CABINET

A quarterly magazine of art

and culture
Issue 7 summer 2002
US $8 Canada $13 UK 6

cabinet
Immaterial Incorporated
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Editor-in-chief Sina Najafi
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Editors Jeffrey Kastner, Frances Richard, David Serlin, Gregory Williams
Art directors (Cabinet Magazine) Ariel Apte and Sarah Gephart of mgmt.
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cover: envelope recovered from the crash of the Pan American World
Airways plane Yankee Clipper in Lisbon on February 22, 1943. Courtesy
Kendall Sanford

Contributors
Magnus Brts is an artist and writer based in Stockholm. In 2000, he
published a collection of essays Orienterarsjukan och andra berttelser
(together with Fredrik Ekman). His recent exhibitions Satellites and The
Museum of Homeless Ideas were shown at Roger Bjrkholmen Gallery in
Stockholm and OK Gallery in Rijeka, Croatia (together with Zdenko Buzek).

Peter Lew is a New York-based artist whose work includes painting, installation
and sound art. He has participated in the radio project WAR!, the sound
show constriction at Pierogi gallery, and his paintings were included in Working
in Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Museum. His work has been exhibited in Austria,
Switzerland, and Japan.

Mike Ballou is an artist based in Brooklyn, New York.

Dirk Libeer remembers Danny from when he was a boy.

M. Behrens (born 1970 in Germany) has lived and worked internationally as

an artist and designer in Frankfurt since 1991. Since 1996 he has worked
mainly with sound and video installations.

Paul Lukas, author of Inconspicuous Consumption: An Obsessive Look at the

Stuff We Take for Granted and editor of Beer Frame: The Journal of Inconspicuous
Consumption, is a Brooklyn-based writer who specializes in minutiae fetishism.
His favorite color is green and his favorite state is Wisconsin.

David Brody is an artist who lives and works near the Kool Man depot in Brooklyn.
Matthew Buckingham is an artist based in New York. He is represented by
Murray Guy Gallery, New York, and Galleri Tommy Lund, Copenhagen.
Brian Burke-Gaffney was born in Canada in 1950 and came to Japan in 1972.
He has been professor at the Nagasaki Institute of Applied Science since 1996.
Paul Collins edits the Collins Library for McSweeneys Books, and is the
author of Banvards Folly (Picador: 2001) and the forthcoming travelogue-memoir Sixpence House (Bloomsbury USA). He lives in Portland, Oregon.
Nancy Davenport is a New York-based artist represented by Nicole Klagsburn
Gallery. Her work has been exhibited recently at the Rockford Museum in
Illinois and at the 25th So Paulo Biennial.
Andrew Deutsch is a sound/video artist who lives in Hornell, NY, and teaches
sound art at Alfred University. He is a member of the Institute for Electronic Art
at Alfred University and of the Pauline Oliveros Foundations board of directors.
Jon Dryden is a musician and writer living in Brooklyn, New York.
Elizabeth Esch is completing a dissertation in the Department of History at New
York University.
Matt Freedman is an artist and writer living in Brooklyn.
Dr. Merrill Garnett is a cancer researcher and the founder and CEO of Garnett
McKeen Laboratory, Inc. Dr. Garnett has had research laboratories at the
Central Islip State Hospital, Waldemar Medical Research Foundation,
Northport Veterans Administration Medical Center, and the High Technology
Incubator of The State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Tim Griffin is a writer, curator, and art editor of Time Out New York. His book
of essays titled Contamination, a collaborative project with artist Peter Halley,
is forthcoming from Gabrius (Milan) in September. His book of poetry, July in
Stereo, is forthcoming from Shark Press (New York).
Daniel Harris is the author of A Memoir of No One In Particular (Basic Books,
2002). He has also written The Rise and Fall of Gay Culture and Cute, Quaint,
Hungry, and Romantic: The Aesthetics of Consumerism.
David Hawkes teaches at a university in Pennsylvania. He is the author of
Ideology (Routledge, 1996) and Idols of the Marketplace (Palgrave, 2001), and
his work has recently appeared in The Nation, The Times Literary Supplement
and The Journal of the History of Ideas.
Sharon Hayes is an artist. She is currently an MFA candidate in the Interdisciplinary Studio at UCLAs Department of Art.
Brooklyn-based soundmaker Douglas Henderson has been working with
electro-acoustic composition, music for dance, and installation pieces for 20
years. He has run the Sound Arts program at the Museum School, Boston
and holds a doctorate in composition from Princeton University. He can be
reached through www.heartpunch.com.
Bill Jones is an artist and writer. He is represented by the Sandra Gering Gallery in
NY and is currently the Director of Operations of Garnett McKeen Laboratory, Inc.
Jeffrey Kastner is a New York-based writer and an editor of Cabinet.
Kris Lee and Matt Freedman met at the 1985 NCAA diving championships.
They later discovered that they were distantly related.
Nina Katchadourian is an artist who lives in Brooklyn and teaches at Brown
University. She exhibits with Debs & Co in New York and with Catharine Clark
Gallery in San Francisco.
Emma Kay lives and works in London. She has exhibited widely in Europe and
the US. She recently participated in the 2002 Sydney Biennial and has
forthcoming exhibitions at The Approach, London, the Muscarnok Kunsthalle,
Budapest, and Tate Modern, London. She has published an artists book,
Worldview (Bookworks).

Christof Migone is a multidisciplinary artist and writer. He lives and works in

Montreal and New York.
Susette Min is currently a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Pomona College.
She is also an indepedent curator and most recently curated Rina Banerjee in
a show entitled Phantasmal Pharmacopia. She lives in Los Angeles.
Sina Najafi is editor-in-chief of Cabinet magazine.
Pauline Oliveros (born 1932) is a composer living in Kingston, NY, and teaching at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Mills College, and Bard College. She is
president of Pauline Oliveros Foundation, a creative cultural center in Kingston
(http://www.deeplistening.org/pauline)
Amy Jean Porter is an artist who recently moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Scott A. Sandage is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University. His book Forgotten Men: Failure in American
Culture, 1819-1893 is forthcoming from Harvard University Press.
Kendall C. Sanford is retired after working forty years in the airline industry and
lives in Geneva. He has collected airmail historical material and air crash covers
for nearly as long. He is a past president of the American Air Mail Society, the
worlds largest aerophilatelic society.
Peter Santino was born in Kansas in 1948.
Paul Schmelzer lives in Minneapolis and writes on art and activism for
publications including Adbusters, The Progressive, and Raw Vision.
Tobias Schmitt. 1975: born in Frankfurt; 1989: first experiments with
electronic music; 1994: started working as sbc; 1996: started doing artworks
as Mischstab; 1999: founded Acrylnimbus.
David Serlin is an editor and columnist for Cabinet. He is the co-editor of Artificial
Parts, Practical Lives: Modern Histories of Prosthetics (NYU Press, 2002).
Lytle Shaws most recent poetry book is The Lobe (Roof, 2002). He co-edits
Shark magazine and curates the Line Reading Series at The Drawing Center.
Michael Smith is an artist based in New York.
Nedko Solakov is a Bulgarian artist living and working in Sofia. His work has
been exhibited in many venues, including the 48th and 49th Venice Biennials,
the 3rd and 4th Istanbul Biennials, the 1994 So Paulo Biennial, and Manifesta
1. The series from which his Cabinet contribution is drawn was first presented
at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin, in May 2002 and will then travel to the
Ulmer Museum, Ulm, and Reina Sofia, Madrid.
Yasunao Tone is a co-founder of Group Ongaku and an original member of
Fluxus. Born in Tokyo in 1935, he has resided in New York since 1972.
He has exhibited in numerous shows, including the 1990 Venice Biennial and
the 2001 Yokohama Triennial.
Tom Vanderbilt lives in Brooklyn and is the author of Survival City: Adventures
Among the Ruins of Atomic America (Princeton Architectural Press).
Claude Wampler is an artist based in New York City.
Allen S. Weiss has been working hard on ingestion: He recently co-edited
French Food (Routledge), and his Feast and Folly is forthcoming (SUNY).
Gregory Whitehead is the author of numerous broadcast essays and earplays,
and is presently at work on a new play, Resurrection Ranch.
Gregory Williams is a critic and art historian living in New York City. He is also an
editor of Cabinet.
David Womack was a Darmasiswa scholar in Indonesian literature and Javanese language at the Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta, Java.
He is currently the Director of New Media at the American Institute of
Graphic Arts.

columns

13
17
17
19

maIN

23

The Clean Room David serlin

Leftovers Paul Lukas
Colors Tim Griffin
Ingestion Allen S. Weiss

Ernst Haeckel and the Microbial Baroque

David Brody

30
33
36
40
44
47
51

Field Traces Bill Jones

Mm, Mm, Good: Marketing and Regression in
Aesthetic Taste David Hawkes
Beautiful Indonesia (In Miniature) David Womack
Paint and Paint Names Daniel Harris
Things Fall Apart: An interview with
George Scherer Jeffrey Kastner
The Six Grandfathers, Paha Sapa,
in the Year 502,002 c.e. Matthew BuckinghaM
Interpretations of the National Park Service
Sharon Hayes

53

Soothe Operator: Muzak and Modern Sound ArT

Susette Min

58

birds of north america sing hip-hop and

62

Hungry for GoD Gregory Whitehead

66

FAILURE

sometimes pause for reflection amy jean porter

Not your name, mine Paul Schmelzer

69

the bible from memory EMMAKAY

70

BLACK BOX Tom Vanderbilt

73

Crash Covers Jeffrey Kastner

76

Shades of Tarzan!: Ford on the Amazon

Elizabeth Esch

81

Hashima: The Ghost Island Brian Burke-Gaffney

85

The Floating Island Paul Collins

88

Old Rags, Some Grand Scott A. Sandage

90

The War of the Flea Marvin Doyle

94

The Short, Sad Life of Danny the Dragon Dirk Libeer

96
98
102
106
108
110
113

Better Luck Next Time Gregory Williams

The Disappointed and the Offended Magnus Brts
The Invention of Failure: an interview with
scott A. sandage Sina Najafi &David Serlin
Travelfest Is Closed Michael Smith & Nathan Heiges
syntax error: Special CD Insert
In case of moon disaster William Safire
Romantic Landscapes with Missing Parts
Nedko Solakov

