Science | David Chalmers Alesworth

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Posted on July 12th, 2009 by alesworth

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Transart draft Proposals
Research and studio 2009-2010

Work Year-1

davidalesworth.com (blog links also on home page)

Research-Proposal (year-2)

Draft title: “Working the Garden, a consideration of the garden in contemporary Pakistan”.

Towards my studio work “A Taxonomy of Eden” I will be researching gardens and urban landscape in contemporary Pakistan. This will include varying attitudes to the notion of nature, wilderness and the paradise garden. Also the legacy of aging colonial parks. Besides readings (see bibliography below) I will interview a cross section of contemporary society from career gardeners in Lahore’s parks, agricultural workers, religious scholars (and lay practitioners from various religions and sects) the educated and the less educated in the city and countryside of Lahore and Karachi (possibly further afield also). From nursery owners, the head of the Punjab Horticultural Authority to jobbing residential gardeners in the Defence housing authorities of Karachi and Lahore. This will follow a format of recordings, translations, transcriptions and analysis. Also photography and some video. I work as a freelance horticultural consultant in Pakistan and have done so for the past 21 years. My clients currently include Agha Khan Cultural Services Pakistan, with whom I am working on several restoration projects, including the uplift of the North Circular Park belt around Lahore’s old city.
(Sacred Texts. Garden Design. Garden History. Landscape. Popular Culture. Decorated Transport. Trees on the edge between nature and culture. Motifs. Carpets. Ageing colonial public parks in Lahore. The culture of the Mali.)

“Working the Garden”
Draft Bibliography (11 July 2009) Part Questia, part owned.

