UNIT 11 — DEGREE PROJECT DEVELOPMENT
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SUGAR BUSH
IS A SUBURBAN PUBLICATION BY RÉKA GÖTZ.PREFACE
We are the nation of human progress, and who will, what can, set limits to our onward march? Providence is with us, and no earthly power can.
—John O’Sullivan, 1839
Suburbia first staked its claim as a physical expression of the American Dream. In the late 1940s, real-estate pioneers fled to domesticate the countryside into a utopian “promised land,” as if the frontier had recrystallised in America’s backyard. Postwar aspiration sent neighbourhoods bleeding outward with fabulous indifference,while Manifest Destiny curdled into strip malls and bleached bread. (Thus began the exodus of White Anglo-Saxon America!)
Suburban life quenched a thirst for something safer, more predictable. It had also sanctified an age-old Jeffersonian ideal: the romantic vision of neighbourliness, small-town democracy, and family enterprise. Entire communities were propelled by a crusade for homeostatic nirvana. Yet, in time, the suburbs had ceased to feel exceptional at all. They became the American default.
In spite of its influence, suburbia remains under-examined as a cultural landscape. Instead, we observe a milieu so plastic, so panoramically dull... that its residue evades scrutiny. SUGAR BUSH was conceived as a mapping of suburban atmosphere. Inspired by the editor’s hometown of Wexford, Pennsylvania, its pages emphasise opacity, abundance, delusion, and strangeness — a spiritually provincial ethos.
—John O’Sullivan, 1839
Suburbia first staked its claim as a physical expression of the American Dream. In the late 1940s, real-estate pioneers fled to domesticate the countryside into a utopian “promised land,” as if the frontier had recrystallised in America’s backyard. Postwar aspiration sent neighbourhoods bleeding outward with fabulous indifference,while Manifest Destiny curdled into strip malls and bleached bread. (Thus began the exodus of White Anglo-Saxon America!)
Suburban life quenched a thirst for something safer, more predictable. It had also sanctified an age-old Jeffersonian ideal: the romantic vision of neighbourliness, small-town democracy, and family enterprise. Entire communities were propelled by a crusade for homeostatic nirvana. Yet, in time, the suburbs had ceased to feel exceptional at all. They became the American default.
In spite of its influence, suburbia remains under-examined as a cultural landscape. Instead, we observe a milieu so plastic, so panoramically dull... that its residue evades scrutiny. SUGAR BUSH was conceived as a mapping of suburban atmosphere. Inspired by the editor’s hometown of Wexford, Pennsylvania, its pages emphasise opacity, abundance, delusion, and strangeness — a spiritually provincial ethos.
WITH THANKS TO
Ellie Hoffmann
Faithe Nguyen
Joe Gardner
Julia Silverberg
Mark Borchardt
Michael Johnsen
Michael Vahrenwald
Rachel Ann Bovier
Rick Miller (Abe Lincoln)
The Pittsburgh Banjo Club
NAVIGATION
- CONCEPT
- PRODUCTION LOG