San Francisco-based artist Amy Balkin has been developing a series of research-based projects questioning human interaction with the public domain and its impact. Her cross-disciplinary practice looks at private and public land ownership and use, pointing also to problems of waste management and atmospheric pollution, using legal tools from property and copyright law and other sectors’ legal strategies.

This is the Public Domain is an ongoing project exploring the possibility of the creation of a land for global public use near the Mojave Desert in California (Latitude: 35.082 / Longitude: -118.2785). For this project Amy Balkin purchased2.5 acres of land in 2003 with the aim of transferring the property’s ownership to a global ‘everyone’ without any restrictions. For this purpose, the artist has been looking into the possibilities offered by real property and copyright laws in order to make this land the property of everyone.

In 2004, Amy Balkin initiated the online project Public Smog, buying 24 lbs of Nitrogen Dioxide credits on the Chicago Climate Exchange - a greenhouse gas emission trading market – in order to create a fluctuating clean-air park in the atmosphere. This ongoing project examines the commodification of the atmosphere, through the economic mechanism of carbon trading. The park is constructed through financial, legal, or political activities that open it for public use. Activities to create Public Smog impact the size, location, and duration of the park, which is also subject to strong winds.

Invisible-5 is a collaborative project with artist Kim Stringfellow and organizations Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, and Pond: Art, activism, and ideas. Invisible-5 is an audio tour to be listened to along the Interstate 5 highway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. This audio piece documents twenty three environmental hazards along the I5 using oral histories, field recordings, found sound, recorded music, and archival audio documents and is available to download on the project website.