Albinia, Alice. Empires of the Indus. John Murray. 2008.
Anderson, Earl R. Folk-Taxonomies in Early English. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003.
Anderson, Edgar. Plants, Man and Life. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1952.
Anesaki, Masaharu. Art, Life, and Nature in Japan. Boston: Marshall Jones Company, 1933.
Arber, Agnes. Herbals, Their Origin and Evolution: A Chapter in the History of Botany, 1470-1670. Cambridge, England: University Press, 1938.
Aubrey, James R., ed. John Fowles and Nature: Fourteen Perspectives on Landscape. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1999.
Aydon, Cyril. Charles Darwin, His life and times. Running Press. 2008.
Bailey, L. H. How Plants Get Their Names. New York: Dover Publications, 1963.
Barton, Gregory Allen. Empire Forestry and the Origins of Environmentalism. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Baydawi, Abd Allah, and Mahmud Isfahani. Nature, Man and God in Medieval Islam: ‘abd Allah Baydawi’s Text, Tawali’ Al-Anwar Min Matali’ Al-Anzar, along with Mahmud Isfahani’s Commentary, Matali’ Al-Anzar, Sharh Tawali’ Al-Anwar. Translated by Calverley, Edwin E. and James W. Pollock. Edited by Edwin E. Calverley and James W. Pollock. Vol. 2,. Boston: Brill, 2002.
Bedford, Henry F. Citizen Politics and Nuclear Power Citizen Politics and Nuclear Power. Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, 1990.
Bell, Simon. Landscape: Pattern, Perception, and Process. New York: Spon Press, 1999.
Benson, Lyman D. Plant Taxonomy: Methods and Principles. New York: Ronald Press Co., 1962.
Bracey, H. E. English Rural Life: Village Activities, Organisations, and Institutions. London: Routledge and Paul, 1959.
Brichto, Herbert Chanan. The Names of God: Poetic Readings in Biblical Beginnings. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Brother, Nan. Men and Gardens. 1st ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956.
Burden, Robert and Stephan Kohl, eds. Landscape and Englishness. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006.
Busch, Lawrence, William B. Lacy, Jeffrey Burkhardt, Douglas Hemken, Jubel Moraga-Rojel, Timothy Koponen, and José De Souza Silva. Making Nature, Shaping Culture: Plant Biodiversity in Global Context. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.
Campana, Richard J. Arboriculture: History and Development in North America. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1999.
Carr, David M. The Erotic Word: Sexuality, Spirituality, and the Bible. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Conlogue, William. Working the Garden: American Writers and the Industrialization of Agriculture. Edited by Jack Temple Kirby. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
Dale, Stephen F. The Garden of the Eight Paradises: Babur and the Culture of Empire in Central Asia, Afghanistan and India (1483-1530). Boston: Brill, 2004.
Don, Monty. Around the World in Eighty Gardens. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 2008.
Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. Bantam Press. 2006.
Ereshefsky, Marc. The Poverty of the Linnaean Hierarchy: A Philosophical Study of Biological Taxonomy. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Evans, David. A History of Nature Conservation in Britain. London: Routledge, 1997.
Eyler, Ellen C. Early English Gardens and Garden Books. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974.
Foerster, Norman. Nature in American Literature: Studies in the Modern View of Nature. New York: Macmillan, 1923.
Fry, Michael. A Manual of Nature Conservation Law. Oxford: Oxford University, 1995.
Gardens of Prehistory: The Archaeology of Settlement Agriculture in Greater Mesoamerica. Edited by Thomas W. Killion. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1992.
Gatta, John. Making Nature Sacred: Literature, Religion, and Environment in America from the Puritans to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Geikie, Archibald. The Love of Nature among the Romans during the Later Decades of the Republic and the First Century of the Empire. London: John Murray, 1912.
Gersdorf, Catrin and Sylvia Mayer, eds. Nature in Literary and Cultural Studies: Transatlantic Conversations on Ecocriticism. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006.
Grady, Wayne, ed. Bright Stars, Dark Trees, Clear Water: Nature Writings from North of the Border. Boston: David R. Godine, 1995
Harada, Jiro. The Lesson of Japanese Architecture. Revised ed. London: Studio Limited, 1954.
Hatton, Richard G. Handbook of Plant and Floral Ornament: Selected from the Herbals of the Sixteenth Century, and Exhibiting the Finest Examples of Plant-Drawing Found in Those Rare Works, Whether Executed in Wood-Cuts or in Copperplate Engravings, Arranged for the Use of the Decorator. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1960.
Harberd, Nicholas. Seed to Seed. Bloomsbury. 2006.
Hawks, Ellison, and G. S. Boulger. Pioneers of Plant Study. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1928.
Henderson, John. Hortus: The Roman Book of Gardening. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Hoffenberg, Peter H. An Empire on Display: English, Indian, and Australian Exhibitions from the Crystal Palace to the Great War. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001.
Howes, Laura L. Chaucer’s Gardens and the Language of Convention. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1997.
Huggett, R
ichard John. Geoecology: An Evolutionary Approach. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Hunt, John Dixon. Garden and Grove: The Italian Renaissance Garden in the English Imagination, 1600-1750. 1st ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.
Huth, Hans. Nature and the American: Three Centuries of Changing Attitudes. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1990.
Jacobs, Noah Jonathan. Naming-Day in Eden: The Creation and Recreation of Language. New York: Macmillan, 1958.
Keulartz, Jozef. Struggle for Nature: A Critique of Radical Ecology. London: Routledge, 1998.
King, Amy M. Bloom: The Botanical Vernacular in the English Novel. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Lehner, Ernst, and Johanna Lehner. Folklore and Symbolism of Flowers, Plants and Trees. New York: Tudor Publishing, 1960.
Leiss, William. The Domination of Nature. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994.
León, Luis De. The Names of Christ /. Translated by DurÁn, Manuel and William Kluback. New York: Paulist Press, 1984.
Luger, Michael I., and Harvey A. Goldstein. Technology in the Garden: Research Parks and Regional Economic Development. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.
Merchant, Carolyn. Reinventing Eden: The Fate of Nature in Western Culture. New York: Routledge, 2003.
Milton, Kay. Loving Nature: Towards an Ecology of Emotion. London: Routledge, 2002.
Noble, David W. The Eternal Adam and the New World Garden: The Central Myth in the American Novel since 1830. New York: Braziller, 1968.
Pavord, Anna. The Naming of Names, The search for order in the world of plants. Bloomsbury. 2005.
Prance, Ghillean and Mark Nesbitt, eds. Cultural History of Plants. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Reed, Howard S. A Short History of the Plant Sciences. Waltham, MA: Chronica Botanica, 1942.
Reed, Michael. The Landscape of Britain: From the Beginnings to 1914. London: Routledge, 1997.
Reynolds, Richard. On Guerrilla Gardening. Bloomsbury. 2008.
Robbins, R. H. A., ed. Religio Medici: Hydriotaphia: And, the Garden of Cyrus. Oxford: Oxford University, 1972.
Rojas, Carlos. The Garden of the Hesperides. Translated by Glad, Diana. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1999.
Scidmore, Eliza Ruhamah. Winter India. New York: The Century Co., 1904.
Simmons, I. G. Interpreting Nature: Cultural Constructions of the Environment. New York: Routledge, 1993.
Stave, Shirley A. The Decline of the Goddess: Nature, Culture, and Women in Thomas Hardy’s Fiction. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995.
Gill, Simryn. Pearls. Raking Leaves. 2008.
Thomas, Julia Adeney. Reconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political Ideology. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001.
Tillotson, Geoffrey. Pope and Human Nature. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958
Trowbridge, Peter J., and Nina L. Bassuk. Trees in the Urban Landscape: Site Assessment, Design, and Installation. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2004.
Troyanov, Iliya. The Collector of Worlds. Faber & Faber. 2008 (Novel).
Turrill, W. B, ed. Vistas in Botany. New York: Pergamon, 1959.
Veenhuizen, Rene Van, ed. Cities Farming for the Future: Urban Agriculture for Green and Productive Cities. Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2006.
Verdoorn, Frans, ed. Plants and Plant Science in Latin America. Waltham, MA: Chronica Botanica, 1945.
Webb, Richard E. The Accident Hazards of Nuclear Power Plants. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976.
Wiggin, Kate Douglas Smith. My Garden of Memory: An Autobiography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1923.