118
122
124
126

AND

128

The Life of Ernst Moir Lytle Shaw

Concert Nancy Davenport
A/C Cheater.coM
Orphan Nina Katchadourian
unlimited edition Kris Lee
Stock in failure institute peter santino

columns

The Clean Room, David Serlins column on science and

technology, appears in each issue of Cabinet / Leftovers is
a column in which Cabinet invites a guest to discuss leftovers
or detritus from a cultural perspective / Colors is a column
in which a guest writer is asked to respond to a specific color
assigned by the editors of Cabinet / Ingestion is a column by
Allen S. Weiss on cuisine, aesthetics, and philosophy

the clean room / The New Face

of Terrorism
David Serlin

In the winter of 2002, the US Food and Drug Administration

approved the use of Clostridium botulinum, a highly toxic
microorganism, for medical use. In large, unsupervised
doses, the bacterium taints organic products like meat,
resulting in often-fatal cases of botulism or food poisoning.
In small, controlled doses, the bacterium produces a
paralyzing effect on nerve endings. Like anti-depressant
medications such as Prozac, C. botulinum blocks the release
of neural signals that transmit information to various
parts of the body. For some physicians, the federal stamp
of approval on Type A C. botulinum otherwise known as
Botoxmeans that patients suffering from cerebral palsy,
blepharoplasm (eyelid muscle spasms), and other neuromuscular disorders will have much easier access to this
medication.
For many more physicians, however, the governmentapproved mass production and widespread availability of
Botox means a surplus of cold, hard cash. In elite consumer
circles, the tiny bacterium has beckoned hither with one
seductive promise: a single Botox injection paralyzes the
nerve endings in an individuals forehead muscles for up to
three months. A middle-aged matron seeking to restore the
smooth, wrinkle-free countenance of youth can undergo
as many injections as her forehead (and bank account) can
endure. Among the latest cosmetic possibilities for Botox are
direct injections into the armpit to paralyze the sweat glands
and render them moisture-free, a procedure whose effects
can last for as long as half a year. Recent figures reveal that
in 2001, physicians delivered over one million Botox injections, and the popularity of the procedure is expected to
increase tenfold over the next few years. In response to
consumer demand, Allergen, the main bio-medical supplier
of Botox, is working with recombinant DNA technology to
produce strains of C. botulinum that will double or triple the
bacteriums potency, thereby increasing its appeal for both
new and longtime users.
Not since the successful Dannon campaigns of the 1970s,
featuring hardy Eastern European octogenarians wrapped
in furs and babushkas extolling the virtues of eating yogurt
for breakfast, have Americans so enthusiastically embraced
the idea of putting active bacterial cultures into their bodies. Historically, individuals exposed to bacterial agents have
been members of populations vulnerable to the authority of
medical science. In the 18th century, British scientist Edward
Jenner infected himself with tiny traces of smallpox-rich pus
to prove that the immune system could build up tolerance
to illness, thereby establishing a precedent for the evolution
of vaccines. But as Susan Lederer has described in her book
Subjected to Science, in the 19th and 20th centuries, a large
number of scientists eager to test new vaccines gravitated
toward soldiers, prisoners, children, prostitutes, the elderly,
and the mentally retarded, often with unimaginably brutal
consequences. In 1908, for example, when pediatricians at
the University of Pennsylvania wanted to perform diagnostic
tests for tuberculosis, they intentionally infected more than
140 children from a nearby Catholic orphanage, most of
whom were under eight years old. In 1911, Hideyo Noguchi,
a microbiologist sponsored by the Rockefeller University,
subjected over 400 patients to luetin, the causative agent of
syphilis.1
In the case of Botox injections, however, we see a transformation in the target audience of experimental infection
from the most vulnerable to the most elite, while the parameters of what delineates infection have become utterly
negotiable. At $300-500 a pop, vanity-obsessed dowagers
and their cohorts are willing to pay exorbitant fees for the
privilege of becoming vehicles for transporting dangerous

strains of bacteria in their foreheadsbacteria for which scientists have still not found a vaccine. Only under the genius
of capitalism can a toxic killer grow up to become a cosmetic
amenity.
Initially, Botox injections seem to be the latest tool
in an enormous arsenal of medical implants, injections, and
other cosmetic technologies that include collagen, silicone,
and even Gore-Tex. Virtually all of the organic or synthetic
materials injected or implanted into human bodies produce
physical side effects, many far worse than the petulant ennui
that often leads one to pursue cosmetic procedures in the
first place. As Elizabeth Haiken has described, in the first
decades of the 20th century, doctors injected paraffin wax
mixed with olive oil, goose grease, and vegetable soap into
their patients faces, breasts, and legs in order to banish
wrinkles and sculpt body parts to meet the cultural expectations of the era.2 The practice ended by the 1930s with the
high incidence of paraffin-related cancers, but the desire for
a sculpted, malleable body among patients persisted.
In the mid-1960s, famed San Francisco stripper Carol
Doda injected a pint of silicone directly into each of her
breasts. This was much more silicone than the standard
amount used in breast implants produced by Dow Corning,
which were taken off the market three decades later amid
a firestorm of controversy and litigation. And while the use
of autologous human fat, which is cleaned of biological
impurities before it is injected, seemed promising in the
early 1990s, recent case studies have revealed its unsavory
side effects. At best, the fat migrates from the injection
site to ones least-favored body part to join its kin; at worst,
the fat forms an unsightly bas-relief comparable to the shape
and volume of a small dwarf. The migration of autologous fat
in penile enlargement procedures shocked many men who
found themselves looking at penises with truly mushroomshaped heads.
The use of Botox marks a departure from the history of
earlier cosmetic implants and injections in two distinct ways.
First, it does not simply introduce an organic product (such
as paraffin or collagen) into the body; it introduces a living
microorganism, and a highly toxic one at that. Second, Botox
injections do not seek merely to produce youthful-looking
skin, or to aesthetically reshape a facial feature that will
continue to function normally. The goal of the Botox injection is to paralyze and otherwise obliterate the function of
the collateral muscles in the forehead, just above the bridge
of the nose. In practical terms, this means that one needs to
be willing to sacrifice subjective expression for wrinkle-free
features. On some level, the allure of Botox injections may
be similar to that of exotic delicacies whose charm resides
in their power to put consumers in danger: one thinks of
the pleasure/pain dialectic derived from the poisonous substances found in absinthe, psychedelic mushrooms, and the
Japanese fish called fugu. Botox, however, is distinguished
from these organic materials as an impure toxin to the body
that produceshowever temporarilya youthful appearance and not an aesthetic experience or altered state of
consciousness.
The widespread use of Botox ushers the first period
in the modern eracertainly since the rise of visual technologies in the mid-19th centurywhere facial expressions
will be disaggregated from the signified meanings to which
they are typically moored. Over time, physicians expect that
Botox customers will have to forfeit use of their forehead
or eyebrows, two key vectors through which humans typically engage in nonverbal communication. As Norbert Elias
described in his classic study The Civilizing Process, facial
gestures are a central part of the modern lexicon of performative visual cues that, along with etiquette and refined
behavior, are public markers of social class.3 In the 1860s,
Nadar captured the prototype of the exaggerated furrowed brow in his photographs of Parisian asylum
15

patients; in the 1970s, John Belushi elevated the mischievous single-raised eyebrow to an art form on Saturday Night
Live. Indeed, what the frozen foreheads of Botox consumers
call to mind, more than anything else, is the passivity and
imperturbability of European aristocracy. One imagines an
unflappable, furrow-less Queen Victoria waving from her
horse-drawn carriage, or perhaps the sunken, emotionless visage of Catherine de Medici in languid repose, with
a pomegranate in one hand and an open book in another.
These were faces indifferent to the whims of fashion or
popular opinion, born not only to rule but to resist physical
weaknesses that might link them with their social inferiors.
The iconic value of unruffled monarchs and aristocrats
may have represented the solidity of power in pre-modern
times, but in our current media-saturated culture, the desire
to humanize celebrities and political figures demands an
increased capacity to physically express a wider spectrum
of emotions than ever before. The fertile territory between
these two competing ideals of public expression is precisely
what Andy Warhol mined in his multiple silk-screened
portraits of Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe in the early
1960s. During the national mourning over Princess Dianas
death in 1997, the British public, seeking psychological
satisfaction, called in desperation for the royal family to
exhibit its collective grief through open displays of emotion.
Instead, the House of Windsors decision to affect a traditional and icy aristocratic stance seemed to many to expose
the artifice of hereditary power, rather than its permanence.
In this sense, it is hard to conceive of a more O. Henryesque historical moment than our own: an era in which
a volatile microorganism invisible to the naked eye has
achieved popularity among a social niche that is completely
indifferent to the political economy of global terrorism.
Herein lies the paradox of Botox: how else to understand
the staving-off of aging, and ultimately the fear of death, by
pursuing a medical treatment that promises to bring one in
closer proximity to death than ever before?
According to Science, US officials recently ranked C.
botulinum second only to anthrax as the microorganism
most likely to be used in bioterrorist activitiesan unnerving statistic, considering that unlike anthrax, there is no
known antidote even for common strains of the bacterium.4
Indeed, any country that can manufacture mass quantities
of C. Botulinum let alone synthesize new mutant strains
of itwill have a weapon of incalculable power. After all,
even the cosmetic use of Botox does not work to protect the
immune system, but instead works to erode the bodys natural defenses. In our enthusiasm to promote the ephemera
of youth over the grace of maturity, could we be producing,
however inadvertently, a passive army of terrorists clad not
in combat boots but in Prada heels?
1 Susan Lederer, Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America Before
the Second World War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), p. 60.
2 Elizabeth Haiken, Modern Miracles: The Development of Cosmetic Prosthetics, in Katherine Ott et al, Artificial Parts, Practical Lives: Modern Histories of Prosthetics
(New York: NYU Press, 2002), pp. 171-198.
3 See Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process, [1937], trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York:
Urizen Books, 1978).
4 Donald Kennedy, Beauty and the Beast, Science vol. 295 (March 1, 2002), p. 1601.

opposite: Franz Xaver Messerschmidts 18th-century character heads from an age before
Botox. Clockwise: the contrarian; the smiling old man; the mischievous man; the beaked man.

leftovers / How to use Scotch Tape

Paul Lukas

Weve all heard the clich about the gift that keeps on
giving. Those words never rang truer for me than they did
last Christmas, when a friend of mine gave me a small,
stocking-stuffer-ish gift: an old metal Scotch tape dispenser
from 1942, scavenged at a secondhand store, its tape roll
still intact but now hopelessly gummed up. At first glance
it appeared to be just another eye-pleasing tchotchke given
from one design geek to another. Upon closer inspection,
however, it has turned out to be a veritable treasure trove of
corporate and design history.
All artifacts are historical documents, of course, but the
Scotch tape dispenser offers an unusually broad window on
several historical fronts, in part because both the product
and its manufacturer, 3M , remain staples of the consumer
landscape today, making time-wrought changes easy to
gauge. Lets start with the product name itself, which is
printed on the dispensers side: Scotch Cellulose Tape. This
sounds vaguely off, because most of us would think of it
as cellophane tape, not cellulose. But cellophane is a cellulose derivative, and in 1942 it was a trademarked product
of DuPont, which would not allow 3M to use it as part of the
products name. That is also why the dispensers front panel
features a little logo seal that reads: Made of Cellophane
[Trademark], The DuPont Cellulose Film.
Although Scotch is a ubiquitous brand today, its familiar
plaid design motif is absent on the dispenser. In order to
understand why, we need to go back to the origin of the
brand name itself. Scotch was born in 1925, when a 3M
engineer named Richard Drew created a form of masking
tape that he envisioned being used by auto painters. But his
two-inch-wide tape had adhesive only at the outer edges,
not in the middle, much to the frustration of a local painter
who tried one of Drews prototype rolls. As the tape kept
falling off the surfaces to which it had been applied, the
exasperated painter told Drew, Take this tape back to those
Scotch bosses of yours and tell them to put more adhesive
on it! In this context, Scotch was an ethnic slur connoting stinginessan unlikely source for a brand name, but one
that served 3M well during the Depression, when Scotch
tape became a symbol of thrift and do-it-yourself mending.
This helps explain the brands rather austere blue-and-white
design visage during its first two decades of existence. The
more playful plaid motif appeared in 1945, as national optimism surged in the wake of WWII .
On the other side of the dispenser, in block letters, is the
manufacturers name: Minnesota Mining & Mfg. Co. Many
of us have forgottenindeed, if we ever knewthat these
words are the source of 3M s three ems. Indeed, 3M has
become so synonymous with high-tech polymer innovation
that a hardscrabble activity like mining seems hopelessly
old-economy by comparison. But in fact the firm was founded in 1902 by a group of Minnesota investors who planned
to mine a mineral deposit for grinding wheel abrasives.
The abbreviation 3M not quite an acronym, more like a
ligatureentered the corporate lexicon soon enough, but
old-timers in the Twin Cities region still refer to the company
as Mining (as in Oh sure, I used to work for Mining).
Those looking for present-day manifestations of the companys old name will be pleased to learn that 3M s stock-ticker
symbol is MMM , and that its Internet domain name is mmm.
com.
3M s nomenclatorial transition from unwieldy 15syllable name to two-character symbol was already under
way in the early 1940s, as is evident in the companys old
logo, which is printed on both sides of the tape dispenser.
The spelled-out name and 3M Co. both appear on

