Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes
Walker Art Center/ DAP (Spring 2008)

The suburbs have always been a fertile space for imagining both the best and the worst 
of modern social life. Portrayed alternately as a middle-class domestic utopia and a dystopic 

world of homogeneity and conformity--with manicured suburban lawns and the inchoate 
darkness that lurks just beneath the surface--these stereotypes belie a more realistic 
understanding of contemporary suburbia and its dynamic transformations. Organized by the
Walker Art Center in association with the Heinz Architectural Center at Carnegie Museum of Art, 
Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes is the first major museum exhibition to examine both
the art and architecture of the contemporary American suburb. Featuring paintings, photographs, 
prints, architectural models, sculptures and video from more than 30 artists and architects, including 
Christophr Ballantyne, Julia Christensen, Center for Land Use Interpretation, Gregory Crewdson, 
Estudio Teddy Cruz, Dan Graham and Larry Sultan, Worlds Away demonstrates the catalytic role 
of the American suburb in the creation of new art and prospective architecture. Conceived as a 
revisionist and even contrarian take on the conventional wisdom surrounding suburban life, 
the catalogue features new essays and seminal writings by John Archer, Robert Beuka, Robert 
Breugmann, David Brooks, Julia Christensen, Beatriz Colomina, Malcolm Gladwell and others, 
as well as a lexicon of suburban neologisms.

Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Walker Art Center (February 16, 2008)
ISBN-10: 0935640908
9 x 6.4 x 1 inches

Rust Belt / Bayou 
comissioned by Turbulence.org/Networked Music Review
with funds from the New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State
Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors 


Rust Belt/ Bayou is an aural exploration of two cities: Cleveland, Ohio, and New Orleans, 
Louisiana. For the past several years, Christensen’s artistic practice has been based in
 extensive travel throughout the United States, surveying the ways in which communities are 
changing in the shadow of corporate real estate development. During these travels, 
she has often been struck by the similarities between Cleveland, a city of the Rust Belt, 
and New Orleans, a city of the bayou. Both cities dwell on the shores of bodies of water 
with global reach: Cleveland on Lake Erie, New Orleans on the Mississippi River. Both cities 
have seen the boom and bust of industry and population throughout their 
histories — past and present. Cleveland and New Orleans look remarkably different, 
but Christensen has often noticed that they have sounds in common: industry, 
birds, water, tourists. Rust Belt / Bayou offers an interactive document of 
aural snapshots from recent trips to both New Orleans and Cleveland.

Big Box Reuse photographs

Photographs from the big box reuse series have shown at galleries 
and museums nationwide. Venues include: Center for Land Use Interpretation, 
Walker Art Center, Hite Art Institute (University of Louisville), Rensselaer 
Polytechnic Institute, The Sanctuary for Independent Media, Hudson Valley 
Teaching Gallery, Regina Gouger Miller Gallery (forthcoming), 
Carnegie Museum of Fine Arts (forthcoming).

Disaster Studies 

Semeter-long collaboration with students at Stanford University. The project 
corincided with the 100 year anniversary of the San Francisco earthquare of
2006, which prompted extensive examination into the culture, remembrance,
life, and oddly, celebration, of disaster.  The earthquake commemoration was
used as a jumping off point to study current disasters that are happening
throughout the United States. The project culminated in a public intervention
at Stanford University, comparing Stanford's interpretation of earthquake
awareness with the public's unawareness of issues in New Orleans provoked
by Hurrican Katrina.

Blinking Girls
Blinking Girls is a video installation in which five seemingly separate videos are
projected from a single video source.  The five videos are mastered on to single 
video channel, which is then transferred to a DVD.  The sound is mastered on 
to a 5.1 matrix, and each video is linked to a single soundtrack.   Five structures 
are built to act as screens for the video projection, and a speaker is installed in 
each separate structure. In the end, the installation is a group of five sound-making,
video pieces projected in space, all mastered on to a single DVD.
The piece has shown in several locations, including Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute,
and the Hite Art Institute at the University of Louisville.

Megachurch Architecture
This series of photographs emerged from several visits to megachurches
as a part of the big box reuse research. The photographs, and associated
essays, explore the architecture of the megachurch. 

My Audience
My Audience is a video installation in which 4 video projectors are used
in order to project over 40 separate images into the seats of a concert hall.
The audience must stand on the stage in order to view the piece, and they are
faced with over 40 silent, staring, moving, large video faces gazing back at them.
The stage is covered in hidden microphones, and a Supercollider patch runs a slight 
delay on each sound course, and the sound is miked out over the house speakers.
In effect, the audience is standing on the stage, their movements making amplified
sound for the piece, and the video is sitting in the seats of the audience, 
patiently watching. 

Our Penultimate Year

Our Penultimate Year is a mini-series for radio by Jarred McAdams, which tells the cautionary tale of the meteoric rise of a young man and woman who become king and queen of the world. It is the result of five years of intensive writing, composition, and rehearsal. It features Jarred as the King and his long-time collaborator Julia Christensen as the Queen.

Our Penultimate Year debuted on Neighborhood Public Radio on May 6, 2006. Archived recordings of the NPR broadcasts of OPY are available at the NPR Website here. Additional clips can be found on Jarred's website, here.

Margin Release , Thursday Night Specials, etc

Julia Christensen's art practice has long been associated with the creation
of public, community-based events.  From 2002-2005 Julia worked to produce 
the Thursday Night Special concerts, a free, weekly, casual concert series 
that featured local artists of any and all media/medium.  These concerts primarily 
took place at Mills College in Oakland, CA, and the Deep Listening Space in Kingston, NY.
Over the years, performers included: Peter Swendsen, Ben Piekut, Michael Carreira, 
Kristin Miltner, Michael Trigilio, Jorge Boeringer, Pauline Oliveros, Fred Frith, 
Robert Ashley, Jessica Rylan, Tomie Hahn, Curtis Bahn, Cenk Ergun, Jarred McAdams.
Currently, Julia curates and produces the Margin Release event series at 
Oberlin College.  Recent performances, lectures, and community activities
 by invited visitors include: The Yes Men, Lo-Vid, Nao Bustamante, Steve Kurtz, 
Paul DeMarinis, Paper Rad, and Neighborhood Public Radio.