The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

Miles Huston: Overshoot

Combining archival photographs with unfolded vegetable boxes, this series of framed diptychs by Miles Huston marks a transformation of agriculture from a practice bounded by human vision to a system predicated on satellite surveillance and globally interlinked supply chains. This new mode of vision transformed our relationship to property, changing the logic of land stewardship from one based on sight ("as far as the eye can see") to systems based on imaging and cybernetics technologies that encapsulate planetary interdependencies. Huston seeks to re-present this aerial view as a moment in the ascent, rather than latitudinal documentation, where humanities optical transformation eventually culminates into the international space race and our collective understanding that our ecology is bound within a blue dot floating in the expanse of space.

Each work in Overshoot consists of an aerial photograph set above an unfolded vegetable box, artifacts drawn from two distinct collections placed in opposition. The aerial images are from a photographic archive created by State Aerial Farm Statistics, a business that shot 16 million aerial photos of farms houses in 44 states over 60 years. While these photographs initially formed the basis for auditing and consolidating farm holdings, they are now administered by Vintage Aerial for the purpose of "preserving and presenting aerial photos of rural America in a way that evokes memories and encourages the sharing of our common history." The vegetable boxes are those that specifically have no company markings. Together with his collection of watering cans, these artifacts exhibit how industry uses idyllic language and images to harken back to the family farm as an example of quality and health. Now unfolded, the boxes are also metaphorically linked to the process of land surveying through vector space thinking: the methodical unfolding of the spherical globe into the flat diagrams that govern our relationship to our environment and each other.

Through his focus on a historical transformation that occurred in the 20th century, Huston seeks to reframe policy debates unfolding in real time as unresolved echoes of this radical shift in the way we see ourselves within the planet. Huston notes that today, "Farmers are now all engaged in a new view from above, one that is optimizing their yield, but also implicates them with communities who suffer from the downstream effects of their farming. The Farmer’s parasocial relationship with the environment has been unveiled through these advanced cartographies."

He is also quick to point out that recent policy rulings like Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency (2023), a decision with disastrous implications for the preservation of wetlands, opt for nostalgic so-called "commonsense" interpretations of ecological policy that refuse to acknowledge the complex links that have been scientifically verified through this novel geo-spatial infrastructure layer. This tension between our common access to this view as either being governed or a form of governance is also evident in the double-meaning of the title. Overshoot relates to a "shot" (photo) from above and also refers to the phenomenon that occurs when the demands made on a natural ecosystem exceed its regenerative capacity.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a ‘zine.

Miles Huston: Overshoot is curated by Associate Curator Eduardo Andres Alfonso.