The Bakken Goes Oil and the Changing Geographies of Western NORTH DAKOTA Edited by William Caraher and Kyle Conway the Bakken Goes Boom

BOOMThe Bakken Goes Oil and the Changing Geographies of Western NORTH DAKOTA Edited by William Caraher and Kyle Conway The Bakken Goes Boom Oil and the Changing Geographies of Western North Dakota The Digital Press @ The University of North Dakota Grand Forks Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons By Attribution 4.0 International License. 2016 The Digital Press @ The University of North Dakota Book Design: William Caraher Cover Design: Kyle Cassidy Library of Congress Control Number: 2016933953 The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, North Dakota ISBN-13: 978-0692643686 (The Digital Press at The University of North Dakota) ISBN-10: 0692643680 Chapter 15 BAKKEN BOOM! Artists Respond to the North Dakota Oil Rush1 Rebecca A. Dunham Introduction In the art exhibition Bakken Boom! Artists Respond to the North Dakota Oil Rush (Plains Art Museum, Fargo, ND, January 29–August 15, 2015), Curator Rebecca A. Dunham presents the largest group exhibition in a museum to date that critically examines the rapid development and trans- formative impact of the Bakken oil boom on North Dakota (Figure 1).2 Using the Chaordic Stepping Stones to organize this groundbreaking project, Dunham invited twenty-two artists and three collaborative groups to display artworks responding to this hot and divisive topic.3 The artists are an equal number of local, regional, and national artists, providing a wide range of perspectives, and works from the Museum’s permanent collection supplement their contributions. Ranging from photography and flm to sculpture, artist’s books, print- making, paintings, costume design, mixed media works, and site-specifc installations, the artworks in Bakken Boom! refect the many ways visual 1 In memoriam Joel Jonientz. 2 Bakken Boom! is supported by lead sponsor Doris Slaaten with additional contributions from Yvonne Condell, Linda Olson, Walter Piehl, and B. J. Zander. The exhibition and programs are also funded in part by the North Dakota Humanities Council, a nonproft, independent state partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, fndings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in the exhibition and programs do not necessarily represent those of the North Dakota Humanities Council or the National Endowment for the Humanities. 3 The Chaordic Stepping Stones are a tool to outline a clear path in project planning. For more information, please read Chris Corrigan, “The Chaordic Stepping Stones: Planning Just the Right Amount of Form For Invitation, Gathering, Harvest and Wise Action,” chriscorrigan.com/Chaordic%20 stepping%20stones.pdf. Figure 1. The Plains Art Museum. Fargo, ND. 295 artists are investigating and commenting on the social, political, economic, and environmental dynamics of the current oil boom. The artists tackle their content with viewpoints ranging from contemplative to confronta- tional and through various modes of communication such as fctional and nonfctional storytelling, sharing personal experiences, asking questions, or challenging assumptions and beliefs about the Bakken boom. How- ever, all of the artists are united in their roles as activists. Within the last few decades, artists have increasingly utilized their art practices as a means to actively engage the public about controversial socio-political issues. In turn, contemporary art galleries, museums, and other such spaces have increasingly provided forums for artists to explore contentious issues like oil culture in America. When Dunham developed Bakken Boom!, it was with these principles in mind. She viewed the artists and collaborative groups as partners, working closely with them to select pieces for display to serve as vehicles for dialogue and debate. Dunham also challenged artists to create new work exclusively for the exhibition, and many did. It is important to note that Plains Art Museum has no stance on the Bakken oil boom. In this exhibition, Dunham offers artists and collaborative groups a platform to exhibit artworks that encourage North Dakotans and visitors from around the world to ponder the oil and gas industry’s past, current, and future presence in the state. She understands visitors may disagree with the artists’ opinions and views. In fact, she hopes visitors will have strong reactions to the artworks and encourages them to openly express their responses to the artworks as this action contributes to the goal of the project: foster public discussions about the Bakken oil boom. Dunham is a relatively new resident of North Dakota, having re- located to Fargo from Houston, Texas, in October of 2013 to become Curator of Plains Art Museum. She quickly noticed that many North Dakotans talk about the Bakken boom in private settings but refrain from public conversations. Moreover, she believes there is a lack of communication between citizens and local and state leaders and representatives from the oil and gas companies. Therefore, she believed (and continues to believe) that the need for projects like Bakken Boom! is immediate and conceived of the exhibition