17

the logo, a busy jumble of typography and geometry. That

logo design is a variation on one that first appeared in 1906;
its basic diamond-within-a-circle template remained 3M s
visual signature until 1950, when the first of several revisions took place. Each subsequent logo facelift has moved
toward simplicity, culminatingfor now, at leastin the
current 3M logotype, whose simple sans serif typography
was designed by the New York firm Siegel & Gale in 1977.
Tucked into the dispenser is a small instruction sheet.
Imaginatively entitled How and Where to Use Scotch
Cellulose Tape, it uses a series of captioned illustrations to
explain the products function. Repeated mention is made of
the dispensers sawtooth edge: One caption instructs
the consumer to pick up tape between roll and sawtooth
edge; another helpfully tells the user to pull desired length
[of tape] and tear down against sawtooth edge. While all
this may seem superfluous today, its worth remembering
that the first tape dispenser with a built-in cutter blade didnt
appear until 1932, and the design patent for this one (one of
many patents listed by number on the dispensers bottom
panel and, like all American patents, accessible at the United
States Patent and Trademark Offices website, www.uspto.
gov) wasnt filed until 1939. So 3M s decision to leave nothing to chance may well have been warranted.
As it happens, the whole thing will soon come full circle,
because the instruction sheet is all tattered and crinkled and
looks like its about to fall apart. At which point I will reach
across my desk, deploy a certain sawtooth edge, and patch
the sheet back together with some fresh Scotch tape.

colors / Safety Orange

Tim Griffin

These are the days of disappearing winters, and of anthrax

spores whose origin remains unknown, or unrevealed.
Concrete phenomena float on abstract winds, seeming
like mere signatures of dynamics that supercede immediate perception. The world is a living place of literature,
interstitial, eclipsing objects with the sensibility of information, and experience floating on the surface of lexicons.
Everything is so characterless and abstract as the weather:
Wars are engaged without front lines, and weapons operate according to postindustrial logic, intended to destabilize
economies or render large areas uninhabitable by the
detonation of homemade dirty bombs that annihilate
culture but do little damage to hard, architectural space.
Radical thought is also displaced, as the military, not the
academy, offers the greatest collective of theorists today; all
possibilities are considered by its think tanks, without skepticism or humanist pretensions, and all nations are potential
targets. Ordinary health risks described in the popular press
are totally relational, regularly enmeshing microwaves and
genetic codes; the fate of ice caps belongs to carbon. Everything is a synthetic realism. Everything belongs to safety
orange.
It is a gaseous color: fluid, invisible, capable of moving out of those legislated topographies that have been
traditionally fenced off from nature to provide significant
nuances for daily living. Perhaps it is a perfume: an optical
Chanel No. 5 for the turn of the millennium, imbuing our
bodies with its diffuse form. (Chanel was the first abstract
perfume, as it was completely chemical and not based on
any flower; appropriately, it arrived on the scene at roughly
the same time as Cubism.) The blind aura of safety orange
has entered everyday living space. One pure distillation
appears in the logo for Home Depot, which posits ones
photos: Ricardo de Oliveira

most intimate sphere, the household, as a site that is under

perpetual construction, re-organization, and improvement.
The home becomes unnatural, industrial, singed with toxic
energy. Microsoft also uses the color for its lettering,
conjuring its associative power to suggest that a scientific
future is always here around us, but may be fruitfully
harnessed (Your home computer is a nuclear reactor).
Such associative leaps are not unique. In postindustrial
capitalism, experience is often codified in color. During the
economic surge of the past decade, corporations recognized and implemented on a grand scale what newspapers
documented only after the onset of the recession: that
colors function like drugs. Tunneled through the optic
nerve, they generate specific biochemical reactions and
so determine moods in psychotropic fashion; they create
emotional experiences that lend themselves to projections
upon the world, transforming the act of living into lifestyle.
Something so intangible as emotion, in turn, assumes a
kind of property value as it becomes intimately maneuvered
by, and then associated with, products. (One business
manual recently went so far as to suggest that consumers
are our products.)
The iMac, to take one artifact of the 1990s, was
introduced to the general public in a blue that was more
than blue: Bondi Blue, which obtained the emotional heat
accorded to the aquatic tones of a cosmopolitan beach
in Australia, for which the color is named. Similarly, the
iMacs clear sheath is neither clear nor whiteit is Ice.
(Synesthesia reigns in capitalism; postindustrial exchange
value depends on the creation of ephemeral worlds and
auras within which to house products. And so, as colors
perform psychotropic functions, total, if virtual, realities
are located within single, monochromatic optical fields.
Control of bodies, the original role designated for safety
orange, is set aside for access to minds, which adopt the
logic of addiction.) In fact, the 1990s boom might be usefully read through two specific television commercials that
were geared to hues: It began with the iMacs introduction in blue, orange, green and gray models, in a spot that
was accompanied by the Rolling Stones lyric She comes
in colors. Later, against the backdrop of 2001s dot-com
wasteland, Target released an advertisement featuring
shoppers moving through a hyper-saturated, blood-red,
vacuum-sealed field of repeating corporate logoscolors
and brands were by then entirely deterritorialized, lifted
from objects and displaced onto architectureto the sound
of Devos post-punk, tongue-in-cheek number Its a
Beautiful World.
Devo often wore jumpsuits of safety orange, which
was, at the time, the color of nuclear power plants and
biohazardsa color created to oppose nature, something
never to be confused with it. It is the color of information,
bureaucracy, and toxicity. Variations of orange have often
played this role. Ancient Chinese bookmakers, for example,
printed the edges of paper with an orange mineral to save
their books from silverfish.
Times change. In 1981, the Day-Glo connoisseur Peter
Halley suggested that New Wave bands like Devo were
rejecting the cloddish substance of traditional humanistic
values, comparing their work to that of the Minimalists.
(All colors are minimal.) Yet the course of Devo has been
the course of culture: the bands rejection of humanistic
values has become more abstract and expansive, and
enmeshed in cultural tissue. Their music moved away from
the specialized artistic realm of electro-synth composers
like Robert Fripp and Brian Eno (who produced the bands
first music in a German studio at the behest of David
Bowie) and into the world. First, it appeared for the mass
audiences of the television show Pee-wees Playhouse,
for whom the band wrote music. More recently, its band
members have written music to accompany Universal Studios Jurassic Park ride and, most recently,
19

Purina Cat Chow commercials. Their anti-humanism no

longer approaches culture from any critical remove; there is
no synthetic outside from which to unveil the bureaucratic,
unnatural structures of a social faade that presents itself
as entirely natural. We have entered an era of synthetic
realism.
Devo is hardly alone in this kind of abstract migration.
Vito Acconci has recounted a similar shift in his subjectivity, which may be traced in his shifting modes of production
from poetry and sculpture to architecture and, finally,
designwhere his work is intended to disappear into the
world. His changing taste in music is more to the point.
He started in the 1960s by listening to the long, introspective passages of Van Morrison, then moved to the public
speakers of punk in the 1970s. Today, he prefers Tricky,
in whose music it is impossible to tell where the human
being ends and where the machine begins. Individuals,
in other words, have given way to engineers. Music by a
composer like Moby has no signature sound or style; art by
a painter like Gerhard Richter similarly leaps from genre to
genre. Subjectivity itself is encoded for Napster. And safety
orange, the color of this synthetic reality, becomes cultures
new heart of darkness.

ingestion / How to Cook a Phoenix

Allen S. Weiss

Angels must be very good to eat. I would imagine they are very
tender, between chicken and fish.
Peter Kubelka

Every art form is a matrix of synaesthesia. Each art informs

all others. Every sentence, every allusion, every word activates a different complex of sensations. These evidences
should not be lost on our daily pleasures. As a translator,
one is perpetually caught in the dilemmas that stem from
these complexities. For example, one quandary I encountered was in Valre Novarinas Le discours aux animaux,
which ends with the sentence, One day I played the horn
like this all alone in a splendid woods, and the birds were
becalmed at my feet when I named them one by one with
their names two by two, followed by a list of 1,111 imaginary birds, beginning with:
la limnote, la fuge, lhypille, le ventisque, le lure, le figile, le lpandre, la galoupe, lancret, le furiste, le narcile,
laulique, la gymnestre, la louse, le drangle, le ginel, le
smelique, le lipode, lhippiandre, le plaisant, la cadme, la
fuyau, la gruge, ltran, le plaquin, le dramet, le vocifre, le
lpse, luseau, la grenette, le galate1

Needless to say, it would be impossible to translate such

names, and transliteration would hardly be satisfying, as
it would be but sheer linguistic play. Rather, the challenge
is to recreate the very conditions of such idiosyncratic
naming, to imitate not Novarinas words, but his poetic
methods; to designate as language itself designates; to
be a demiurge unto ones own speech. In the ornithological
context, most names are in some part descriptive, referring
either to a birds relation to its habitat, to its physical
aspect, behavioral conditions, or decidedly unverifiable
mythical analogies. I would, in all modesty, propose
the following English parallels (if not, strictly speaking,
translations):
pimwhite, sandkill, partch, barnscrub, stiltback, goskit,
persill, peeve, phyllist, corntail, perforant, titibit, queedle,
jewet, phew, marshquiver, graywhip, corvee, rillard, preem,
peterwil, cassenut, flusher, willowgyre, trillet, silverwisp,
eidereye, wheeltail, ptyt, jeebill, wheatspit...

In an early volume, Flamme et festin, I had begun to muse

upon the possibility of creating recipes for just such
creatures, but I now must admit that this was a rather
disingenuous proposition. Not because these birds are
imaginary, but simply because each such name is a hapax
(a word that occurs only once in a language), appearing
without predication or description, in a context that offers
no denotations, but only the undemonstrable connotations
implied by the name itself. (For how can we ever really determine if the cassenut actually breaks open nut shells in its
quest for nourishment, or if the barnscrub lives in barns like
certain swallows and owls, or if the sandkill is a shore bird?)
Any such hapax is a pure signifier without signified, a word
without objectwe can never know whether or not it is a
figment of the imagination. While they might enter a dictionary of imaginary creatures, they cannot be catalogued in a
universal encyclopedia, for sheer lack of information.
Years ago, I had hoped for some practical help from
the International Society of Cryptozoology, located in
Tucson, Arizona. But none was forthcoming. Cryptozoology is the science of nonexistent animals, such as the
banshee, centaur, chimera, griffon, kraken, minotaur, rukh,
unicornnot to mention all those nameless species that
haunt our fantasies and nightmares. I sought more precise
qualifications in order to fortify my belief that this obscure
field of wisdom could be made more joyous through its
intersection with cryptogastronomy. However, it was rather
in the abstract realm of theory that I found my inspiration,
specifically in Umberto Ecos article Small Worlds,2 where
he proposes a theory of fictional discourse whereby one may
judge truth value and descriptive validity within imaginary
or possible worlds. Such domains span the spectrum from
those most resembling our quotidian environment to the
farthest reaches of the speculative utopian imagination; their
epistemological status may be verisimilar, non-verisimilar,
inconceivable, or even impossible. In all cases, such worlds
can be either relatively empty or furnished, depending upon
the amount of information given about a particular fictional
milieu. Following this lead, it is obvious that the general
world of Novarinas animals is relatively unfurnished, and
the specific context in which the birds appear is absolutely
impoverished: we are offered no ornithological information
whatsoever, and thus cannot begin to conceive of appropriate recipes for them.
But, luckily, this is not always the case for fanciful
animals. Consider the phoenix, that mythical bird which is
consumed in spontaneously generated flames, to be reborn
from its own ashes, a symbol particularly appreciated by
the early Christian church for its blatantly resurrectional
qualities. Indeed, we know much more about the phoenix
than we do of many real animals. The history of this bird is
ancient, and it appears in Hesiod, Herodotus, Plutarch,
Tertulius, Tacitus, Pliny, Martial, Ovid, Dante, Cyrillus, Saint
Ambrose, and Milton, among many others. It is estimated
that half of the pre-modernist European poets have written
about it, with, for example, seven mentions in Shakespeare.
There thus exists a wealth of detail, albeit somewhat contradictory at times, about this creature. The 1967 edition of
the Encyclopedia Britannica informs us that the phoenix,
whose ecosphere is the Arabian peninsula, is as large as an
eagle, with scarlet and gold plumage, and a melodious cry. It
is most often said to resemble the purple heron (Ardea purpurea), and less often the stork, egret, flamingo, or even the
Bird of Paradise. Part of the confusion seems to stem from
the fact that in ancient Egyptian mythology, the hieroglyph
of the benua solar symbol, as is the pheonix resembles
a heron or some other large water-fowl, and a purple heron
was sacrificed by the priests of Heliopolis (City of the Sun)
in a grand ceremony every 500 years. It would seem that the
sacred powers invested in this hieroglyph greatly influenced
the perception of the natural world, as well as consequent ornithological classification. The life-cycle of
20

