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ACME LABS variation
V (a field trip to FERNALD)
This project is part of the "Installations" exhibition currently at the Carnegie Arts Center in the Greater Cincinnati Area. The Museum is located approximately 20 miles southeast of Fernald Environmental Management Project or FEMP. FEMP is an EPA Superfund clean-up area and Ohio's largest radioactive contamination site. ACME LABS variation V involved making field-trips to the FEMP site as well as researching over twenty years of media coverage of FERNALD's atomic legacy. To begin I created a room approximately twenty feet long by twelve feet wide by eight feet in height. The shape of the structure visually is derivative of a mushroom cloud and can be viewed from the museum's second floor. The room is covered with tarpaulin, symbolically painted magenta and yellow, colors the United States military uses to mark radiation danger areas. Covering contaminated waste with tarps is a procedure currently being used at FEMP. The piece attempts to create an artificial environment that highlights the allusive aspects of hazardous radio-nuclides. Enclosed in the structure on the southern wall is a concrete sand castle made from soil collected from the Fernald area. The castle is encased within a Plexiglas cylinder creating a biosphere. An ultra sonic vapor machine blows most air into the center of the castle creating condensation. The moisture gathers and eventually drips down onto the castle. Over time the water drops will erode the miniature structure carrying tiny pieces of Fernald soil into a basin on the floor. Other soil samples from the Fernald area sit on the floor of the eastern side. A pristine air-filter leans against the wall, recalling FEMP's problematic history of airborne contaminates. Hanging on the West interior wall is a small landscape painting. The painting was purchased from an antique mall approximately one mile from FEMP. I manipulated the surface of the painting with the above mentioned metal ores. The artifact is presented inside a thick Plexiglas enclosure. Located on the ground of both the east and west wings of the piece, are Lumbricus terrestris Fermi or FERMI worms, a group of slush latex interpretations of gigantic Oligochaetas or common earthworms. Oligochaetas are represented by the phylum Annelida or the segmented worms and here are a symbol of contaminated soil media, a metaphor I have used with other Acme Labs projects. The pieces are named after the late Italian physicist Enrico Fermi. Historically, Fermi is remembered for his actions pertaining to the development of the first successful self sustaining nuclear chain reaction at the University of Chicago. His later interventions at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory assisted in the manufacturing of atomic bombs. The worms range in size from four to twelve feet. Embedded in the surface of the sculptures are pulverized metallic ores --materials that at one time were exposed to a radioactive source and under ultra-violet lighting continue to glow. With a timed relay lighting system, sequenced "explosions" of fluorescent light illuminate the artificial environment. The lights flicker out leaving a luminescent alien terrain lit only by ceiling hung ultra-violet lights --a theatrical display reminiscent of the surreal past of the Atomic Industry in America.
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