California

Trevor Paglen, Remnants of California

Trevor Paglen, “Alley Flood,” Delta Remnants project

California is built on borrowed time -- time borrowed through an expenditure of incredible amounts of human labor, effort, and resources. And at some point, when the humans are gone or the pharaonic expenditures necessary to preserve it are no longer possible, California, as we know it, will not exist. In this post-human, or as some geologists might call it, post-anthropocene era, the landscape will slowly begin to subsume the human remnants. Los Angeles will go back to being regularly engulfed by fire. Deserts and floods will reclaim the San Joaquin Valley. Traces of anthropic land use will begin to fade - eroding and slowly decomposing.