ABSTRACT
This conclusion compares the Confluence Project with sculptor Michael Heizer's monumental, secretive work City, completed in 2022. Heizer's work evokes many of the most sacred tropes about the Great Works of Art: Man working against Nature to produce a singular Masterpiece. His project similarly reinscribes the mythologies of the West and Manifest Destiny. The barren landscape of the surrounding desert is tabula rasa, an unblemished canvas, awaiting the artist's civilizing genius. By contrast, Lin's collaborative method and execution allow Confluence to resist and complicate these same tropes. Finally, the two projects represent vastly different approaches to environmental sustainability. Where Heizer's work resembles a billionaire bunker's hideout, Confluence reminds viewers of the customs and rituals that allowed human beings to coexist in relative harmony with nature for millennia. How can we encounter the world differently and experience humanity's impact on nonhuman species more expansively? Confluence provides methods for recovery and reinvention. Is it already too late?