Transart Year-2
Studio Practice: “A Taxonomy of Eden”

Building upon “The Garden of Babel” 2009 as the initial format I will work towards examining aspects of various sacred texts in translation. Those of the Abrahamic religions including Judaism, Christianity and Islam and possibly others in the broad grouping in relation to notions of the garden of Eden. In this respect I will be particularly focusing on the plants mentioned there. Using this with allied horticultural enquiry, and in consultation with various international scholars I would work to build a plausible taxonomy of Eden. The works may be gridded digital prints of botanical and zoological accession labels, as are to be found in Zoos and botanical gardens around the world. My work on “The Garden of Babel” revealed a pleasing lack of scientific rigour in the world of plant taxonomy. I would find reasonable botanical approximations of specifically mentioned plants in Eden (these will be real plants). I will aim for around 180-300 plants in a work. There may be one or more works. I will then make the labels in etched plastic laminates, as authentic botanical labels. Photograph them in particular settings, as I have learnt from the making of “The Garden of Babel”. These may then be composed as grids and printed as large C-prints. How the work will play out in other forms such as performance, video, audio, texts, woven carpets or illuminated manuscripts or their digital equivalents remains to be seen.

Notes/alternatives: Performative: (Autobiography/Horticulture/Video) The Lawn Mower. New Liberal Mowers, Lahore, producing Ransomes vintage 1950’s machines, monstrous machines evolving on their own paths away from their colonial models. Lawn grass is the white mans burden? Myself pulling a large mower around a massive lawn I have made, (re: Un Chien Andalou, the harness pulling all the mass of culture) I encounters at various Stations around the route (Columns of Stewardship for example). Garden machines, garden technologies, male (Machinery) and female (the land itself). A sort of Cremaster of the garden approach. Exploring the history of the lawn: it speaks of class aspirations, industrialization has allowing broad access to the privilege of the lawn, once the domain of the landed gentry. To make my own lawn-mowers and perform with them? (Very autobiographical). Greens, British racing greens (Brooklands, where I studied), English mower greens, the Suffolk Punch mower. Water cans, columns of Stewardship, a journey around the Tarogil lawns. Lawrence Mali’s. Howard Gem rotator’s. My grandfather’s horticultural medal. Events in the journey around the Tarogil play ground lawn, journeying on a ride-on mower?
Go down into the ground too, digging into the soil. Incorporate the “12.2.42” boxes in the fields of Tarogil.

