FRIDGEHENGE, as seen in 2007.   For additional images, please see a 'GOOGLE IMAGE SEARCH' for "Fridgehenge Santa Fe.”   

Santa Fe artist and filmmaker Adam Jonas Horowitz has proposed a new public art project to the City of Santa Fe.

 

The project is titled ‘FRIDGEWALL,’ and is a follow-up and sequel to Mr. Horowitz’ previous ‘FRIDGEHENGE’ project in Santa Fe that was built, and rebuilt,  from 1997-2007.

 

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Artist:  Adam Jonas Horowitz

Artist's Documentary Film Website;  nuclearsavage.com

email:  adamjonashorowitz@gmail.com

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"FRIDGEWALL" - A Proposal for a Public Art installation in Santa Fe, NM

 

 Officially Submitted to Santa Fe 'Art in Public Places Committee,' and to 'TOURISM Santa Fe’,  on May 3,  2019                  

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“Even paradise could become a prison if one had enough time to take notice of the walls.”  - Morgan Rhodes, "Falling Kingdoms”

 

Walls have been built by tribes and governments around the world for thousands of years, as ‘protection’ in the form of both literal, and symbolic barriers against the ‘other.’   The Great Wall of China, the Berlin Wall, the Israeli-West Bank Wall, and the U.S.-Mexico Border Wall, are all famous and even infamous examples of man’s need for separation, segregation, exclusion, and division.

 

As an artistic response and public meditation on this universally disturbing, and simultaneously ancient, medieval and contemporary phenomenon,  Santa Fe artist and filmmaker Adam Jonas Horowitz proposes "FRIDGEWALL"   a sculptural monument and public “Land Art" installation to be constructed on the site of Santa Fe’s  former solid-waste landfill property on Paseo de Vista, on the west side of the city.  Mr. Horowitz is requesting only the city's permission and approval,  from the 'Santa Fe City government, including the Mayor, Art in Public Places Committee',  and 'TOURISM Santa Fe,’  for this satiric land-art project, and is not seeking any city funding, which will be obtained separately from private and foundation sources.

 

This former city landfill property site is now closed to the public, and is surrounded by a high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire.  It is proposed that this existing fencing will remain in place during the entire duration of the "FRIDGEWALL"  project, for public safety.   The "FRIDGEWALL" installation is intended to be viewed from a distance for maximum visual effect, and will be visible from the Paseo de Vista roadway primarily between the top of Camino Torreon, and the entrance to the Solid Waste Transfer Station.  It is proposed that the installation remain in place for one year after its completion.

 

The "FRIDGEWALL"  land-art sculpture will serve as a satiric, artistic, and political “anti-monument,” that will consist of approximately 300 to 600 discarded refrigerators arranged vertically side-by-side to form a six-foot,-to twelve foot high, ‘wall' of fridges running and curving along about a half-mile along the undulating hilltop of the former city landfill site, thus forming a literal and symbolic sculptural monument recalling the other 'walls of the world’ from both history and imagination, as well as referencing  the high-tech security installations along many international borders of the present day...   

 

"FRIDGEWALL” will also be a kind of sequel, and reference  to Mr. Horowitz’ previous public land-art installation in Santa Fe, the enormously popular “FRIDGEHENGE,” which was built as a sculptural and satirical “anti-monument” to consumerism and waste,  that was built, and rebuilt, on top of the same former landfill site in several incarnations between 1997 and 2007.  ‘FRIDGEHENGE’ was featured extensively in national and international print and broadcast media, and provided an enormous amount of free publicity to the City of Santa Fe as a center for art and tourism.      It is anticipated that the "FRIDGEWALL”  land art project will generate similar free publicity for tourism and art in the City of Santa Fe.

 

In addition to being covered and featured by mainstream international media like CBS, the Associated Press, and the BBC, the original "FRIDGEHENGE”  project was written about by various art world critics such as the renowned Lucy Lippard, who included photographs and critique of the monument in her most recent book about 'Land Art', titled, “UNDERMINING: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West.”  (2014).   As Ms. Lippard wrote in her book, ”Incarnations of this project with hundreds of fridges, were constructed by performance artists.  A “pagan temple” to the cult of “technological materialism,” Fridgehenge was destroyed three times by government officials.   Anne Valley Fox called Stonefridge/Fridgehenge  “food coffins” whose “license to chill has expired.”

