Crossing Thresholds & Confronting Limits: George Trakas's "Source Route" (1979) Open Access

Abstract

In this thesis, I examine environmental artist George Trakas’s work, Source Route (1979), one of his first major site-specific installations in landscape. Weaving through the Peavine Creek ravine of Emory University, the work consists of two pathways of steps and beams that trace the topographic inclines and meet on either side of the stream at the bottom of the natural terrain. The structural components’ narrow dimensions, slight elevations, and sloping trajectories confront the limits of the moving body. The work contains thresholds, transitions in bodily motion and shifts in consciousness, that shape an experience of site. In my analysis of the descent from the north, I draw upon concepts of biomechanics, kinesthesia, and gait theory to investigate how Trakas choreographs the body of his participant. In addition, I situate Trakas in the “expanded field of sculpture,” a term art historian Rosalind Krauss uses to describe the new heterogeneity of three-dimensional works beginning in the 1960s. I argue the significance of Source Route arises when heightened kinesthetic awareness and strikingly internal, bodily experience during the descent gives way to an overwhelming awareness of the external environment at the work’s locus: the creek at the lowermost point in the topography.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Thresholds of Consciousness ……………………………………………   1

 

Trakas in the “Expanded Field of Sculpture” …………………………………………    6

 

Source Route (1979) …………………………………………………………………..    9

 

Confronting Biomechanics of Human Motion ………………………………………..  20

 

Site, Space, & the Perambulating Body: Trakas’s Source Route &

Richard Serra’s Clara-Clara ….………………………………………………………   30

 

Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………    37     

 

Images …………………………………………………………………………………   41

 

Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………..   46

 

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	Art History
Degree	B.A.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Art History
Keyword	Kinesthesia Biomechanics George Trakas Environmental art Source Route Site-specific Installation Landscape art
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Lee, Lisa, Emory University
Committee Members	Campbell, Jean, Emory University Gough, Ellen, Emory University

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