In his Roden Crater in Arizona, James Turrell is concerned with conveying “new” experiences or re-conveying “old” ones—experiences whose importance had already been realized by the American Indian Chief Seattle in 1855, when he said:

There is no quiet place in the white man’s cities. No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring or the rustle of an insect’s wings. […] The clatter only seems to insult the ears. […] The air is precious to the red man, for all things share the same breath—the animal, the tree, the man—they all share the same breath. The white man does not notice the air he breathes. Like a man dying for many days, he is numb to the stench.[1]

It is this tranquility and the rediscovery of a quality of life, lost under layers of civilization and progress, that Turrell wishes to achieve with his most important work, the Roden Crater project, in the middle of the ancient American Indian territory.

From Jiří Švestka’s James Turrell, Düsseldorf: Edition Cantz, 1992, p. 41.

Footnote

1. Speech of Chief Seattle to the President of the United States of America in 1855, Twentieth Edition, Switzerland: Olten, 1989, pp. 19-20.