‘Line of Wreckage’: Towards a Postindustrial Environmental Aesthetics

Environmental aesthetics, largely because of its focus on 'natural' rather than artifactual environments, has ignored postindustrial sites. This article argues that this shortcoming stems from the nature-culture divide and that such sites ought to be considered by environmental aestheticians. Three forms of artistic engagement with postindustrial sites are explicated by looking at the work of Serra, Smithson, and others. It is argued that postindustrial art leads to a successively richer ability to see and thus think about such sites. Finally, a new category is proposed, the interesting, in order to capture the aesthetic experience of postindustrial landscape art that eludes current terminology.