 | This article may lend undue weight to certain ideas, incidents, or controversies.(November 2022) |
Lauren Elder | |
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| Born | 1946 (age 77–78) Portland, Oregon, U.S. |
| Alma mater | UCLA, UCB Extension |
Lauren Elder (born 1946) is an American artist, designer, and environmental activist known for environmental works and performative collaborations. [1]
Lauren Elder was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1946. She has a BA in Fine Arts from UCLA. She also studied Landscape Architecture at UCB Extension. [2] Throughout the mid-1980s to early 1990s she worked with the interdisciplinary performance ensemble, Contraband, as a set designer and performer. Elder lives and works in California, taught at California College of the Arts, and works with environmental art, as well as continuing in set design. [3] Elder is known for being the sole survivor in the crash of a light airplane in the Sierra Nevada in the 1970s. [4]
In collaboration with the San Francisco based performance collective, Contraband, Elder produced the performance piece Oracle in 1988. Elder created "an 'industrial,' kinetic visual environment" in which the dancers explored issues of freedom and imprisonment. [5]
Singing My Mother to Sleep (1988) is a collaboration with performance artist Nina Wise. [6] This performance explores issues of grief, mortality, and personal catharsis, using the threat of extinction to endangered animals as a metaphor. The performance takes place in a hospital room with large images of animals projected onto the hospital privacy screen.
Maria Porges writes of Elder's 1993 production Surrender in Artforum, "Although billed as environmental theater, Lauren Elder's immensely ambitious multidisciplinary performances encompass far more than mere drama. Like her earlier work Off Limits, 1989, Surrender is a sprawling, archetypal story with a narrative thread that twists into knots at times, guiding the audience from event to dream to memory, but always wandering back to the story at hand. This temporal movement is echoed by the frequent physical relocation of both players and audience in and around the hangar-sized space of the theater. Surrender also shifts from spoken text to singing, chanting, and instrumental interludes."
Porges continues, "From the first, Surrender drew in the audience, making it clear that the questions being asked were ones that all of us will have to find an answer for, sooner or later, within ourselves. These issues range from war resistance to wartime killing, from the loss and loneliness experienced by the families of soldiers, to the effects of radiation on the flora and fauna of the desert." AND "Even more compelling than the story they told, though, was the visual design of the piece as a whole. Elder's inventions, more sculpture and installation than “props” or “sets,” derived their power from a kind of can-do simplicity, rather than from gee-whiz high-tech effects. (A nighttime sky of stars, for instance, was represented by a huge dome-shaped mobile of bent bicycle wheels, all set in motion by the astronomer's hand.) From one moment to the next, her objects and environments simultaneously spun the fantasy and confronted the audience with difficult truths." [7]
On April 26, 1976, Lauren decided to take up an offer to be the third passenger in a Cessna 182P, tail number N52855, on a trip from Oakland International Airport in Oakland, California to Furnace Creek Airport in Death Valley's Furnace Creek. The 36-year-old pilot had 213 flight hours (46 on type) experience and was not instrument rated. He probably flew east, up Bubbs Creek and sought but missed Kearsarge Pass (11,709 ft or 3,569 m) through the Sierra. Instead he flew southeast into Center Basin, the eastern side of which is ringed by three peaks over 13,000 feet (4,000 m) tall (Mt. Bradley at 13,289 feet (4,050 m), Mt. Keith at 13,977 feet (4,260 m), and Junction Peak at 13,888 feet (4,233 m)). Lauren Elder, sitting in the back seat and enjoying the view of mountains all round, turned forward to see a wall of granite moving towards them. When she woke up, she realized that they had crashed. The crumpled plane was lying on a precarious slope a few feet away from a ridge in California's Sierra Nevada at an elevation of 12,460 feet (3,800 m), one-half mile south of Mt. Bradley.
The pilot and one other passenger, sitting in the front of the airplane, survived the crash but died by the following morning. The evening of the accident, Elder could see the lights of the Owens Valley below, but miles of wilderness, elevation and sheer, icy cliffs separated her from it. She was wearing nothing but a blouse, a wraparound skirt, and boots with two-inch heels. One of her arms was fractured. The morning following the accident, with both her companions dead and with no real possibility of rescue, Elder decided to climb down from the mountain to the valley below. At one point it was necessary to lower herself down a 100-foot-tall dry waterfall. She suffered from hallucinations on the way because of lack of sleep and shock. Her descent took 36 hours.
Finally, as Elder reached civilization, she had trouble finding help when she walked late that night into the town of Independence, California. People saw her disheveled appearance and were afraid; Charles Manson and his female followers had lived at the Barker Ranch in Inyo County, California seven years earlier and were arrested there in 1969 after the Tate—LaBianca murders, and members of the Manson Family had appeared at the preliminary hearing that took place in Independence before trial was transferred to Los Angeles.
Lauren Elder wrote a book about the crash (with Shirley Streshinsky) entitled And I Alone Survived, [4] which was later made into a TV movie with the same title, [16] as well as a documentary aired by the Discovery Channel.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) ruled the accident was caused by the pilot in command (PIC), who "continued flight into known areas of severe turbulence." The NTSB also judged the PIC made "improper in-flight decisions or planning." The National Park Service continues to remove pieces of wreckage from Elder's flight. There have been nearly a dozen private and military airplane crashes in the immediate vicinity.
Trans World Airlines Flight 800 (TWA800) was a Boeing 747-100 that exploded and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near East Moriches, New York, on July 17, 1996, at approximately 8:31 p.m. EDT, 12 minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, on a scheduled international passenger flight to Rome with a stopover in Paris.