Radical garden design, guerilla gardening? Imran’s early chainsaw, Bhor tree (at home), climbing trees, tree work equipment (I used to work as a tree-surgeon). Fruit bat counting Mali’s, Lawrence Gardens, Cantt. Water Towers. The canals, barrages and bal mitti of Punjab. Garden tools. Lahore Compost at the city dump. Shalimar Gardens in disarray. Punjab Horticultural Association, my meetings with them. Garden plans, graphics, plant taxonomy.
How to build upon “The Garden of Babel” work?

Car number plate grids? Hierarchies. Another trajectory.

DCA 12th
Lahore,
July 2009.

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The Autobiographical

Posted on April 15th, 2009 by alesworth

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HALF-LIFE
New Work
David Alesworth | Huma Mulji
Zahoor ul Akhlaq Gallery
National College of Arts | Lahore | Pakistan

February 16-March 4, 2009

DAVID CHALMERS ALESWORTH

My work has long addressed issues of environmental degradation, cultural attitudes to the notion of nature and nuclearization/weaponisation of the sub‐continent. Growing up one of my earliest memories was of the Cuban missile crisis and the tension in the family home as the world inched ever closer to nuclear conflict. CND marches were a constant feature of the UK in the 1960’s . We now live in an age where nuclear power begins to look like a cleaner solution to our energy needs and nuclear weapons are considered for tactical use. It’s as though the world has forgotten what was unleashed on Japan in 1945. People are calling it the Beginning of the second Nuclear Age.

“12.2.42”

180 Passivated MS boxes, installation variable.

A tribute to Fermi’s first experimental nuclear pile built under the squash courts of Chicago University in 1942. Here on the second of December the first sustaining chain reaction was initiated amidst a stack of graphite blocks and uranium metal. The pile at that time cost around one million dollars to make.

The idea that CP‐1 was built in a university squash court has always appealed to
me.

This sculptural installation has other resonances, the formality of artists such as (late period) David Smith, Donald Judd and Karl Andre. This is slightly tongue in cheek reference to such minimalist concerns, through the lens of time and place. This is another prayer for sanity and peace, the way my “Two Bombs Kiss” was in the early ‘90’s. It was within the unshielded CP-1 reactor that plutonium production became a practical proposition.

“Seaborg, (the discoverer of Plutonium) was asked to suggest a name for the element he had discovered. He decided to respect the tradition begun with uranium, named for the planet Uranus, then neptunium — the 93rd element, found in 1940 — for Neptune. As the next planet in the solar system was Pluto, he suggested the new element be called plutonium. No one thought to point out that the deity after which the planet Pluto was named was the Greek god of hell, the Roman god of death.”

All the Plutonium on the planet now (a completely man‐made element) is around 50 tons; enough, if judiciously employed, to entirely destroy life on the earth. It is undoubtedly the most toxic substance in existence. I see “12.2.42” as part tribute (to scientific endeavor) and part warning (of the imperfect nature of mankind’s knowledge). The smallness of mankind’s achievements set against the vastness of creation. The ultimate failure of all technologies and civilization itself. It is a Vanitas sculpture. It critiques the arrogance of scientific knowledge. I half suspect this world will be sucked through the eye of an atom sized black‐hole, produced in the new Cern accelerator experiements. What a suitable ending it would be for this planet, wrecked as it is, by mankind’s insatiable greed. The units are identical but also quite distorted from the heat of their welding. The proportions of 14 x 14 x 28 inches directly address the scale of one’s body. I investigated other sizes and ratios to arrive at this. It is to do with one’s span. I realize these are very much the concerns of the early minimalists, like Caro, who was once Henry Moore’s protégé. The idea of span and of being body‐scaled are terms that could be right out of Moore’s own vocabulary. Though such concerns are readily discernible in ancient Egyptian sculpture (all of the canonical works.) My undergraduate dissertation was on the cannon of proportion in ancient Egyptian sculpture. I welcome the “wobble” that sign or life. It’s the imperfection that makes energy flow in the work, something I’ve long used in my practice. A tension between stillness and movement.

