Land Mark (Foot Prints),

2001–02

Known for integrating poetics and politics, the collaborative team of Jennifer Allora &amp; Guillermo Calzadilla explores issues such as ecology, nationalism, militarism, and self-determination. The twelve photographs comprising <em>Land Mark (Foot Prints)</em> document a performance that was also a civil disobedience campaign. Several times over the course of 2001 and 2002, Allora, Calzadilla, and a group of activists trespassed onto a United States Navy bombing range on a beach in Vieques, Puerto Rico. Each person wore customized soles on his or her shoes. Embossed with words and images, the soles spoke silently but assertively, voicing a host of positions, opinions, and grievances. Some of the messages were explicit, while others were more indirect. All, however, addressed what the artists and activists viewed as an unacceptable injustice: the occupation of Vieques by the United States Navy, one that commenced during World War II and finally ended in 2003. Ranging from delicate and shallow to emphatic and sculptural, each footprint is as unique as its message, and when they overlap, the footprints generate abstract patterns whose effect is in excess of their content.