Not A Cornfield Subject of Getty Research Institute Panel

Not A Cornfield artist Lauren Bon was joined by moderator Ralph Rugoff -- an author, critic, and director of the CCCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco –- and Matthew Coolidge -- founder and director of the Center for Land Use Interpretation –- on stage at the Getty Center’s Museum Lecture Hall last Wednesday evening, October 5, 2005.

Bon is the GRI project artist for the institute’s 2005 "Duration" theme. A Getty official who introduced the panel called Not A Cornfield a, “brief but punctual intervention,” and noted the art project’s "strong architectural underpinnings."

The Getty evening’s formal topic, “Not A Cornfield: Panel Discussion,” left plenty of room for a range of relevant high art as well as more populist musings.

Rugoff, for example, made various contemporary art historic comparisons to Not A Cornfield, including citing Agnes Denes’ “Wheatfield, A Confrontation” in Battery Park, Joseph Beuys’ "7,000 Oaks,” and the edifice-painting renaissancemayor of Tirana, Albania. Alternatively, Rugoff also played jovial film critic, labeling corn “the most cinematic of vegetables.”

CLUI’s Coolidge showed off photographs and talked up the “landscape of corn.” He segued easily from speaking of a “brownfield mediation” and “relational aesthetics” to presenting facts about ADM, Frito-Lay, corn syrup consumption, amazing maize mazes and kitchy corn belt sculptures.

Not A Cornfield’s Bon showed one of the Not A Cornfield project videos, and spoke about topics including ambiguity, surrealism, utopianism, paying homage to legend, and much more. On the GRI theme of duration, Bon pointed out the ephemeral nature of the project, and the challenges in continuing to catalyze the general public’s interest in the existance of Los Angeles State Historical Park, on which Not A Cornfield grows. “Consciousness,” Bon said, “changes much more slowly than corn grows.”