There’s a correlation between the persistence of an official record and that of radioactive waste.

I’m thinking of Half-Life as the link between the forest of files (The Record Room Series), undying, unending and uncountable, and the beginning of the nuclear age. Taking Fermi’s first pile CP‐1 as the beginning of this as it was here that Plutonium was first produced, albeit in tiny quantities.

On that day that CP-1 first went critical for only 28 minutes and Plutonium was produced in its nuclear flux. Leo Szilard lingered on the balcony until most people had left, then turned to Fermi, shook his hand, and said that he thought the day would go down as a “black day in the history of mankind.”

This cube of steel boxes is as much a play with the proportions of the room and scale of the body as it is a reference to nuclear power. Waste from Chicago Pile1 was buried in nearby woodland, this was not a fortuitous beginning to the nuclear age.

“Doomsday Clock Will Move Closer to Midnight.

WASHINGTON, DC, January 12, 2007 (ENS) ‐ The minute hand of the Doomsday Clock will be moved closer to midnight on January 17, the first such change to the clock since February 2002. The Doomsday Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world’s vulnerability to nuclear weapons and other threats.” The move was announced today by the Board of Directors of the magazine “The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.” It reflects growing concerns
about what the board calls a “Second Nuclear Age” marked by grave threats. The board also cited “escalating terrorism, and new pressure from climate change for expanded civilian nuclear power that could increase proliferation risks.” The Doomsday Clock is now set at seven minutes to midnight. The Doomsday Clock is a symbolic clock face that the Bulletin has maintained since 1947 at its headquarters on the campus of the University of Chicago. It uses the analogy of
the human race being at a time that is a “few minutes to midnight” where
midnight represents destruction by nuclear war. The decision to move the minute hand is made by the Bulletin’s Board of Directors in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 18 Nobel Laureates. The “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists” was founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had worked on the Manhattan Project and were deeply concerned about the use of nuclear weapons and nuclear war.

“The Garden of Babel”

A grid of botanical accession labels from Linz (Austria) and Lahore. I believe all work is essentially autobiographical. My grandfather was the horticulturalist, F.W. Alesworth, a rose is named after him. He taught me my first name in horticultural Latin, something I still had yet to study at school. These names in all their authority and scientific exactitude are threaded through and through with tales of conquest and aspirations of immortality. They speak of the earliest attempts to order the natural world. Beginning with Theophrastus in 300 AD, and for me ending with John Ray (he wrote it, Wray), not the upstart Linnaeus. Perhaps the names of Neem and Bachain say it all. Azadarachta Indica and Melia Azadarachta respectively. An Ash like leaf (Bachain) and both the Free-Tree’s-of-India), this co‐opting of language is typical of botanical Latin. It is a specialist, insider’s secret language and as equally imperfect an attempt at creating logical order as the Record Room itself.

Botanical accession labels are often grey or black and the whole assemblage feels like a mausoleum to me. A graveyard for nature, epitomized as “the garden”. This also serves as a pointer to environmental issues, as so many plant names may actually survive the species (in the wild) in many cases. Many of these names are embedded with tales of Empire, the names of Victorian naturalists, indigenous names Latinized and other slight problems in the overall scheme of things. To say nothing of the need for constant revision as new discoveries lead to new classifications of relatedness. The books “All the Names” (Jose Samarago) and “The Naming of Names” (Anna Parvord) were inspirations for this work.

“The Record Room” series 2009.

Monochrome archival, digital C-Prints. Galvanized and passivated

steel-frames, 2009.

