Terrestrial Perspectives takes the extensive collections at the Ludwig Forum Aachen as a starting point to explore the phenomenon of human interventions on the surface of the earth. The exhibition spans work from the beginnings of Land Art in the late 1960s to the present, and investigates connections between ecology, colonialism, and resource extraction. The exhibition includes works by Michael Heizer, Richard Long, Nancy Graves, Robert Smithson, Betty Beaumont (2000 Awardee), and Jean-Michel Basquiat among others.

Betty Beaumont’s Ocean Landmark creates a critical link to ecological activism while offering perspectives beyond the male-dominated narratives within Land Art. Beaumont’s work in Territorial Perspectives includes three videos: The Journey (1980), Ocean Landmark Virtual World (2000), and Imagining Imaging (2001). Ocean Landmark is an underwater work on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, made of 500 tons of processed coal-waste, a potential pollutant, that underwent stabilization and a planned transformation into a flourishing ecosystem. Seventeen thousand coal fly-ash blocks were fabricated, shipped to the ocean site, 40-miles from the New York Harbor and three-miles off Fire Island National Seashore, and laid on the continental shelf. Ocean Landmark started to change at the point of its installation. It has grown and developed into a productive new ecosystem over forty-four years and continues to evolve as a living artwork, that when fished, feeds people. Today, the work is listed as a “Fish Haven” on the NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration) coastal navigational charts. Ocean Landmark is the fifth in a series of Beaumont’s large-scale site works.

Beaumont freely integrates cross-disciplinary ideas and the connections among them to produce works that reveal transformational ideas about our contemporary world and urban landscapes. The flow from the specific concrete, and technical, to the abstract, meditative and lyrical characterizes her work.