as a means to provide visitors with a forum to discuss the current oil boom. To further fulfll this need, Dunham and the Museum’s Director of Education, Kris Bergquist, organized a series of public programs with par- ticular emphasis on socially engaged art practices entitled “Community Conversations.” Both the exhibition and the program series encourage discussion in the Museum’s galleries and beyond, inspiring visitors to 296 voice their opinions, engage in civil dialogue, and take ownership of how the Bakken oil boom is shaping their community, state, and nation. The remainder of this essay presents the artworks featured in the exhibition and concludes with data culled from the exhibition’s program series. Summary of Exhibition Checklist A “checklist” is the complete list of artists and artworks displayed in an exhibition. While museums plan their exhibitions years in advance, Dunham only began working on Bakken Boom! upon her appointment in October of 2013. Due to the timely nature of the project, it was im- perative for her to establish a set of principles to guide the selection of artists and artworks to be included in the exhibition. In order to create a dynamic checklist that refected the complexity of the Bakken oil boom, she invited artists (no unsolicited proposals were reviewed) from dif- ferent geographic regions, a mixture of generations, and a combination of emerging, mid-career, and mature artists. She also only considered artists who had a history of exploring the oil and gas industry in their practices. Lastly, all of the artists’ artworks are contemporary to the Bakken oil boom (made in the mid-2000s and later) and represent a variety of art materials and media, styles, and subjects. Summary of Exhibition Design An exhibition’s checklist greatly infuences its gallery design. Bakken Boom! is installed in two of the Museum’s main galleries, the William and Anna Jane Schlossman Gallery and the Fred J. Donath Gallery, which together total 545 linear wall feet and 5,225 square feet. Identical rectan- gular-shaped rooms with the exception of ceiling height—the former is ten feet high while the latter is sixteen—both galleries also have moveable “L” shaped walls to facilitate the fow of space by dividing the galleries into rooms and enhancing dramatic effects. Due to the eclectic nature of the exhibition’s checklist, Dunham chose to paint the walls white and installed the artworks formally, which means the formal qualities of the artworks (line, size, color, pattern, texture, etc.) provided the basis for their placement in relation to one another. With Bergquist’s assistance, she also created information centers in both galleries containing iPads with bookmarked websites about the Bakken boom, copies of relevant publications, and information about the exhibition’s program series “Community Conversations.” She also made the galleries more comfortable and inviting to visitors by placing cushioned 297 benches around the rooms, on top of which she placed bound gallery guides about the artworks on display. Exhibition Checklist The text below consists of the didactic materials Dunham wrote to accompany the artworks on display in Bakken Boom!. After Alec Soth’s photographs, one of the impetus for the exhibition, the remainder of the artists and collaborations are presented in alphabetical order. In addition to this material, Dunham also wrote information panels about the Bakken Shale Formation and the drilling and extraction technologies utilized at the formation, specifcally horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking), to contextualize the artworks and their content. Dunham installed these panels strategically around in the galleries, but these are omitted from this essay because of other authors’ contributions about this material to the anthology. 1. Alec Soth, Minneapolis, Minnesota Selections from North Dakota Went Boom, 2013, printed 2014, Pigment prints Bakken Boom! was partially inspired by the New York Times Magazine February 3, 2013 cover story, “North Dakota Went Boom.” Written by Chip Brown with black-and-white documentary style photographs by Alec Soth, it brought national and international attention to the Bakken oil boom. Originally intended for publication in the magazine, Dunham asked Soth to print a selection of these photographs for display in Bakken Boom!. Figure 2, which depicts a young male “roughneck,” or a laborer in the oil and gas industry, serves as the visual identity of Bakken Boom!, having been featured in marketing and promotional materials for the exhibition. A project-based photographer who likens his process to flmmaking, Soth traveled around North Dakota in the winter of 2012 to capture his subjects. Quite striking individually, the photographs transform into a narrative about life in the oil patch when viewed together (Figures 3). As illustrated in Figure 3, Soth’s photographs surround another artwork in the exhibition, a flm by Isaac Gale. Gale shot his flm—also a black- and-white project—while accompanying Soth on his assignment for the New York Times Magazine article and their works feature some of the same individuals.

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