My Three Stories About Water

pinkStardust: my search for time and space continues...

Why the name pinkStardust?

Very shortly after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 the US (in collaboration with the UK) began a frenzy of atomic testing.  That testing was taking place in two major areas in the US (Utah and Nevada) and in the south Pacific.  

60 miles south of the Nevada testing site lay Las Vegas.  

A map found online

As the propaganda machine revved up in earnest, the following message became embedded in our Cold War psyche with the USSR.  Our bombs "good" (the US),  their bombs "bad" (the USSR).  And it worked.  We became fascinated with everything atomic, including atomic testing.  After all, our fascination was necessary if we, the public, would be willing to tolerate the radioactive fallout that came along with nuclear testing.  

I would have been fascinated, wouldn't you?

And, we needed to be fascinated if we would also continue to believe that we were "safe" from the effects that would follow nuclear testing - mostly the variety of cancers that wouldn't show up until some year(s) after exposure.

The city fathers (and mothers) of Las Vegas, recognizing the potential of the new entertainment (and income) that atomic testing was providing christened Las Vegas The Atomic City.  When the bombs blew pink sand would fall from the sky, "coating skin and breathed by lungs" (lyrics from The pinkStardust Blues) of those who came to watch, and those who just happened to be there.  This (irradiated) sand was called pink stardust.

 
These images are postcards that I found on line. 

It was crazy!  Crazy, because there are no "good" bombs.  Radiation affects everyone and everything.  But, one cannot make sense of crazy. 

My installation pinkStardust zeros in on this crazy time in our history and radiates out from there.  The Atomic City becomes ground zero - the perfect starting point to make my point.  Because history is always ready to repeat itself ("...it happens all the time", more lyrics from The pinkStardust Blues).  And we keep repeating this mistake over and over and over.  The hows and the why's - especially the why's I found to be very disturbing.

A sheet of lyrics from The pinkStardust Blues.  Will be the basis for a music video I am working on.

My Goal for My Manhattan Project's three installations. 

My goal for the three installations in My Manhattan Project is not to preach but to present; This is what happened!  I think it was nuts. And continues to be very dangerous.  What do you think?

The basic form: layout  

The basic form for pinkStardust is laid out as a timeline that features stars of different sizes that have information written on them, by hand, by me.  I think.  I'm still deciding on this and will discuss it more when I post a blog about stars and their content.

The timeline moves around the gallery walls mimicking the pattern of linear time and space and how we express it - in books and movies...  The way we experience time and the way we usually talk about past, present and future events. Linearly.  

When very important events happened, like the Trinity test (the first atomic explosion), or the Castle Bravo test (thermonuclear in the Pacific - remember Bikini?), or Operation Baby Teeth (a study performed by a Kansas City doctor concerned about the effects of fallout on babies) I make objects or images about them.  Images will placed prominently on the timeline itself and objects will travel out and away from the time line into the gallery space in hopes of providing a broader, and deeper experience of the event for visitors.

Castle Bravo test - a photo I found online.

My interpretation of the Castle Bravo test. 

This is an image of a piece I made that will be exhibited in pinkStardust.  The "drawing" was made using pipe cleaners on a canvas skinned with aluminum foil (matte side).  This  image is a detail of the work (cropped). 

I first exhibited it in my installation PLEASEtouch as a future artifact.  I will post more images, including pics of the making of this work, on a future blog post. And I'm sure this test will also show up in The 32 Most Notorious Atomic Tests because it is indeed notorious.  

So as you can see, and I hopefully have explained, pinkStardust will not be a presentation of the testing times of our atomic history as one might see in the Atomic Museum in Las Vegas or Albuquerque because it is a fine art installation.  As such my consideration of how to present the information I wish to discuss will be always be considered within that context.  It's an artwork.  I am making an artwork.

pinkStardust: my search for time and space continues...  

My next blog will be a more in depth discussion of the timeline - what will be included, how and why.

I will discuss how I use references to major religions such as Buddhism, Christianity and Islam when I make certain objects and imagery.  How the whole installation is presented within a pop art framing  (materials, colors, and processes, such as appropriation) that reflects the time in which the events were happening. 

I will also discuss the entanglement of certain people with events on the timeline.  Odd little things like the fact that Robert Oppenheimer, sometimes referred to as The Father of the Atomic Bomb (in the installation I call him Daddy O) visited a site in what was at that time called Bohemia, where he contracted dysentery and almost died.  That same site was later mined for uranium to fuel the Nazi's plan for an atomic bomb.

What might have happened had Daddy O died from his illness?  How odd is it that the site became an important component for the Nazi's plan to create an atomic bomb?

There are a few of those odd entanglements included in the timeline for pinkStardust.

Hope you continue to visit the postings to check them out.