 

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 ‘FRIDGEHENGE’  was also featured extensively in the following international mass media:   (Double-Click on the Blue Colored Links to open)

 

CBS NEWS “SUNDAY MORNING”,  national, syndicated weekly television news magazine program,  with correspondent Bill Geist.  

 

ASSOCIATED PRESS, International wire-service story,  story written by Deborah Baker; picked up and published by newspapers around the world.

 

BBC - British Broadcasting Company, syndicated radio interview and story,  broadcast in the UK and internationally.

Univision Spanish Network - Spanish-language syndicated satellite television magazine feature story, broadcast across Latin America, and internationally.

CBC- Canadian Broadcasting Co., syndicated radio program, Canada.

ABC - Australian Broadcasting Co. – syndicated radio program, Australia

Chicago Tribune  -  newspaper feature story.

Los Angeles Times -newspaper feature story.

Denver Post - newspaper feature story.

American Airlines,   feature story in their official 'in-flight’ monthly magazine:  ‘American Way,’   (magazine is in every passenger seat...)

‘STRANGE UNIVERSE’ – syndicated Hollywood based TV reality show

‘National Examiner’ – supermarket tabloid national magazine. 

‘SAVEUR’ - gourmet food and art magazine

‘Civilization’ magazine - The official magazine of the U.S. Library of Congress.

‘TREND’ magazine – Art, fashion and culture magazine

‘New Mexico’ magazine – Official NM State tourism office magazine.

‘Santa Fean’ magazine – Official Cty of Santa Fe culture and tourism magazine.

‘THE’ Magazine  -   Art magazine based in Santa Fe, NM

KOAT, KOB, and KRQE  television news - multiple feature stories on all three Albuquerque network TV news affiliates, including CBS, NBC, and ABC

Albuquerque Journal - Multiple stories

Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper - Multiple stories, including news section and Pasatiempo

Santa Fe Reporter - Multiple news and feature stories

‘BEHIND THE WHEEL’ - Documentary film.   Six minute long segment in a feature length documentary film produced by Tao Ruspoli

‘HURRA TORPEDO’  Music Video -  ‘Fridgehenge’ was used as the primary set for an MTV music video by the Norwegian rock band ‘Hurra Torpedo'.

 

Artist Adam Jonas Horowitz is currently working on concept sketches, site plans, and drawings of the proposed "FRIDGEWALL”  land-art project that will be provided to 'TOURISM Santa Fe', and to the 'Santa Fe Art in Public Places Committee’,  in time for their public meeting that is scheduled for May 23, 2019.    However, Mr. Horowitz was told by several City of Santa Fe officials that they strongly oppose the project, and will be voicing their opposition to the project at that meeting.   In a shocking turn, however,  Santa Fe City Official Rod Lambert told Mr. Horowitz that he will NOT BE ALLOWED TO SPEAK at this same public hearing....  Official Lambert wrote:  "Adam,  The agenda for that meeting has been filed in the Clerk's office and posted publically.  Without a presentation by you specifically referenced on that agenda, we are unable to have you present.     However, the meeting is public and the item is simply a discussion item for the committee to gather input from members of the committee and City staff.  You are welcome to attend as is any member of the public. Thank you, Rod."

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Meanwhile, the land-artist Robert Smithson  (1938- 1973), seemed to anticipate FridgeWall / Fridgehenge when he wrote:

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“Many architectural concepts found in science-fiction have nothing to do with science or fiction, instead they suggest a new kind of monumentality which has much in common with the aims of some of today’s artists….The works of many of these artists celebrate what [Dan] Flavin calls “inactive history” or what the physicist calls “entropy” or energy drain.”  They bring to mind the Ice Age rather than the Golden Age, and would most likely confirm Vladimir Nabokov’s observation that, “The future is but the obsolete in reverse.” 

                               - Robert Smithson,  “Entropy and the New Monuments.

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