LandRush was on show as part of the World Of Matter exhibition Mobilizing Materialities at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery in Minneapolis in 2017:

The five-channel installation featured the Dry West chapter of our research. It combined two large-scale projections with a series of short films on three monitors. In addition, two iPads featuring the LandRush-App connected Dry West to the first three LandRush chapters from Ethiopia, Brazil, and Iowa.

Dry West – Moonscape was presented as a series of large-scale prints for the first time. The series invited visitors to reflect on the artificial irrigation landscapes of the American West, more than 130 years after John Wesley Powell noted: “Gentlemen, you are piling up a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights, for there is not sufficient water to supply the land.” The great explorer believed that the arid West was not suitable for agricultural development, except for about two percent of the lands near water sources. Since then, the American West has turned into a hydrological society. Rivers run in concrete beds, across mountains and deserts, and up towards money. But even where the eye sees a wild river or natural lake, chances are that nature is nothing more than an illusion in the artificial landscapes of the Anthropocene.

We want to thank the curators Howard Oransky and Teréz Iacovino with their team. They did a fantastic job curating and building the exhibition. We also have to mention Ursula Biemann, who again organized and curated the World of Matter exhibition in Minneapolis. As always, she brought an additional position into the show: