Touring the Archive, Archiving the Tour: Image, Text, and Experience with the Center for Land Use Interpretation

Whether the visitor steps in from the blazing sunshine of a Culver City sidewalk, thumbs open the cardstock cover of a slim booklet, takes a reclining seat on an air-conditioned bus, or types a few letters in a browser, her point of entry to the work of the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI) leads to an experience that defies the tidy categorizations of research, art, education, or tourism. An image greets her-an unremarkable image, an unromantic image, an image of land working, abandoned, or waiting to be put to work again.