Category Archives: Landscapes of Quarantine

For me, one of the most exciting aspects of the Landscapes of Quarantine studio that Geoff Manaugh and I ran last autumn was its multidisciplinarity. On any given Tuesday evening, we’d see a game designer giving feedback to a set designer, a comic book illustrator comparing storylines with a fiction writer, and architects brainstorming with artists. Meanwhile, the resulting works – on display now at Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York City – were realised in materials as diverse as bentonite clay, Aerochrome film, medical-grade Tyvek, and tear-off pads.

I’m delighted to announce that Landscapes of Quarantine, an exhibition I co-curated with Geoff Manaugh of BLDGBLOG, will be opening at New York City’s Storefront for Art and Architecture at 7 p.m. on March 10. Unfortunately, that means that we’re spending this week painting, installing, and picking up beer for the opening – apologies for the lack of posts in the meantime.

Algeria is not a small country – according to Wikipedia, it is one hundred times the size of Texas – but eighty-five percent of its territory consists of the Sahara desert. In fact, only a thin strip of land along the northern coastal edge of the country is cultivable.

As a curious coda to my previous post, in which Kew’s Plant Health and Quarantine Officer, Sara Redstone, notes the frequent mismatch between biological and political borders and discusses the role of quarantine in creating an artificial biological boundary, I was intrigued by this post on the Foreign Policy editors’ blog, Passport, reporting on political […]