Brett Tracy travels the western US by bicycle and uses his artist's trained eye to document the end of the industrial age.
While the end of the industrial age might not be an accepted fact, Brett sees evidence everywhere that humans are coming to the end of their industrial phase. He imagines that a more ecologically aware human-scale era will replace it.
His website is “The Illuminated Thread: a journey by bicycle into the murky unknown of the deindustrial age.” It's full of pictures, videos, audio and journal postings of his travels.
Brett is about to set out on a bike tour from Los Angeles to Houston. Along the way, he's planning to stop at desert water projects, failed alternative energy projects, utopian settlements, mines, dumps and aircraft storage yards.
Here's what Brett hopes to tell us during his upcoming bike travels:
“1. Document and interpret the contraction phase of the industrial adventure with an emphasis on the landscapes and structures left behind.
2. Piece together a viable image of a stable low-energy future.
I’ll take a look at improvised ground-up support systems as they emerge in the cracks of the old industrial model. Expect images of organic farms, co-ops, innovative recycling, repurposing and retrofitting efforts, intentional or lifeboat communities, sustainable building models, squatting,
3. Identify and refine a skill set necessary to thrive in the transition to a new paradigm: practical techniques for living on the margins.
Shitting outdoors, sleeping in marginal places, living on an extreme shoestring budget, being a good houseguest, dumpster diving, time management, situational awareness, intuitive navigation, the effect of transience on relationships, working with the weather and the seasons, and bicycle maintenance all fall into this category.”
The project started when Brett, shown above in Wyoming, and his friend Joseph Miller set out by bicycle from Chicago a couple of years ago and rode first to Portland and then to San Francisco. Along the way they interacted with people along the road and recorded their observations. The trip resulted in a gallery show.
In the second stage, Brett headed south from San Francisco to Los Angeles, then to San Diego. His art subjects from that trip essentially appear to be power plants, edifices like freeway interchanges and Disneyland parking lots and things that were falling apart, such as the abandoned shipyard at left.
He's preparing to shove off on the third stage of his travels on Feb. 5. He says he'll be take “an extended look at the industrial age, and witness the wonder and tragedy of a world built with phenomenal amounts of fossil energy.”
After visiting all of the US, he plans to head to the industrialized parts of Europe.
Brett is seeking donations to help offset the costs of the project. You can donate at the Illuminated Thread website.
I'm interested to see what Brett is going to find in the desert.
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