the phoenix is unique in the animal world, here described in

the classic account by Ovid in the Metamorphoses:
There is one living thing, a bird, which reproduces and
regenerates itself, without any outside aid. The Assyrians
call it the phoenix. It lives, not on corn or grasses, but on the
gum of incense, and the sap of balsam. When it has completed five centuries of life, it straightway builds a nest for itself,
working with unsullied beak and claw, in the topmost branches of some swaying palm. Then, when it has laid a foundation
of cassia, and smooth spikes of nard, chips of cinnamon bark
and yellow myrrh, it places itself on top, and ends its life amid
the perfumes. Then, they say, a little phoenix is born anew
from the fathers body, fated to live a like number of years.3

The decadent Roman Emperor Heliogabaluswho

shared with the phoenix a part of solar divinitywas a great
gourmet and glutton, especially fond of such delicacies as
flamingo heads, peacock tongues, and cockscombs cut from
the live animal. He once sent hunters to the land of Lydia,
offering two hundred pieces of gold to the man who would
bring back a phoenix. None did. An explanation for this prodigious culinary desire can be extrapolated from Jean-Pierre
Vernants analysis:
The incandescent life of the phoenix follows a circular
course, increasing and decreasing, with birth, death and
rebirth following a cycle that passes from an aromatic bird
closer to the sun than the eagle flying at great heights, to the
state of a worm in rotting matter, more chthonian than the
snake or the bat. From the birds ashes, consumed at the end
of its long existence in a blazing aromatic nest, is born a
small earth-worm, nourished by humidity, which shall in turn
become a phoenix.4

What more appropriate dish for a solar emperor?

Perhaps tired of the repeated human sacrifices to his own
divine nature, he sought a rarer offering. For Heliogabalus,
true to his own solar name, wished to bring heaven down
to earth in a cruel and erotic scenario of death, so that the
blood of the human sacrifices organized by the Priest of
the Cult of the Sun, flowing from the sacrificial altars of the
Temple of Emesa, might have well been augmented by some
more decidedly supernatural offerings. The lifecycle of the
phoenix is the very allegory of cuisine, taken in its structural
instance, as it spans the antithetical conditions of raw/
cooked, cold/hot, fresh/rotten, dry/moist, aromatized/gamy.
The phoenix would thus be the perfect dish and the ideal
offering, paradoxically encompassing the contradictory possibilities of diverse cooking techniques, inherent alimentary
differences, and sacred symbolism. Like the transubstantiation of the host, or cannibalistic communion, the eating of
the phoenix would constitute a truly transcendental gastronomic act.
Setting aside whatever extravagance Heliogabalus
might have had in mind, let us consider appropriate recipes
for a phoenix. The end of the phoenixs lifecycle, when it is
consumed in its own flames, quite obviously suggests the
proper manner of cooking: the phoenix is to be roasted
outdoors over a fire of sweet-smelling resinous woods and
aromatic herbs. This suggestion corresponds to the symbolic exigencies of this sacred bird, a symbolism elucidated
in Claude Lvi-Strausss analysis of culinary practice in The
Origin of Table Manners. The difference between the roast
and the boiled entails respectively the following oppositions, all pointing to the fact that one can place the roast
on the side of nature and the boiled on the side of culture:
non-mediated (cooked directly on an open flame) versus
mediated (cooked in water in a closed utensil); masculine
(open fire) versus feminine (protected hearth); exo-cuisine
(cooked outside and destined for foreigners) versus endocuisine (cooked in a recipient and destined for the family

or a closed group).5 Thus while the roast is the sort of dish

offered to strangers, the boiled is destined for a small, intimate, closed group. Furthermore, the sociological markers
are even more precise, insofar as boiling fully conserves the
meat and its juices, while roasting entails destruction or
loss. The former is popular and economical, the latter aristocratic and prodigious, with the smoke rising as an offering
to the gods. The boiled is an empirical culinary mode, while
the roast is a transcendental one. The phoenix is, therefore,
the most festive of dishes, truly appropriate for a once-in-alifetime occasion.
The preparation of the phoenix is relatively simple, and
similar to the preparation of much large game. First of all,
as is suggested by its habits, the phoenix should be hung,
so that the flavor of the flesh becomes gamy, according to
taste, somewhere between the bird state and the worm state.
Afterwards, it should be marinated in a mixture of red wine,
herbs and spices (see infra). The reason for the marinade
is, however, the opposite of what is usually the case. Many
types of large game need be hung and marinated in order to
soften their flesh, as their free-ranging lives produces a far
greater proportion of muscle to fat than is found in domestic
fowl and livestock. For the phoenix, however, tenderizing
is unnecessary, since it is a very long-lived and sedentary
creature, and thus has an extremely high and volatile fat
content. (This complicates both hanging and roasting, as its
flesh easily falls to pieces if tenderized too long.) As it has a
distinct tendency to burst into flame, a marinade is necessary for moistening and flame-retarding purposes, and it is
precisely for that reason that the bird should be continually
basted with the marinade mixed with a bit of clarified butter or neutral vegetable oil. As for the recipes themselves,
we should beware of misleading analogies. Certain of them
believe that the phoenix should be treated like the heron.
The Oxford Companion to Food reveals that the gray heron
(Ardea cinerea) was treated throughout the European Middle
Ages like other great birds such as the stork, crane, and
peacock: stuffed with garlic and onions and then roasted
whole, with an often lavish presentation, including gilding and the decorative replacement of its feathers.6 But it
is obvious that, though roasting is indeed the proper technique, the mere accompaniment of onions and garlic is an
impoverishment of the phoenixs culinary possibilities. Like
all game, the flesh is already strongly flavored by what it
feeds on: in this case, gum of incense, sap of balsam, and
diverse savory herbs and berries (the phoenix is a vegetarian bird, which adds to its symbolic allure of purity); and the
composition of its nest suggests that certain combinations
of aromatic herbs and spices found in the Middle East should
be used in the stuffing, such as the already mentioned cinnamon, cassia, frankincense, myrrh, and nard, to which we
can add cardamom, ginger, turmeric, cumin, nutmeg, mace,
sumac, allspice, etc. In short, many of the riches of the spice
trade are appropriate; they judiciously harmonize with the
phoenixs flesh. The particular mixtures of spices, like Indian
curries, differ from country to country and family to family.
There is no classic recipe.
There is little information about appropriate side
dishes, though here too a false analogy reigns. In Greek,
phoenix also means palm tree, and in Egyptian, the hieroglyph of the benu symbolizes the phoenix and, alternately,
the palm tree; since both the tree and the bird are attributes
of the sun god, they are often confused. This has led some
to believe that the fruit of the date palm is either an appropriate stuffing or accompaniment. While such a rich fruit might
well serve the purpose, I would much prefer a truffe sous
cendres [truffle cooked in ashes] and some pomegranate
jelly.
It should be noted that the phoenix is so rare that
its snob appeal by far supercedes that of all other
luxury foods. Even the gold shavings and small gems
21

that Heliogabalus consumed mixed into his vegetables, or

the huge pearls that Cleopatra dissolved in her beverages,
are banal in comparison. The reason for this rarity is both
because only one phoenix is said to exist at any given time,
and because it is so very difficult to capture, as indicated
by its life span: in the lowest estimate, Ovid places it at 500
years; Tacitus claims that it corresponds to the Egyptian
Sothic Cycle of 1,461 years; Pliny puts it at the length of the
Platonic Year, the 12,994-year period needed for the sun,
moon, and five planets to all return to their original heavenly
positions; one extreme estimate suggests that its life span is
97,000 years, but this seems ridiculous. Taking into account
the ancient Egyptian ritual cycle would most probably lead
one to accept the lowest estimate of 500 years. Despite its
rarity, the phoenix is a foodstuff eminently worthy of consideration, and its absence from the culinary literature is most
curious. It is hoped that this brief essay will to some extent
aid in filling this noteworthy gastronomic gap.
The International Society of Cryptozoology can be reached at P. O. Box 43070, Tucson,
Arizona (AZ) 85733, USA. Telephone & fax: +1 520 884 8369.
1 Valre Novarina, Le discours aux animaux (Paris, P.O.L., 1987), p. 321.
 2 Umberto Eco, The Limits of Interpretation (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1994),
pp. 64-82.
3 Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. Mary M. Innes (New York, Penguin, 1984), p. 345.
4 Jean-Pierre Vernant, Introduction to Marcel Detienne, Les jardins dAdonis (Paris,
Gallimard, 1972), p. xxxiii.
5 Claude Lvi-Strauss, LOrigine de manires de table (Paris, Plon, 1968), pp. 397-403.
6 Alan Davidson, The Oxford Companion to Food (Oxford, Oxford University Press), p. 379.

maIN

Ernst Haeckel and the Microbial

Baroque
David Brody

In 1895, a group of mountains along the spine of the Sierras

in California was named to immortalize the apostles of evolution, pioneers of a new enlightenment. Mts. Darwin, Agassiz,
and Mendel topped the elevational pecking order. Next in altitude, at 13,418 feet higher than Mts. Wallace, Lamarck, and
Huxley came a peak named for the German zoologist Ernst
Haeckel, who at the time of christening was in the full vigor of
his remarkable career.
You may not have heard of Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), but
for 50 years or so, until his death, he was the most influential
evolutionary theorist on the map. He did more to spread the gospel of evolution than all his fellow snow-capped honorees combined, lecturing, demonstrating, thundering, and publishing
dozens of books, some technical, some popular. In the decades
before World War I, prominent display of Haeckels books was
de rigeur in European or American households seeking to seem
educated, up-to-date, and non-dogmatic; his opinions spiritual, aesthetic, philosophical, political carried the imprimatur
of unquestioned scientific objectivity. But Haeckel was more
than a progenitor of the Carl Sagan-like scientist-celebrity. His
immense ambition was founded upon a visionarys graphic talent, manifested in biological illustrations so hallucinatory that
his lithographs of microorganisms still threaten to overwhelm
all sorts of categorical distinctions between art, nature, and
science. These images, however, cannot be examined without
acknowledging the omnivorous, Faustian hunger for consolidation of knowledge that produced them.
Haeckel had made his name, in the 1860s, by describing
hundreds of new species of radiolarians, publishing volume
after volume of taxonomic description of this order of marine
protozoan. What really set his work apart, though, was not
the science but the plates. Whether this emphasis was
entirely legitimate was debated at the time had Haeckel
over-embellished and idealized his observations or, as he
claimed, had he discerned for the first time their underlying
crystalline structure? Certainly no biologist before him had
applied the study of solid geometry to precise descriptions of
organic phenomena, and the penetrating insights resulting
from this dtente of disciplines seemed to justify the boldness
of Haeckels drawings. If the images were not optically true,
then perhaps they were truer than true. Wasnt a search for the
pattern beneath the noise the higher purpose of science?
If certain of Haeckels colleagues were dubious, the public was not. Weltratsel (The Riddle of the Universe), first issued
in 1895, sold more than half a million copies in Germany alone,
an unheard-of number for the time, and was translated into
thirty languages. Kunstformen der Natur, or Art Forms in
Nature published in installments between 1899 and 1904, has
arguably enjoyed an even broader audience. Its lavish images
of self-enlacing, baroque jellyfish, with their translucent baldachins of tendrils, and his constellations of plankton magnified to
Romanesque filigrees,1 directly influenced the more self-consciously decorative, asymmetrical vocabulary of Art Nouveau
and Jugendstil Ren Binets cast iron entrance gate to
23
the 1900 Paris Exposition, for example, was modeled on