United Airlines Flight 232 was a regularly scheduled United Airlines flight from Stapleton International Airport in Denver to O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, continuing to Philadelphia International Airport. On July 19, 1989, the DC-10 serving the flight crash-landed at Sioux Gateway Airport in Sioux City, Iowa, after suffering a catastrophic failure of its tail-mounted engine due to an unnoticed manufacturing defect in the engine's fan disk, which resulted in the loss of all flight controls. Of the 296 passengers and crew on board, 112 died during the accident, while 184 people survived. 13 of the passengers were uninjured. It was the deadliest single-aircraft accident in the history of United Airlines.
Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 was a scheduled flight from New York JFK to Miami. Shortly before midnight on December 29, 1972, the Lockheed L-1011-1 TriStar crashed into the Florida Everglades, causing 101 total fatalities. All three cockpit crew members, two of the 10 flight attendants, and 96 of the 163 passengers were killed; 75 people survived.
Avianca Flight 052 was a regularly scheduled flight from Bogotá, Colombia, to New York City, United States, via Medellín, Colombia, that crashed on January 25, 1990, at 21:34 (UTC−05:00). The Boeing 707 flying this route ran out of fuel after a failed attempt to land at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), causing the aircraft to crash onto a hillside in the small village of Cove Neck, New York, on the north shore of Long Island. Eight of the nine crew members and 65 of the 149 passengers on board were killed. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the crash occurred due to the flight crew failing to properly declare a fuel emergency, failure to use an airline operational control dispatch system, inadequate traffic flow management by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and the lack of standardized understandable terminology for pilots and controllers for minimum and emergency fuel states.
Continental Airlines Flight 1713 was a commercial airline flight that crashed while taking off in a snowstorm from Stapleton International Airport in Denver, Colorado, on November 15, 1987. The Douglas DC-9 airliner, operated by Continental Airlines, was making a scheduled flight to Boise, Idaho. Twenty-five passengers and three crew members died in the crash.
United Air Lines Flight 553 was a scheduled flight from Washington National Airport to Omaha, Nebraska, via Chicago Midway International Airport. On December 8, 1972, the Boeing 737-222 serving the flight, City of Lincoln, registration N9031U, crashed while approaching Midway Airport.
American Eagle Flight 4184, officially operating as Simmons Airlines Flight 4184, was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Indianapolis, Indiana, to Chicago, Illinois, United States. On October 31, 1994, the ATR 72 performing this route flew into severe icing conditions, lost control and crashed into a field. All 68 people aboard were killed in the high-speed impact.
On October 11, 2006, a Cirrus SR20 aircraft crashed into the Belaire Apartments in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City, at about 2:42 p.m. EDT. The aircraft struck the north side of the building, causing a fire in several apartments, that was extinguished within two hours.
Continental Express Flight 2574 was a scheduled domestic passenger airline flight operated by Britt Airways from Laredo International Airport in Laredo, Texas to Houston Intercontinental Airport (IAH) in Houston, Texas. On September 11, 1991, the Embraer EMB 120 Brasilia turboprop, registered N33701, crashed while initiating its landing sequence, killing all 14 people on board. The aircraft wreckage hit an area near Eagle Lake, Texas, approximately 65 miles (105 km) west-southwest of the airport.
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EgyptAir Flight MS990 (MSR990) was a scheduled flight from Los Angeles International Airport to Cairo International Airport, with a stop at John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York City. On October 31, 1999, the Boeing 767-300ER operating the route crashed into the Atlantic Ocean about 60 miles (100 km) south of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, killing all 217 passengers and crew on board, making it the deadliest aviation disaster for EgyptAir, and also the second-deadliest aviation accident involving a Boeing 767 aircraft, behind Lauda Air Flight 004.
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On July 16, 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr. was killed when the light aircraft he was flying crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. Kennedy's wife Carolyn Bessette and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette were also on board and were killed. The Piper Saratoga departed from New Jersey's Essex County Airport; its intended route was along the coastline of Connecticut and across Rhode Island Sound to Martha's Vineyard Airport.
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Asiana Airlines Flight 214 was a scheduled transpacific passenger flight originating from Incheon International Airport near Seoul, South Korea. On the morning of July 6, 2013, the Boeing 777-200ER operating the flight crashed on final approach into San Francisco International Airport in the United States. Of the 307 people on board, three died; another 187 were injured, 49 of them seriously. Among the seriously injured were four flight attendants who were thrown onto the runway while still strapped in their seats when the tail section broke off after striking the seawall short of the runway. It was the first fatal crash of a Boeing 777 since the aircraft type entered service in 1995.
Empire Airlines Flight 8284 was a cargo flight operated by Empire Airlines for FedEx Feeder from Fort Worth Alliance Airport to Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport, Texas. On January 27, 2009, it crashed on final approach to its destination. Both crew members survived with minor injuries but the aircraft was written off.
On 4 August 2018, a de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver aircraft operated by K2 Aviation crashed in poor weather near Denali, Alaska, United States. All five people on board survived the crash, but died before rescuers were able to arrive at the scene. The five people consisted of the pilot and four Polish tourists.
Atlas Air Flight 3591 was a scheduled domestic cargo flight under the Amazon Air banner between Miami International Airport and George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. On February 23, 2019, the Boeing 767-375ER(BCF) used for this flight crashed into Trinity Bay during approach into Houston, killing the two crew members and a single passenger on board. The accident occurred near Anahuac, Texas, east of Houston, shortly before 12:45 CST (18:45 UTC). This was the first fatal crash of a Boeing 767 freighter.
On 29 May 2021, a Cessna 501 Citation I/SP crashed into the Percy Priest Lake in Tennessee, United States. All seven occupants died, including diet guru Gwen Shamblin Lara and her husband, actor Joe Lara, who was piloting the aircraft.
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