These myriad vehicle papers are more akin to a living entity than an official archive. They represent the dreams of countless families for progress, modernity and the transformation of their lives. This is failed order, individually and collectively; as a species our attempts to control and order the world are doomed to fail, for we forget that we are also nature. The images of this record-room are for me beautiful and tragic. They are 18 million files, 18 million dreams, a poignant metaphor for the populace of Karachi. My own records were found here in a matter of minutes. I was invited to view this record-room after commenting on the speedy delivery of my own file. I fell in love with it instantly and have been begging my way back with an assortment of cameras ever since. It is a dying (physical) archive the files are being scanned and destroyed currently and should cease to exist entirely in a few years. I’ve seen the facility shrink like the loss of forestation, the demise of a coral‐reef or the melting of glaciers, for this is something like nature itself. Somehow in all it’s dog‐eared, rubbed till soft existence (so handled these records become almost living); the archive actually works. It functions daily at huge volumes and serves the inhabitants well for without their cooperation nothing will ever be found. One can read the staff’s valiant attempts to manage the deluge of incoming paper, abandoning the expensive (but rapidly collapsing steel shelving) in favor of old fruit crates. The failure to create order in the record room for me becomes a Vanitas subject, a gentle reminder of our ultimate individual decay and demise as a part of nature itself.

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‘Half-Life” Video Documentation

Posted on April 15th, 2009 by alesworth

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A video survey of my part of the show. Everything is in monochrome except for the “Garden of Babel” which is composed of horticultural accession labels, in polychromed plastic units. Repetitive units are everywhere, the surrounding Record Room images, the steel cubes and the horticultural tags.

The installation of “12.2.42”, it took six hours to build and then to adjust and rebuild again.

This is an autobiography through formalism. This is minimalism gone bad. Minimalism having no resonance in Pakistan. The disintegration of an idea,the loss of an ideal. Also the idea of cheap clean nuclear energy, once discredited and now again being entertained as a lesser evil in this carbon obsessed age. Karachi has commissioned four new nuclear plants this year.

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“Half-Life”

Posted on January 21st, 2009 by alesworth

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The persistence of an official record and that of radioactive waste is probably about the same.

CP-1 was buried in nearby woodland, this was not a fortuitous beginning to the issue of dealing with nuclear waste.

I’m thinking of Half-life as the link between the forest of files, undying, unending and uncountable, and the beginning of the nuclear age. I’m taking Fermi’s first pile CP-1 as the beginning of this as it was here that Plutonium was first produced, albeit in tiny quantities. The cube of steel boxes (if they get made in time) are as much a play with the proportions of the room and scale of the body as they are references to nuclear power.

I had originally intended the installation to be about order and chaos but the imperfection of the cubes has led it elsewhere. I like the lack of perfection in theses boxes, distorted by the heat of their making. The imperfection of these (not so) minimal cubes echoes the story of the black stone of the Kaaba.

“According to Islamic tradition, the Stone fell from Heaven to show Adam and Eve where to build an altar and offer a sacrifice to God. The Altar became the first temple on Earth. Muslims believe that the stone was originally pure and dazzling white, but has since turned black because of the sins it has absorbed over the years. Islamic tradition holds that Adam’s altar and the stone were lost in the process of Noah’s Flood and forgotten. It was Abraham who found the Black Stone at the original site of Adam’s altar when the Archangel Gabriel revealed it to him. Abraham ordered his son–and the ancestor of Prophet Muhammad–Ishmael to build a new temple in which to embed the Stone. This new temple is the Kaaba in Mecca.” (Wikipedia)

“Base of the World, Magic Base No. 3 by Piero Manzoni 1961 Homage to Galileo.”

The world as sculpture.

Mona Hatoum, “Socle du Monde” 1992-1993
Wooden structure, steel plates, magnets and iron fillings
64 5/8 x 78 3/4 x 78 3/4 in. (164 x 200 x 200 cm)
Photo: Edward Woodman

Besides a tribute to Manzoni’s sculpture by the same name of 1961, Hatoum says like the black stone of the Kaaba, thirty years of wars and deceits have turned Manzoni’s pure work black with the sins of man.

“12.2.42”

I see “12.2.42” as part tribute (to scientific endeavor) and part warning (of the imperfect nature of mankind’s knowledge). The smallness of mankind’s achievements set against the vastness of creation. The ultimate failure of all technologies and even civilization itself. It is a Vanitas sculpture. It critiques the arrogance of scientific knowledge. I half suspect this world will be sucked through the eye of an atom sized black-hole, produced in the new Cern accelerator. What a suitable end it would be for this planet, wrecked as it is, by mankind’s insatiable greed.