Haeckels beloved radiolarians.2 Art Forms was eagerly perused

by the Surrealists, notably Max Ernst, and almost certainly
by the Bauhaus painters Klee and Kandinsky. Thus, even contemporary artists who have never seen the book can hardly have
avoided the pulsations of its influence.3 But, about this, more
later.
From his professorship in Jena, the university town that was
associated with the immortal polymaths Goethe, Schiller, and
Hegel, Haeckel advocated Darwinism to a hostile world, declaring war on the medieval mystifications of religion and unleashing a barrage of invective at the Catholic Church. In contrast
to Darwin and most of his fellow evolutionists, though, he did
not confine himself to the role of sober secular materialist. His
almost mystical obsession with a rational and progressive
march toward biological perfection was far removed from the
random impersonality of natural selection, and his contempt
for religion did not stop him from establishing one of his own.
As his theories developed, he began to attack not only antiscientific ritualism, but dualism in general. Evolution proved that
man and nature were not separable, and thus neither were matter and mind. Crystal souls4 inhered in the very minerals we
were made of, human intellect being simply their higher expression achieved by means of the evolutionary drama. Accordingly,
there was no need to project the existence of a creator outside
the physical world: spirit lay within. In 1906, Haeckel founded
a progressive church based on this quasi-scientific pantheism,
calling it the Monist League in opposition to the dualistic religions. The Judeo-Christian ancestry was no more than a living
fossil that could now be left behind.
Haeckels immodest claim to have reconciled age-old
antagonisms between science and spirit slipped, incrementally,
toward the far side of social Darwinism. His philosophical support for racist eugenics, coupled with his widespread popular
appeal, was arguably crucial to the legitimization of such ideas
in Germany, and historian Daniel Gasman has gone so far as to
lay blame for the Holocaust virtually at Ernst Haeckels feet. Gasman demonstrates, convincingly, that Haeckel was an anti-Semite, and that his ponderous authority did much to bring the Jewish question into the realm of biology.5 Social Darwinism would
better be named Social Haeckelism, it seems. Of course, racism
and eugenics were in the very air of fin-de-sicle, scientific culture, and Gasmans view of Monism as a wellspring underlying
everything from French Symbolism to Futurism, Surrealism, and
the Bauhaus is thinly documented and a bit monomaniacal in its
own right. Still, consider this passage from Haeckels worldwide
bestseller The Riddle of the Universe:
The statement of the apocryphal gospels, that the Roman
officer, Pandera, was the true father of Christ, seems all the more
credible when we make a careful anthropological study of the
personality of Christ. He is generally regarded as purely Jewish.
Yet the characteristics which distinguish his high and noble personality, and which give a distinct impress to his religion, are certainly not Semitical; they are rather features of the higher Arian
[sic] race.6

The Monist Leagues promise of a scientifically sanctioned

and racially purged spirituality appealed to the German elite,
and after Haeckels death, the Leagues longstanding argument

that state policies must not interfere with evolutionary necessity began to gather influence. The postwar economic crisis was
theorized as a result of immigration and cultural decadence; the
lower races, it was reasoned, must no longer be coddled into
artificial survival if the German people were to thrive. Nature
itself decreed it.
Posthumous association with the methodical madness of the
Nazis has cast a retrospective pall over Haeckels undeniable
achievements in microbiological taxonomy; his grander evolutionary theories have been debunked. Nevertheless, Art Forms
in Nature continues to inspire and provoke the artists who, like
Ernst or Kandinsky before them, stumble upon its gorgeously
elaborated plates. Admittedly, the boundaries between art
and science have never been, and never can be, absolute. But
their progressive and mutual violation may well turn out to be
a defining obsession of 21st-century art, and there is certainly
a renewed concern, on the part of contemporary artists, with
the empirical mystique of the bio-lab with its statistical procedures and DNA /digital frontier on one hand, its viscosities and
oozings, its creepy-beautiful microcosmic landscapes on the
other. Given his pervasive influence and subsequent, near-complete eclipse, I wondered how many artists today were actually familiar with Haeckels work. And, I wondered if those who
have looked deeply into Haeckel and considered his example
in the development of their own art might discern, in his triumphally willed organic patterns, a graphic signature of the scary
ideology that selective cultural memory has lopped away. I conducted an informal poll, and sure enough: from Alexis Rockman
and Philip Taaffe, who have borrowed from Haeckels prints
directly; to Alex Ross, Karen Arm, and Tricia Keightley, whose
working premises have been informed and inflamed by his aestheticization of microscopic rendering; to Fred Tomaselli, Susan
Jennings, and Tom Nozkowski, whose engagements are mixed
with severe critique, Haeckels influence remains palpable in
the studios of New York artists.
For these visual thinkers, the discovery of Haeckels portfolios, whether received as art or science, or both, or neither,
has been revelatory. Once entranced, however, many also
register an ambivalent attraction/repulsion to Art Formss
romantically totalizing worldview, to the heavy, structuralizing hand that renders medusae as swimming chandeliers,
and echinidea as hovering spacecraft. Most of the artists with
whom I spoke had no idea of Haeckels proto-Fascist past.
Nevertheless, many seem to have intuited something of that
spirit from the material before them on the page.
In their overall patterning, these pages studded with
elaborately symmetrical groupings, usually floating over a
black void are as striking as are the specimens themselves. A
plate from Art Forms can minimize empty space to an almost
neurotic degree, laying out finicky, jewel-box arrangements
of like-to-like in vertical columns. This bilateral approach to
display threatens to overpower the subtleties of individual
organisms, whose symmetries tend to be radially complex, their
multiple digits or leaves twisting with restless animation so as
to bring maximal morphology into view. Sometimes the heavyhanded whole exceeds the sum of its delicate parts, sometimes
not. Indeed, if one sees Haeckels lust for unification as suspect leading to overdetermined (though fascinating)
art, and bad (though compelling) science then the very
24

characteristics which attract an artist to his images their integrated, harmonious, monistic design would be their most
dangerous and dishonest features.
Yet this sort of judgment may itself be overdetermined.
Haeckels florid conflation of aestheticism with empiricism
made him a lesser scientist in some ways leading him, on
occasion, to fudge his illustrations for the sake of a beautiful
argument. But it may also have made him a greater one, his
formal acuity and imagination leading to genuine morphological discoveries. And, if the miscegenation of disciplines made
him less of an artist operating covertly, as it were, never quite
seizing an artists prerogative or admitting to an artists seductionsin other ways, the rigors of the scientific idiom seem to
have freed him, allowing him to channel his enduring talent for
formal articulation into an almost superhuman penetration,
focus, and deftness of hand.
Fred Tomaselli, who discovered Art Forms relatively recently,
notes that Haeckels mirror-image arrangements propose, in
effect, their own meta-organism, a more-than-perfect symmetry which plays upon the idea of the beautiful as it is coded
deep within us. He also acknowledges a comparison between
Haeckels black backgrounds and his rationalized, proliferating
layouts, and some of his own methods for animating a pictorial
field. But at the same time, Tomaselli finds parts of Art Forms,
particularly those plates featuring creatures farther up the
evolutionary ladder, to be limited by a precisionist rigidity. In
the (relatively infrequent) groupings of frogs, lizards, bats, and
birds, Tomaselli diagnoses a telltale scientific override a
certain stiffness that can make cartoons of nature, especially
when compared to the more sensual and vivid work of John
James Audubon or Martin Johnson Heade. In Haeckels depictions of microbiota, on the other hand, you see the scientist at
work. Tomaselli discerns that within the realm of the exotically
small, where Haeckel could use a compass, French curve, and
ruler with impunity, he gets to sing.
As a connoisseur of 18th- and 19th-century scientific illustration, Philip Taaffe also admires Haeckels contribution as a
draughtsman, acknowledging that his drawings brought the
field to a new level of authority or life or animation The brilliance of the graphic execution is undeniable; you have to be
aware of these. You have to look and look. Taaffe stops short,
however, of touching; though his process often involves the
silkscreening of biological illustrations in gestural conjunctions, and despite the fact that a couple of Haeckels more sinuous images have found their way into his work, on the whole
he finds Art Forms too willful, too aestheticized to use. Susan
Jennings agrees. Like Haeckel, Jennings actually spends time
at the microscope, observing life forms that she cultures and
photographs. She is interested in Haeckels passion and
regards his drawings as beautiful, fascinating, but also uses
words such as uptight, oppressive, and claustrophobic.
Its something hes imposed because he has looked for it until
hes found it. Its not how nature is, necessarily.
Take, as an example, Plate 61 of Art Forms. It features a
radiolarian with the exoskeleton of a super-stellated Buckyball,
a geomancers polyhedral dream, awesomely complex yet
serenely Platonic. Though not a strictly scientific image, appearopposite: Plate 85 of Art Forms in Nature

ing as it does in a book aimed at general consumption, neither

is it meant as fantasy or invention, raising possible suspicions
about the draughtsmans habits of fidelity to the organism. In
Art Forms, the unmatched zeal for extracting architecture from
the infinitesimal wigglings of life might be indulged as a kind
of more-than-empirical insight; in one infamous case, however,
Haeckel stands accused of out-and-out fraud.
To bolster his theory of developmental recapitulation the
cornerstone of his lifes work, his all-explanatory dogma
defended to the day he died Haeckel often illustrated comparative stages of the human embryo alongside those of lower
vertebrates. The point was to demonstrate how humans pass
through the stages of phylogenetic ancestry, how we climb in
the womb, as it were, up the evolutionary tree hence those
fish gills and lizard tails observed in the fetus. (For that
matter, the Tree of Life image, still beloved of evolution textbooks, is completely Haeckelian; he was the first to draw the
differentiation of species, with all its apparent ramifying logic,
as a brooding, twisted oak.7) Haeckels illustrations testified
powerfully in favor of his argument that in his famous motto
ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny: fish, frogs, chicken, cows,
and humans all look the same at comparable stages of development, the higher animals passing through and beyond the terminal expressions of their evolutionary ancestors.
Recapitulation promised to reveal not only the animal
ancestry of man and the line of his descent but also the method
of origin of his mental, social, and ethical faculties.8 A similar epistemological template stamped itself on a number of
emerging disciplines, for example, on Freudian and to some
extent Jungian psychology, where neurosis, paranoia, and
mania were schematized as primitive vestiges, the childs
mind recapitulating the mental states of early tribesmen, etc.
Even at the time, however, it was claimed by some of Haeckels peers that his telltale embryos were not to be found in
nature. According to the late Stephen Jay Gould, a dogged foe
of Haeckels distortions, Haeckel had simply copied the same
figure over and over again.9 Humans, in fact, have notable
similarities with lower vertebrates only at the very beginning
of development.
Haeckel dismissed the embryo controversy by claiming
that all diagrammatic figures are inaccurate10 and of course,
however disingenuous as a defense, in a way this was perfectly
correct there is no such thing as an objective transcript of scientific observation. For the artists I interviewed, it is precisely
this shifty topography that compels exploration; in one way or
another, navigation of the art/science divide defines these bodies of work, and each of my respondents recognizes Art Formss
problematic siting in this terrain. For Alex Ross, art and science
overlap most poignantly in the areas of research and discovery
Artists have no limits at all but the beauty of science is that
it is guided by the ultimatum of its own strictures: follow the
rules or dont call it science. Ross, whose tightly rendered but
imaginary biomorphs were fattened on the myriad delights of
Art Forms, calls it a revelation, to be sure, a prime mover in the
germination of my thinking. The careful taxonomic display presented such a potent dream-world. The crux of my work is that
what for, say, Kandinsky, were shapes and relationships,
26 are for me organisms and communities. This concep-

