SUBJECT TO OWNERSHIP
As my final project for ARTS 4444: Art + Rural Environments Field School, I developed a site-specific installation piece at the Rocky Mountain Land Library (RMLL) titled “Subject to Ownership.” The piece is a 38’7” x 16’0” barcode with the RMLL’s land parcel, “R0004923”, encoded into it. From afar, “Subject to Ownership” looks like a genuine barcode claiming the ridge it sits upon, forcing the viewer to grapple with the idea of land as a product.
Subject to Ownership, 2026
Tarp and nails on ridge
38’7” x 16’0”
“Subject to Ownership” critiques the view of land as a product through an instantly recognizable symbol: a barcode. This barcode encodes the string “R0004923”, the index of its land parcel, into the internationally recognized Code 128. It thus functions the same as a barcode on an apple or cereal box at a grocery store—it is an alphanumeric label, a branding, to indicate that something can be bought and sold. “Subject to Ownership” asserts that our treatment of land is no different than any other product, while highlighting the absurdity in that. To even claim a small piece of one ridge, a barcode must be enormous to maintain any kind of legibility. At the same time, it’s ambiguous what area the barcode is even claiming. Is it on the left side of the ridge, or the right? There is no tangible border where a “parcel” of land begins and ends, something which “Subject to Ownership” makes evident to the viewer. In forcing the viewer to grapple with this comparison, “Subject to Ownership” points out the arrogance in assuming that land is anything one can “own”.
“Subject to Ownership” also represents a dissonance between the way land is traded from afar vs experienced in-person. This ridge itself is owned by the city of Aurora, a government agency residing nearly 100 miles away. It was likely purchased with the click of a button. On the other hand, creating this piece involved several mile-long walks across the plains carrying heavy equipment, shuffling through boulders and deer droppings and crawling on one’s hands and knees. The commercial treatment of land has nothing in common with the use of land itself. The piece’s title itself is pulled directly from Colorado’s Taxation Assessor Reference Library, Volume 2, Chapter 13: “All land is subject to ownership.” Ownership of land, as absurd as it may be, is written into law. Ultimately, “Subject to Ownership” makes clear, cynically, that land is a product which can be packaged, itemized, and scanned in the same manner as anything else.
Process
Ideation
Blank ridge
Technical
Watercolor concept sketch
I tested a few spots along the ridge before settling down on one - a task which required a lot of walking and radio communication.
Placement
Construction
Colorado Public Parcel Map displaying the parcel number and owner of the plot of land containing the ridge. I confirmed the string “R0004923” on a privately owned website as well before continuing with the piece.
I encoded “R0004923” into Code-128, a barcode format used worldwide, using an online generator, then traced over an image of the barcode in OnShape. I made sure the height of the barcode was 16’ (the height of tarp I knew I’d be using), then edited adjusted widths accordingly. From there, I could calculate the total area of tarp I’d be using to know how much to buy. The image to the right - my parts list - became my holy grail throughout this project, as I meticulously referred to it every time I cut or laid down a strip of tarp.
Field Spreads
The two weeks prior to making this project were spent on the road in rural Colorado, Kansas, and Nebraska, gathering as much visual information as possible to inform final projects. During this stretch, I produced several fieldwork spreads: sketches of what I saw, notes of what I thought and read. My sketchbook became a journal of anything and everything I noticed about the American West, something that could later be transformed into art. Here is an assortment of my best spreads. I would consider all of them to be part of the process of creating “Subject to Ownership”.