“A Taxonomy of Eden”

“Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in <st1:city><st1:place>Eden</st1:place></st1:city>; and there he put the man he had formed. And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”<o:p></o:p>

Genesis 2:8 9

In the Bible, God tells the man to name the animals (Genesis <st1:time minute=”19″ hour=”14″>2:19</st1:time>). In the Qur’an, Allah teaches Adam the names “of all things” and Adam repeats them (Ta-ha 20:120).

It is through the learning of “all the names” that Adam’s place above the angels is consolidated, for the angels do not know the names of things.

I propose that Hazrat Adam made botanical lab
els for Eden, having learnt of all the names of the plants from God. Unfortunately many of these names are embedded with tales of Empire, the names of Victorian naturalists, indigenous names latinized and other slight problems in the overall scheme of things. I was thinking I might add zoological names plates for the reptilian and mammalian inhabitants of Eden, at least a few key characters. This is still under consideration.

Finding convincing and possible names for the plants of Eden is a longer task. I’ve started researching Quaranic and biblical references, but they then need re-translating into botanical Latin, it’s going to take some time. I will then commission engraved labels, which I will in turn photograph. I am hoping to do one garden work for the NCA show, by 14th. February 2009. This will be a grid of botanical labels, in place of a garden. “All the Names” (re. Samarago’s book) or “The Naming of Names” (re. Anna Parvord’s book) may be title options. This will work alongside the file (Record Room) images. I will combine photographs of botanical labels from multiple locations, the regional languages also impinge in this supposedly international language of science. The labels are grey and the assemblage feels like a mausoleum. This also serves as a pointer to environmental issues, as so many plant names may survive the species (in the wild) in many cases.

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NCA Show references.

Posted on January 20th, 2009 by alesworth

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CP-1
1942

The idea that CP-1 was built in a university squash court has always appealed to me.

(Chicago Pile-1) This appears to be a stack of graphite blocks from the core prior to assembly.

Artists impression of the view across the squash courts.

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Work on “Fermi’s Pile”, 17 Jan. 2009

Posted on January 17th, 2009 by alesworth

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Working amongst the small metal workshops of Lahore’s Lakshmi Chawk area.

Stack of 30 units, from a total of 180 units.

The units are identical but also quite distorted from the heat of the welding. The proportions, 14 x 14 x 28 inches somehow work interestingly with the scale of ones body, why? I investigated other sizes and ratios to arrive at this. Is it the scale of a pet? child? what one can hope to pick-up unaided, something to do with one’s span? I realize these are very much the concerns of early minimalists, like Caro, who was once Henry Moore’s protege. The idea of span and of being body-scaled are terms that could be right out of Moore’s own mouth. Though such concerns are readily discernible in ancient Egyptian sculpture, canonical works.

Is it not possible to make a perfect, quiet cube in Lahore? I think I welcome the “wobble” that sign or life. It’s the imperfection that makes the energy flow.

I’m facing problems with the zinc plating process. I want the zinc plate not only as protection from rust or as an aesthetic surface, though I want both of those qualities too. I chose it for the link to the last two bodies of work I’ve made (objects), the “Probes” and the “Trays”. These deliberately turned away from the aesthetic of “Truck Art” and other high visibility urban craft items in Pakistan. That strategy well played out by now, though I might well re-visit it. I want the link to a more domestic space, the kitchen. The zinc plate is the language of milk-churns, baking trays, funnels and jugs. There is a strong reference to the making, but they are also somehow, proto-industrial. Retro-tech, almost industrial.

Much of my reading over the last decade has been about the origins of nuclear technology and weaponry. I’ve made work that addresses the bulbous, toy like proportions of early nuclear weapons. (Two Bombs Kiss).

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Work the in progress for NCA Show, Jan. 2009.

Posted on January 16th, 2009 by alesworth

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Reference Boxes, for “Fermi’s Pile”

Sample cubes, distortion and weld issues under consideration. I’m settling on 22 gauge MS sheet and argon shielded welds. These are cleaner welds for later electroplating.