tion of pictorial autonomy was directly inspired by Haeckels

aestheticization of life forms. As Ross puts it, The work seemed
to scream, If nature can play reality designer, you can too.
Hubristic reality-design, conversely, is Alexis Rockmans
target. His work specifically addresses evolution and ecology, but from a pointedly sardonic angle; his current paintings
present a wry natural history that he calls psychedelic ecotourism. Rockman discovered Haeckel in high school. His mother,
an archeologist, was Margaret Meades assistant at the American Museum of Natural History, and as a child he had unusual
access to its dioramas and displays. In these, as in the wilderness-born American tradition generally, plant and animal specimens were shown interacting within a total ecosystem, whereas
Haeckel catalogued only closely related species deployed in
frankly abstract, etheric space. Even the few attempts at populated landscape in Art Forms the same that Tomaselli deems
cartoonish manifest a charting or listing tendency that Rockman calls vertical compared to the horizontal polymorphism
of Hudson River School naturalists like Audubon and Heade.
European organization, Rockman asserts, is about putting
the organism in a vitrine or box.
Karen Arm, however, defends this isolating tendency, arguing for realms of organic truth in which aesthetic and scientific
inquiry are allied. Art forms in nature describes my work. Every
time I pick up the book, its an affirmation of what Im doing.
Arms paintings and drawings begin with observations of natural
forms branches, waves, spider webs, smoke which she winnows from their chaotic matrix and reorders in dense, intuitive
patterns. She describes her creative process much as Haeckel
described his own, as heightened views that nevertheless ring
true to the anarchic specificity of observation. As Arm points
out, Haeckels depictions were empirically based, but he still
has his hand in it. Thats what makes him interesting to us now.
His images are not dry; they have a life to them. Or, as painter
Tricia Keightley says, a blob is not thought out; Haeckels
drawings demarcate a zone between the gooey undefined and
the schematic. Still, like Philip Taaffe, Keightley finds that the
eccentricity of Art Forms works against its direct utility. Haeckels work, she says, can be intimidating, precisely because it
is so tempting as source material. If one succumbed, then 400
people would come up to you and say, You know, thats form
number 10 on page 36, plate 17.
Whether admiring or skeptical, the artists I spoke to understand the siren song of Haeckels lapidary profusions to be
their selling point. The totalizing confidence of his project
its implication that nature is art is design is science is what
compels, in spite of the implied denial of humanistic values like
idiosyncrasy or accident or freedom. As Taaffe (who knew of
Haeckels dark side) says, there is an intellectual attraction to
clockwise from top left: Philip Taaffe, Metacrinus Angulatus, 1997; Fred Tomaselli, Monsters of Paradise, 2001 (courtesy James Cohan Gallery); Thomas Nozkowski, Untitled, 1999 (courtesy Max Protetch Gallery); Susan Jennings, Art
Culture, 1996-97 (detail); Alexander Ross, Untitled, 1998 (courtesy Feature, Inc.);
Alexis Rockman, Amphibian Revolution, 1986 (courtesy Gorney Bravin + Lee); Tricia Keightley, 72.56.01A, 2001; Karen Arm, Untitled (Incense #3), 2001 (courtesy
PPOWGallery).
overleaf: Plate 61 of Art Forms in Nature

come to grips with that schizophrenia, that dichotomy, that

strange will to systematize everything, to organize everything.
But at the end of the day, it leads you to mass murder or something. Tom Nozkowski, meanwhile, describes himself as an
anti-Haeckelian: I began with great enthusiasm. But the
more I looked, the more pissed off I got about him. His ordering processes are very 19th-century, very Germanic, and I
think they lie. Haeckels project seems to be skewed in the first
place and maybe not for good purpose. Nozkowski echoes
Jenningss feeling that Haeckels sin is that he finds what he
expects to find. For all the works ostensible beauty, it does
seem a period piece, inherently nostalgic. I dont question the
seriousness of how he plays the game, I just think that intellectually he fails. Nozkowski is not afraid to diagram an equivalence between the pictorial and the political: It plays back
into the work, a kind of self-assuredness or self-certainty, a
predisposition to knowing the answer the minute you ask the
question. I think that can always lead to evil aesthetic evil first,
then maybe evil in the real world.
Perhaps. Leonardo designed ingeniously vicious war
machines for the Sforzas and the Borgias, but we have no
trouble calling him a humanist, and like the notebooks of the
ur-Renaissance Man, Ernst Haeckels lithographs encompass
an otherworldly formal clarity, teased out from messy reality by
the delicate emphases of the trained hand; they evince a kindred delight in draftsmanship in service to science, a devotion
to a truth higher than mere optical objectivity. Both Haeckel and
da Vinci maintained a boyish fascination for spiky armored creatures, for the gracefully fantastic and grotesque. Of course, one
is the greater scientist and the other the greater artist. But the
megalomaniacal determinism that tints the edges of Haeckels
vision signals, perhaps, the last shudder of a dying da Vincian
ideal, a union of curiosity and craftsmanship, poetry and industry, science and art. Perhaps Haeckels preternatural exactitude
is truly pathological. But if so, the force of his obsession, while
edifying in its failures, only adds conviction to the appeal of the
ancient argument he urges that beauty is the proof of natural
intelligence.
1 Haeckels delicate pencil and ink drawings were brilliantly interpreted by the
lithographer Adolph Giltsch. A thorough assessment of Art Forms in Nature would
require that their separate contributions be disentangled.
2 Ernst Haeckel, Art Forms in Nature (Munich & New York: Prestel Verlag, 1998),
p. 27.
3 Art Forms in Nature was kept in print for years by Dover Publications in their
catalogue of uncopyrighted clip-art oddities, alongside compendia of Victorian
stencils and 19th-century political cartoons. In 1998, Prestel issued a superb
color version of the book.
4 Krystallsee is the title of a book published by Haeckel in 1917.
5 Daniel Gasman, Haeckels Monism and the Birth of Fascist Ideology (New York:
Peter Lang Publishing, 1998), p. 157. See also Gasmans The Scientific Origins of
National Socialism: Social Darwinism in Ernst Haeckel and the German Monist
League (London & New York: MacDonald, 1971).
6 Ernst Haeckel, The Riddle of the Universe (New York: Harper & Bros.,1900), p.328
7 Here is another example of Haeckels insightful but dangerous mixing of science
and art. For a detailed discussion of the misleading teleological subtleties of Haeckels trees of life, see Stephen Jay Goulds Wonderful Life (New York: Penguin, 1991),
especially pp. 263-267.
8 Ibid, p. 116.

9 Gould, This View of Life, Natural History, March 2000. Those phony embryos
were recently discovered persisting in textbooks, and creationists have blustered
about finding Haeckels skeleton in the closet of evolution ever since. See, for example, M. K. Richardson et al., Haeckel, Embryos, and Evolution, Science 280:983985 (1998). Haeckels dogma of recapitulation had lost its luster on
any terms by 1910 or so, when it became unfashionable in practice, following
the rise of experimental embryology, and untenable in theory, following scientific
change in a related field (Mendelian genetics). Stephen Jay Gould, Ontogeny and
Phylogeny (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1977), p. 77.
10 Ernst Haeckel, The Evolution of Man: A Popular Exposition of the Principle
Points of Human Phylogeny and Ontogeny (New York: Appleton, 1897. English
edition vol. 1), p. xxxv.

Field Traces
Bill Jones

For the past five years, Ive been working with Dr. Merrill Garnett, a biochemist who has spent three decades researching
electrogenetics, the behavior of biological systems altered by
substances that increase the flow of electrical charge to DNA .
The basis of Dr. Garnetts approach involves the postulation that there is a corollary genetic code of pulsed electromagnetic current that enables communication at the cellular level
within a given organism. The coaxial liquid-crystal structure of
DNA transmits and receives energy and information by a process known as flexo-electricity, the equivalent of the piezoelectricity produced by crystal oscillators in computers. Dr. Garnett
theorizes that molecular nano-circuits, through which the corollary genetic mechanism transfers charge over great distances,
induces the multi-cellular state, as well as being key to organized growth and development. Every cell has both an inward
and outward current. The inward current builds up, and forms a
metastable equilibrium involving multiple reactions. When the
inward current reaches a certain level, outward current is forced
to occur. We see the visual evidence of this flux of energies in
experiments and resulting photographs that show changes in
form. In such images, DNA liquid crystals that normally look like
small flowers explode outward into starburst-like structures
when charged at the correct frequency, expressing the energy
field needed for cell maturation. During the life of an organism,
this energy flux continually streams through its DNA in a number of axes of vibration when the fluxes end, life ends.
Microscopy and microphotography of electro-active biological polymers charged with pulsed electro-magnetic fields
trace those fields as the liquid crystalline polymers dry on the
surface of a glass microscope slide. The microphotographs
presented here show field traces mapping the change in structure and symmetry of DNA and prothrombin the bio-polymer
responsible for blood clotting that one preliminary model suggests might function as a kind of vascular internet, facilitating communication with DNA under the influence of a pulsed
electro-magnetic field.
opposite: Microphotograph of prothrombin dried on a glass slide. The fern-like
fractal structure of this bio-polymer responsible for blood clotting demonstrates
its liquid crystalinity.
overleaf: Prothrombin is once again dried on a glass slide, but in this experiment
the linear structure of transmission cables is formed by coating the prothrombin
with the biological dialectric hyaluronic acid. The discovery of the electro-active
nature of prothrombin and other bio-polymers such as DNA suggests the possibility of a corallary genetic code and a vascular internet.

30

Mm, Mm, Good: Marketing and

Regression in Aesthetic Taste
David Hawkes

In the week following September 11, a portentous apparition

appeared on the campus of the liberal arts college where I teach.
A hugely fat man dressed as a tin of Campbells soup greeted
shell-shocked students and faculty on their way to the cafeteria. The red-and-white blimp was imprisoned in a tight costume
splattered with his employers logo. He sweated under a carnivalesque mask that twisted his once-human features into a hideous, mocking grimace. His polyester uniform must have been
a torment in the late-summer sun, but at first he bore the curses,
taunts, and gibes of passers-by with something approaching
good humor. As the afternoon wore on, though, his demeanor
began to turn ugly. The winsome advertising slogans he sung
degenerated into sullen mutterings, eventually shading into
outright threats. The cheery smile with which he greeted the
co-eds mutated into an aggressively salacious leer. Perhaps
his gloved hands slipped; in any case one girl responded to his
attentions with a sharp kick to the shin. Finally, as a group of
simian fratboys began to circle him with violent intent, he slunk
grumpily off into the sunset.
This monsters visitation caused considerable consternation around the university, some of whose denizens were
recently bereaved. I was one of those who complained about
him to the manager of the food court. The response I received
was quizzical, uncomprehending. Was the Campbells freak in
questionable taste, a stunt better inflicted on a less distraught
community? On the contrary, he had been summoned precisely because of the disaster, for the purpose of cheering
people up. The representatives of the corporation that now
controls our dining services simply could not understand why
anyone should find this clownish spectacle unamusing. Commercial aesthetics, I came to realize, were regarded by these
folk as unequivocally uplifting, and the thought that people
numb with the shock of recent disaster should be anything but
delighted by this ghoul had simply not crossed their minds.
In retrospect, it was probably naive to cause a fuss. The
hapless soup-man was merely a local eruption of the general
plague of marketing, packaging, and mind-control currently
raging through the college campuses of the Western world.
Naomi Klein describes this phenomenon in devastating detail in
her book No Logo, but her protests are already buried beneath
the billboards. The university cafeteria is now a shopping mall,
where Starbucks and Burger King lord it over consumers.
Where, the campus shop once provided good, cheap, homemade sandwiches, the students must now purchase an Asian
atom-bomb of MSG from an outlet labeled, with presumably
unconscious Hitlerian overtones, Mein Bowl. An enormous
wall is being constructed at the edge of campus, with the dual
purpose of housing The Gap and sealing off the university from
the impoverished Puerto Rican neighborhood in which it is
marooned. Needless to say, the bookstore has been taken over
by Barnes & Noble.
We may ask ourselves: Well, how did we get here? The
answer we will be given is that we wanted it this way. For a
while, it was my habit to question the authorities whenever
a new piece of capitalist propaganda defaced my working

environment. Why, I used to say, are you doing this to us?

