charted displacement Butte, Montana
urbanism | terrain by sean burkholder and bradford watson
blast dig haul sort repeat
In 1969 Michael Heizer conceived and constructed displaced / replaced mass , which called for the excavation of three large holes in a dry lakebed in Nevada in which three boulders were placed, each weighing the same as the excavated material. This piece created a dialogue of not only the mass of different materials, but also of the movement and transformation of that material – a sorting perhaps. It also raised the question of where the excavated material went, for there is no displacement without replacement. We move mass every day, for many reasons, but an example as geologic (and obvious) as is Heizer’s does promote some reflection upon the anthropological movement of raw material and the sorting regimes that instigate this movement. This piece foreshadowed the anthropo-geomorphological condition in which we currently find ourselves; a byproduct landscape created by industrialised sorting regimes.
Butte in 1900. Washoe Hoist and mine dump at left side of image.
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Butte-Silver Bow Public Library
the photograph of Butte in 1900, above). These valuable metals – primarily copper, molybdenum and lead – are the only materials exported from the region, and constitute only 0.5-2% of the total material removed from the earth. The remaining 99% is dumped, spread and washed over the landscape in various ways. This large scale extractive process has created a landscape significantly defined by displacement and subsequent replacement. While this or some similar process of sorting is common in most mining operations, many are located in somewhat uninhabited landscapes. In Butte however, this process resulted in the displacement of a community founded around and governed by a geologic condition. The city’s
Butte, Montana is a displaced / replaced mass at an immense scale. For over a century this landscape has been extracted, sorted and deposited, a process that began in the 1860s with the minimal displacement of material by placer miners working in streambeds. It quickly grew in scale from small individual shaft mines, dug with a shovel and bucket, to the explosive removal of an entire mountain to quench the world’s thirst for copper. From the moment material is dislodged from its parent mass, decisions must be made as to where it will go. A value is placed on the removed material that determines feasibility and degree of displacement. Rock containing precious metals is moved great distances for processing while the residual material is deemed waste rock and displaced only as far as necessary (see
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