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“Column of Stewardship”sample, trying plant motifs for scale. The idea is four of these guard “Fermi’s Pile” like the guardian figures around Tutankhamen’s outer sarcophagi, in the Cairo Museum.

More stacking, exploring stability.

MS stamped floral motifs, I’m considering them for the “Column’s of Stewardship”, they’re a bit “Truck Art”, crude, heavy and undifferentiated. I’m still gathering the range of samples for these.

The first zinc plated cube on top. The black areas are around weld holes, which is a problem. The lower cube has been Ducco sprayed, it’s not the look I want. I’m looking for a kind of failed minimalism, referencing Karl Andre and others in the 1970’s.

A prototype MS, Zinc plated frame. This one’s got a hot-dip surface. This has a thicker Zinc deposit which is good, for oxidizing, but also heavily crystalline, which isn’t what I’m looking for. The second frame sample is currently in progress.

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A zinc plated surface prior to oxidation, I’m still deciding how and when I’m going to fix the Zinc. I may go with an iridescent metallic finish

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National College of Art, two person show, Febuary 16th-1st March 2009

Posted on January 11th, 2009 by alesworth

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Work in progress January 10th, 2009

Columns of Stewardship

Samples of boxes, for Fermi’s Pile.

Construction of CP-1, or Chicago Pile Number One, was done under the football stadium in an abandoned squash court. On December 2, 1942, mankind first harnessed the energy of the atom. Fermi’s pile produced only 1/2 watts of power. But that was all the power the United States needed to start the next phase of the bomb’s development. The pile contained 771,000 pounds of graphite, 80,590 pounds of uranium oxide and 12,400 pounds of uranium metal when it went “critical.” It cost about $1 million to produce and build. The pile took the form of a flattened ellipsoid which measured 25 feet wide and 20 feet high.

Light Box sample, for “Trees of Lahore”

Column sample, for “Columns of Stewardship”.

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“The Little Book of Slugs”.

Posted on November 19th, 2008 by alesworth

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ISBN 1 90217 513 1 Paperback
Publication date 2002 Retail Price £4.99
Format Pb – 130mm x 100mm
Extent 128pp
Illustrations b/w line drawings

The Little Book of Slugs edited by Allan Shepard and Suzanne Galant, CAT Publications, 2002. A truly tiny book, perhaps pocket sized to facilitate it’s use in the garden. Tales of woe and revenge. Slug inflicted carnage and diabolical retribution, from salt, egg-shells, scissors and copper sheets. A good chapter on knowing your enemy followed by several on tackling the pests. Gleaned from the experience and advice of hundreds of surveyed gardeners the book is at least solace if not the final solution. I found most of the advice suitable for a more tropical garden too.

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“Seed to Seed”.

Posted on October 16th, 2008 by alesworth

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“Seed to Seed” (The Secret Life of Plants), Nicholas Harberd.
Bloomsbury 2006.
ISBN-10:1-58234-413-2
Such a sumptuously produced book, hard-back, set in Perpetua, it was impossible to resist.
(Perpetua, Eric Gill 1928. First used in the book The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity; therefore the roman was named Perpetua, and the italic was named Felicity. The font is also called Lapidary 333. “The type, based on Gill’s inscriptional lettering, is intended to have a chiseled quality).
It was clear wrapped when I found it at Saeed Book Bank, in Islamabad early in October 2008. The front cover is in an off white and shows a succession of botanical line drawings, illustrating the life cycle of the Thale-Cress, which turns out to be the main protagonist of the book. The book is a fairly boring mix of diary and science. Obscure science at that. The science of gene interactions in plants, notably within the Thale-cress. However I suspect that it will be useful in the long run. I will definitely trawl the gene nomenclature for possible work titles at some point. I found it odd that despite a fair amount of personal trivia the author’s wife didn’t feature at all, though his children prominently did so. Perhaps she refused to share the pages with her husband’s weed obsession. I feel I was misled by the exciting excerpt on the back cover, where the plant was almost devoured by a rampaging slug. It certainly awakened in me the dread of attempting to work autobiographically.

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Tag ‘Science’