The response never varied. A survey had been done, a
poll taken, a study commissioned. The results had proved
proved beyond all reasonable doubt that students desired,
demanded, could not possibly live without, the comforting
presence of multinational corporations. To object that Burger
King is a purveyor of poison, or that Nike trainers are manufactured by six year-old slaves, would have been viewed as
not merely unscientific, but actually undemocratic. In one
of many forlorn and futile discussions with the campus decision-makers, I tried to explain that part of my job as an educator was to teach my students to think critically about the
ideological structures upon which commercial advertising is
built, and that having human tins of soup rampaging across
campus tended to undermine my work. I was politely informed
that while there was no desire to denigrate your philosophy,
it was an incontrovertible and empirically tested fact that students took pleasure and succor from
living in a brashly commercial, logosoaked environment. This ambience,
outside of which students would, I was
assured, flounder like dying fish, was
frequently said to generate a branded
feel.
Obviously, there are more things
in heaven and earth than are dreamed
of in my philosophy, but the more I
considered this ostensibly unlikely
proposition, the more I found it to be
true. Adolescents away from home
for the first time probably do find it
reassuring to be surrounded by the
familiar signs and symbols, logos and
brands, which gratified their desires
as children. Why wouldnt they? The
branded feel, after all, is hardly confined to university campuses. I suppose that the traditional pedagogical
mission of such institutions may once
have protected students from what
my colleagues in the Business College refer to as the real world
for an unnaturally long time. When businesspeople talk of the
real world, of course, they mean they world of money that
is, of imaginary value and the phantasmogoric, hallucinatory
techniques of advertising and entertainment that is necessary
to induce consumption. Today, however, this hyper-real dimension can no longer be distinguished from the empirical world.
The unreal has become real, and what we once thought of as
the real world lying beneath the veneer of representation has
been consigned to the unimaginably distant and exotic other
country of the past, where they do things differently.
Soup is one thing, books are another. Being forced to eat
Burger King and Campbells will not kill me alright, it will,
but probably not for a couple of decades but I did think we
could draw the line at the bookstore. When Barnes & Noble
took over, they naturally revised the inventory so as to eliminate those books that appealed only to the tastes of a minority.
The travel section, for example, shed its guides to back34 packing in Africa and the Andes, directing customers

instead to toney restaurants in London and Paris, or all-inclusive

Caribbean resorts deemed suitable for secure Spring Breaks. In
general, books that were obscure or idiosyncratic disappeared
from the shelves. This seemed a pity to me, so I wrote in protest
to the new manager. Her reply was disarmingly frank:
I do not understand why this is a bad thing. We only have so
much room in the store so why would I want to fill it with items
that students/faculty/staff do not want? The goal of any business
is to have what people want when they want it. Paralleling this
to your profession: if a minimum enrollment for a course is not
achieved it would be rare to never that a course would run (except
as independent study?). In other words the course (product) that
no one, or almost no one, wants is removed from the shelves
(registrar list) and new products (courses) replace them in future
semesters. Why offer a course that no one is interested in taking
(paying tuition)? Why offer products that no one is interested in
buying?

We find here the extension of the

supply-and-demand ethos of neoclassical economics into the life of the
mind. People are regarded as customers, not only when they go shopping
in a mundanely literal sense, but also
when they figuratively shop for the
products of knowledge. Students
choose their courses on the basis of
cost-benefit analyses: how many hours
of work will be required to achieve an
A, and how much will this grade add
to ones starting bonus. Professors
have grown accustomed to student
complaints that, having put in the requisite amount of study-time, they have
not been rewarded by adequate final
grades. Office hours at the end of the
semester are filled with a haggling and
a wheedling that would not disgrace
the Cairo souk. Intellectual trends confirm and support students self-image
as consumers: according to the popular philosophy of rational
choice theory, the principle of the maximization of marginal utility can, and should, apply to every field of human endeavor, up to
and including romantic love, artistic creation, and education.
Appalled but intrigued, I wrote another letter asking how
the Barnes & Noble takeover had influenced the day-to-day
running of the bookstore. The manager once again responded
with commendable honesty: The biggest way B&N influences
our daily lives is their customer service requirements B&N
has never lost a contract due to customer service We have a
motto we must follow: Of course we can.
This service mentality is closely analogous to prostitution. Other forms of servility, such as those found in feudal
societies, are manifested in the interactions of individuals performing clearly defined and mutually understood social roles.
But in the world of customer service, servility is mediated
through the medium of money. It involves an abject debasement at the feet of the customer, the need to serve him in any
way possible, combined with absolute, intransigent, and yes

principled insistence on the financial nature of the transaction.

One hundred and fifty years ago, Marx pointed out that capitalism reduces all of us to whoredom. In the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 he observes that: Prostitution is
only a particular expression of the universal prostitution of the
worker, and since prostitution is a relationship which includes
not only the prostituted but also the prostitutor whose infamy
is even greater the capitalist is also included in this category.
In the 19th century, this prostitution of the worker was at least
limited to the workplace. In the endless market of postmodernity, however, allurement, seduction, and enticement for monetary gain achieve the status of an ethical code, a morality to
live by.
One way of illustrating the transition from the modernist
to the postmodernist sensibility is to compare Thomas Manns
Death in Venice with Vladimir Nabokovs Lolita. Both concern a
middle-aged man, educated in the great tradition of European
high culture, who is destroyed by his fetishistic fascination for
a brainlessly beautiful child. But 40 years, a continent, and an
entire aesthetic epoch lie between them. In Manns novella, the
desire of the artist Aschenbach for the boy Tadzio has a heroic,
self-sacrificing purity. It symbolizes the ancient attraction of
Apollo for Dionysus, the lure that the erotic has always held for
the intellectual. In Nabokovs book, Humbert Humberts lechery
is dirty, disgraceful, sick. The reason is not the age of the lustobject (Tadzio is barely older than Lolita), but its nature. Aschenbachs boy is silent, enigmatic, distant, European. Humberts
girl attracts him for the opposite reasons it is her vulgarity, her
brazenness, her venality, her American-ness that enslave him.
In a word, Humbert is captivated by Lolitas commercialism.
He loves her preoccupations with movie stars and jukeboxes,
comic books and bubble gum, motel rooms and Levis jeans. He
loves her branded feel. We see it in the exquisite, melancholy
poem he writes for her: Where are you riding, Dolores Haze? /
What make is the magic carpet? / Is a Cream Cougar the present craze...?
Between 1912, the apex of high modernism when Mann
wrote Death in Venice, and 1955, when Lolita appeared, the aesthetic sensibility of the Western world was changed, changed
utterly. A terrible beauty was born from the shotgun marriage
of aesthetics and commerce. In The Conquest of Cool, Thomas
Frank takes issue with the myth that the post-war counterculture was an oppositional or liberatory force. He points out that
the revolution in taste and lifestyle celebrated by the baby-boom
generation was accompanied and even directed by analogous revolutions in advertising and marketing. Capital learned
to embrace aesthetic and even political rebellion: the Revolutionaries are on CBS . In fact, Rock n Roll represents the
moment when image replaced substance in music, and when
youth seized the social and cultural prerogatives which once
belonged to age. Andy Warhols Double Elvis, a simple reproduction of two identical photographs of the King, announces
the demise of the Platonic ideal from of beauty, which resided
above all in uniqueness. The age of mechanical reproduction
despises uniqueness, which it destroys as certainly and effectively as mass-produced hamburgers drive homemade sandwiches from college lunch counters.
To protest against the corporatization of campus
35
is thus to tilt at windmills. But we should not be so inno-

cent as to imagine that commerce is devoid of aesthetics, or of

ethics. Although I am mercifully free of his unsalubrious sexuality, I could not but sympathize with Humberts poshlust (the
wonderfully evocative Russian word that Nabokov translates
as attraction to the false) when I received a written response
to my recriminations from the food court manager, a nice lad
who looks young enough to date Lolita. It is, I have come to
think, very beautiful.
Dear David Hawkes, I appreciate the time you spent in conveying this concern. Feedback to myself is imperative so we can
make sound business decisions to improve our patrons experience. In regards your soup question, the price of soup in the Food
Court hasnt be raised in the past 3 years. Whether or not we
went with Campbells or the home made the price was going to
be inflated either way to accommodate rising costs in the business. We introduced the Campbells program during the winter
break last year and response from facility and staff was positive. The Campbells program offers consistency, name brand
recognition, and also the fact that we could offer soup through
all meal periods. In the past, we would rely on the board plan
for distributing soup to the Food Court. If they had a busy lunch
or dinner often the Food Court would have no soup to offer our
dinner customers. With the Campbells being prepared fresh on
our floor we would be able to offer soup at anytime to appease
all of our customers. As far as pricing we compared our price to
the local McDonalds and they're offering a 12 ounce Campbell's
soup for $1.69. Im sure if you checked other local retail operations you would find our selling price for soup is very competitive
to the local market. Again, we didnt raise the price for 3 years. In
two weeks we will be running a special promotion for our regular
soup customers. We will be issuing Cards that the cashier will
stamp after every soup purchase. After 5 punches our customers will receive a free Campbells soup mug and a re-fill price of
$1.49 for the entire semester. I hope this answered your questions. Again, thank you for your concern and your patronage at
the Food Court.

Professors of literature are in no position to mock the commercial aesthetic, which emphatically drives home its hegemony on a daily, nay hourly, basis. Perhaps the advocates of
canonical art need to learn, like Humbert Humbert, to appreciate the beauty of the banal. Kant claimed that the experience
of the sublime sprang from contemplation of the uncreated, of
the natural, which he opposed to the idolatrous adoration of the
Biblical works of mens hands. He was wrong. In the 21st century, the sublime is produced by the seamless merger of aesthetics with the market, of desire with prostitution, of artwork
with product. Im off to claim my free cup of Campbells.

