsoil and create groundcover for combat after European settlers enacted agricultural practices incompatible with the colonized landscapes. The tumbleweed fulfills the final stages of its evolutionary life cycle in death. Once the plant reaches maturity, a bone-like connection anchoring it to the ground breaks, transmuting it into a traveling exodeisic armature for sprinkling the landscape with thousands of seeds.

Tumbleweeds speak to America and Caucasia’s complex histories of war, technology, immigration, and agriculture, from Thomas Jefferson's formation of the Public Land Survey System to create a nation of yeoman farmers to President Hoover's control over wheat prices in World War I and Georgia's steppe biome degradation during the Russo-Georgian War. These activities, among others, led to the removal of millions of acres of native grasses and plants in both America and Georgia, exposing new ground and leaving it vulnerable to invasive plant species and different forms of warfare. Since leaving Caucasia, tumbleweed has become ubiquitous in the US and synonymous with the American West. It defies almost all human-made borders and, in the process, asks new questions of indigeneity and invasiveness. These topics are central to the Southwestern US, which has faced multiple waves of conflict and ethnic succession.

Through a series of impromptu, Dadaesque performances and dinners, design-build projects, GPS-informed landscape drawings, and material explorations, the Rodeo attempts to comprehend the social dimension of an ecological catastrophe that, when considered from a different perspective, isn’t all that bad. It positions the question of invasive species (what came first, and what’s truly invasive?) not as disasters but as displays of the majesty of nature and of life.

Supported by:
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
MacDowell
Tbilisi Architecture Biennial
Texas Tech University, College of Architecture
The Residency Project
University of New Mexico, School of Architecture + Planning
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, School of Architecture and Urban Planning

Exhibited at:
CO+OPt Research and Projects (2019)
Space p11 (2020)
At’l Do Farms (2021)
Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts (2021)
ACSA & Pratt Institute (2022)
Untitled Gallery Tbilisi (2022)

Published in:
POOL Magazine
Southwest Contemporary

Collaborators:
Eric J. Simpson
Jack Craft

Facilitators:
Adam Farcus, Adrian Reyna, Alexa Rae Caves, Ana Skolnik, Bert Delgadillo, Brinton Freeze, Chris Taylor, Emma Bittner, Garrett Wiese, Grant Stewar, Llano Estacado Monad Band, Liam Kolstad, Logan Parker, Margaret Halquist, Natalie Kuehl, Nathan Rennich, Roundhouse Platform, Seth Duellman, Travis Rukamp, Victoria McReynolds

Photos by:
Adam Farcus, Eric J. Simpson, Nathan Keay, Sarah Aziz
1. Tumbleweed-adobe wind berm in rural Colorado
2. 750’-long landscape drawing with Eric J. Simpson
3. Automatic drawing performances
4. Building experiments