Spiral Jetty as a Barometer of Slow Violence in the Great Salt Lake
By Steve Lemeshko
Spiral Jetty in 2015. Credit: csp67, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
The Great Salt Lake in Utah, a unique desert oasis ecosystem, is in a precarious position. For decades, its water levels have fluctuated, but recent trends show a decline. This is driven by a combination of human activities—diverting river flows for agriculture, industry, and residential use—and climate-induced droughts that are increasingly common in the West.
Understanding the extent of this crisis and its long-term implications requires more than scientific data; it calls for a way to visualize the slow, creeping destruction. Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty might offer a compelling lens.
Created in 1970, Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty is a hallmark of the land art movement that uses the natural world as a canvas for artistic vision. The work was constructed with 6,000 tons of black basalt rock collected from the site and arranged in a counterclockwise spiral 15 feet wide. For Smithson, the artwork embodied the concept of entropy—a state of constant yet natural decay from the moment of its creation. Over time, however, the Spiral Jetty has transformed into more than an artistic statement. It has inadvertently become a "barometer" of environmental change, partly because of its location in the northern arm of the Great Salt Lake.
The Great Salt Lake has been long divided into two parts—the northern and southern arms—by a causeway constructed in the 1950s and now operated by the Union Pacific Railroad. In the northern arm, this division significantly lowered water levels, drastically increased salinity, and left a blood-red hue caused by salt-tolerant microbial activity. In 2016, a breach temporarily allowed water from the southern arm to flow northward, but a berm was quickly erected to preserve the salinity balance in the southern arm, where ecological and economic interests are concentrated. This division has effectively sacrificed the northern arm for the sake of preserving at least a part of the overall ecosystem. Yet, as the lake’s water levels continue to decline, the long-term sustainability of this strategy remains uncertain.
The concept of slow violence, introduced by Rob Nixon, helps contextualize the gradual but devastating impact of these changes. Unlike immediate, explosive forms of violence, slow violence unfolds over years or decades, making it harder to perceive and respond to. In the case of the Great Salt Lake, slow violence manifests through the cumulative effects of water diversion, industrial exploitation, and climate change, which together erode the lake’s ecosystem and threaten its future.
The Spiral Jetty, once surrounded by water, now sits dry, encircled by salt deposits. This physical transformation makes visible the forces of creeping degradation that define slow violence.
This decline also echoes the catastrophic fate of the Aral Sea in Central Asia, halfway across the globe. Once one of the world’s largest lakes, the Aral Sea was devastated by Soviet-era short-sighted irrigation projects that diverted rivers feeding the lake. What followed was an ecological disaster of global proportions: the lake dried up, its salty bed exposed to windstorms that spread toxic dust, harming local communities’ health and livelihoods. The Great Salt Lake might face a similar trajectory.
As the northern arm of the Great Salt Lake becomes increasingly desolate, we must question whether current policies—such as maintaining the berm—are sufficient to address the crisis. Within this context, the Spiral Jetty is more than an artwork; it is the physical manifestation of the slow violence of anthropogenic changes we see right now and a call for urgent action. Just as Smithson’s spiral invites us to contemplate the passage of time and the inevitability of change, it also challenges us to confront the human choices driving the lake’s decline. To heed its reimagined message is to recognize the urgency of safeguarding this fragile ecosystem before it’s too late.
If you’re inspired to take action, consider exploring the work of the organizations focusing on advocacy, conservation, and raising awareness about the Great Salt Lake’s ongoing crisis:
For further reading on slow violence, see the following articles:
Pollution as Environmental Violence / October 17, 2024
Indigenous Knowledge and Colonial Violence in Kaipara Moana, New Zealand / September 19, 2024
Documenting Coal Mining in Jharia, India, through Photography / May 5, 2024