Beautiful Indonesia (In Miniature)

David Womack

On a rainy day in November, at the Beautiful Indonesia in Miniature Park, two nearly-naked men from Irian Jaya (the Indonesian half of the island of New Guinea) sit on the cold marble
floor in the main pavilion. Their dark faces are streaked with
red and yellow ochre. Crescent-shaped bones hang from their
noses. They sit with their long, banded arms wrapped around
their knees, smoking cigarettes and arguing. In front of them
a Balinese dancer stares wide eyed into the middle distance.
Without turning her head she looks from right to left to right.
Her forefingers flutter like hummingbirds, beating quadruple
time to the rhythm of the gamelan. These performances are one
of the few things in Indonesia that always take place on time,
whether anyone is there to see them or not. As long as they continue, culture is alive and well in Indonesia or at least that is
the official position.
Beautiful Indonesia in Miniature Park, or Taman Mini as it
is known in Indonesias national language, Bahasa, lies six kilometers outside of the capital city, Jakarta. On a weekday afternoon, particularly during the rainy season, the 250-acre park is
one of the best places in the Jakarta area for a leisurely stroll. On
a sunny weekend, however, the park can be thronged with visitors. Taman Mini draws an estimated 4.5 million visitors a year,
the vast majority of them Indonesian. Visitors come to Taman
Mini from all over the Indonesian archipelago, which stretches
across an expanse of ocean slightly larger than the continental
United States. The park features a lake that symbolizes this vast
expanse of ocean with islands that represent a few dozen of the
archipelagos 13,677. The islands in the lake are identically flat,
featureless, with low bushes representing mountain ranges,
and are best viewed from above in a creaky gondola that dangles from a sagging cable. From the gondola, one can also see
most of the pavilions that are the parks main attractions. There
is a pavilion for each of Indonesias 26 provinces, and one for
East Timor, which has just gained independence after a 23-year
struggle for independence.
The pavilions were built by traditional craftsmen brought in
from the provinces by the government. The Minangkabau pavilion, representing western Sumatra, has soaring, overlapping
roofs made of coconut-fiber thatch. The walls are intricately
carved and painted with symbols. Taman Minis guides teenage boys who freelance for tips and a chance to practice their
English are particularly proud of the fact that the pavilions
are authentic, or asli. They were built with all the rituals and
ceremonies necessary to insure that they are fully endowed as
spiritual, as well as material, entities. The pavilions are not replicas of existing buildings, rather were designed to be exemplary
structures larger and more intricate than any other traditional
buildings in Indonesia. Some, such as the Javanese pavilion
built in the style of the Kraton, are even considered sacred.
The pavilions, and the ceremonies and rituals that take place
within them, are meant to exemplify local tradition purified and
elevated to the national level.
Taman Mini is beginning to show signs of wear since its
benefactors, the Suhartos, were ousted in 1998. The concrete
paths have cracked and the paint is beginning to peel off the
concession stand. Although widely known among
36 Indonesians, Taman Mini generally receives just a few

lines in foreign guidebooks descriptions that are most often

apologetic. They imply that Beautiful Indonesia in Miniature is
a place for people who do not have the time or resources to go
to the islands themselves. This is not the view that most Indonesians have of the park and is certainly not the governments
position. During Suhartos 30-year rule, Taman Mini was seen
as Indonesias most significant cultural symbol. Despite its current disrepair, the park and the policies it represents continue to
shape Indonesia today.
The idea for Taman Mini came to the dictators wife, Tien
Suharto, during a visit to Disneyland on a sunny day in 1971.
Tien was said to have been completely smitten with the Magic
Kingdom. Perhaps this was because her life had the elements of a fairy tale, though with none of the easy moral lessons. Tien, who traced her lineage back to Javanese royalty,
had married below her class. Her husband who would go on
to rule a nation that included pirates, witches and cannibals
was from a poor family. A short man with a blunt nose and pockmarked face, Suharto had risen through the military and had
come to power as the result of a coup in which he is rumored
to have had his rivals murdered in their beds. Tien was his muse
and constant companion and is said by some to have been the
brains behind Suhartos brawn.
The most remarkable thing about Taman Mini is that it
was built at all. Taman Mini cost $25 million a preposterous
above and overleaf: photos of Taman Mini courtesy of the Indonesian Consulate

amount of money in Indonesia in 1971. A group of officials

objected to the project, pointing out that for the same price the
government could build 52 small industries or seven large universities. Public protests drew large crowds and reached a climax when the Save Our Peoples Money movement marched
on Tiens Our Hope foundation. The army opened fire with live
ammunition and at least four people were seriously wounded.
Suharto finished the clash with characteristic subtlety, saying
of the dissenters, Quite frankly, Ill deal with them. No matter
who they are!1
Why would the leader of a struggling republic risk public outrage and financial ruin to build a theme park his wife
dreamed up at Disneyland? Suharto himself addressed the
question at the dedication on 20 April 1975. Life, he said,
will not have a beautiful and deep meaning with material sufficiency only Ones life will be calm and complete only when
it is accompanied by a spiritual welfare. The direction and
guidance toward that spiritual welfare is, in fact, already in our
possession; it lies in our beautiful and noble national cultural
inheritance.2 This remark gives a clue as to the true function
Taman Mini would come to serve for the government. Beautiful Indonesia in Miniature Park was not built to be an amusing diversion. Rather, it would serve as the nations spiritual
treasure trove a locked box containing the nations cultural
wealth to be kept close to Indonesias heart and its capital.
Suhartos definition of culture would be elucidated by the festivities that followed.
In addition to the foreign dignitaries, the governors of
Indonesias territories were recalled to Jakarta for Taman Minis
dedication ceremony. As the representative of the cultures of
that region, each of the governors were required by Suharto to
dress in a customary costume. Under these orders, the governor of Irian Jaya wore a fur crown and put a bone through his
nose. (This, of course, hardly obscured the fact that he was not
a dark-skinned native of Irian Jaya, but a light-skinned Javanese.) The other governors, who were similarly costumed,
were Javanese as well. Though the effect of all these pale,
pudgy Javanese bureaucrats dressed up like jungle warriors
must have been comical, it seems safe say that, given the pious
tone of the proceedings, no one laughed except, perhaps, for
Suharto himself. For Suharto, the masquerade was an ideological victory with far-reaching implications. He had succeeded in
separating the idea of culture from the people who practiced
it. Culture was now a costume that could be taken on or off,
depending on the occasion.
Suharto would soon drop his mask. Having secured his position as a champion of culture in Indonesia, he would seize the
land and resources of the outer islands and set about to dilute
and destroy the people whose culture he had so recently celebrated. These policies would cost hundreds of thousands
of lives and fuel the violent separatist movements that now
threaten to break Indonesia apart. By the time Taman Mini
was completed, the national government had already begun
to claim locally held property. The Forest Development Law
removed control of the nations forests from the communities
and gave it to the national government. The results were devastating. In 1966, when Suharto took power, 75 percent of Indonesia, or 144 million hectares, were covered in forest.
37
By the time Suharto was removed from power in 1998,

only 53 million hectares, or 37 percent, of the land remained

forested. Indonesia had lost its rain forest at more than twice
the world average. Suharto pushed the government authority
into the most isolated regions of Sumatra, Sulawesi, Kalimantan and Irian Jaya. Huge camps were created in the middle of
the jungle. Workers were brought in from Java and Madura.
The money went to Jakarta. Tien Suharto even earned the nickname Mrs. Ten Percent because of the cut she took on business deals. When Suharto left office his successor estimated
his fortune at $45 billion enough to repay Indonesias debts
to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Taman
Mini and the cultural policies it represented had paid for themselves many times over.
Suhartos policies brought equal devastation upon the people. Hundreds of thousands of people who resisted the authority of the Indonesian government were tortured and killed in
East Timor, Irian Jaya, Aceh, and elsewhere. Recognizing that
culture, though officially entombed at Taman Mini, might still
be an organizing force, Suharto pushed a policy designed to
dilute these populations. The program was called transmigrasi.
Transmigrasi consisted of moving people from the densely
populated islands such as Java to the outer islands. As many
as 3.5 million people were lured by the promise of free land and
housing but in fact found themselves stranded in isolated communities consisting of tiny, tin-roofed houses laid down at the
edge of the jungle. Like canaries in a coalmine, the immigrants
were used to inform the government of local hostility. When the
hostility reached the boiling point, they would let the government know by dying.
The participants in transmigrasi have been the victims
of some of the most extreme ethnic violence. On one island
alone, Kalimantan, members of the Dyak ethnic group the
famed Wild men of Borneo have slaughtered more than 550
immigrants in numerous attacks. Claiming a revival of ancient
headhunting practices, they leave the headless corpses of men,
women, and children strewn about the dirt streets. Although
they seem to fancy themselves warriors descending from the
forest primeval, they are several decades too late for that. In
reality, most of these killers lived a life that was remarkably
close to their victims struggling to eke a living from a land that
had been reduced to red dirt and saw grass.
In May of last year, the Beautiful Indonesia in Miniature Park
held a mock Dyak wedding. At more or less the same time,
the Dyaks held a mass execution in Kalimantan. Both of these
events were seen as a celebration of Dyak culture by the people
who staged them. Neither has much to do with the hunters and
gatherers who once lived in the worlds second largest rain forest and developed a complex system of rituals and beliefs that
were in harmony with a world that has now almost entirely vanished. Beautiful Indonesia in Miniature has overtaken beautiful
Indonesia.
1 John Pemberton, On the Subject of Java (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp.
157-158.
2 Ibid.

Paint and Paint Names

Daniel Harris

I had painted walls only once in my life and was entirely unprepared to tackle the six rooms of the apartment I recently purchased. What began as an exciting project of renovation,
a fresh start, a new lease on life, ended as a costly disaster.
Tawny Day Lily looked like a drop of golden sunshine on
the paint chip, but on the four walls of my bedroom it was
a technicolor catastrophe, as was Dark Salmon, a cloying shade of pink, and Candied Yam, a sulfurous yellow that
transformed my room into the girlish lair of a cheerleader.
Tangerine Dream looked no better in my hallway, and the
Citrus Blast of my pantry, when seen in conjunction with the
Caramelized Orange of my kitchen, turned my front rooms
into a fruit stand.
No one had mentioned to me what many consider a rule
of thumb in choosing paint: find a color you like and then select
one at least two shades lighter or, better yet, choose another
color altogether, preferably white, or, better still, dont choose
and let someone more knowledgeable make the decision
for you. When magnified on the wall, a square inch of Pumpkin Patch or Iguana Green becomes several square yards of
fluorescent orange and radioactive malachite. The difference
between the chips one selects from the color preview palettes
on display in hardware stores and what one slaps onto the
plasterboard is so extreme that the inexperienced homeowner
chooses this unequivocally visual product blindly, sight unseen.
As tangibly physical as paint is, we are not actually buying a
bucket of latex and pigment but a far more fanciful literary product, an evocative name and a piece of paper no bigger than a
bookmark, a type of phantasmal paint that we apply not with
our brushes but with our imaginations, which rise to the bait
of such arresting, yet evanescent, two-word haikus as Bright
Laughter, Butterfly Bush, Fleeting Fawn, and Pale Parsnip.
Words, however, are a poor substitute for pigment. Strawberry
Mousse and Pineapple Delight may be great for the taste buds,
but they are hell on the eyes.
The vast selection of colors available in paint stores (I counted
over 50 shades of pink, among them Pink Popsicle, Marshmallow Bunny, and Tickled Pink) complicates the homemakers
task even further. Although the Inter-Society Color Council
recognizes only 267 colors and, moreover, gives them such
prosaic names as Reddish Orange, Very Light Green, and
Dark Red, Pittsburgh Paint currently offers 1,800colors and
Benjamin Moore no less than 2,000 a mere fraction of the
14,000 the latter has produced since its inception in 1883. Such
bewildering variety would challenge the taxonomical skills of
even the most ingenious of Linnaeuses who, as it stands, has
no tidy Latinate system to make order out of chaos but gives
way to despairing giddiness, lapsing into free association. The
muse of non-sequiturs inspires him to dream up such marginally descriptive epithets as Splish Splash, Pitter Patter, Golfers
Tan, Pollination, Salted Shrimp, Old Pickup Truck Blue, Rubber
Duckie, and Fuzzy Navel. The absence of established rules also
creates nonsensical redundancies and contradictions;
40 Surf Spray for Pratt and Lambert is pale yellow, while

California Paints Tropical Surf is dark greenish-blue and

Benjamin Moores Ocean Spray is white-green, just as
Mission for Pratt is whitish-beige while Mission for California
Paints is blackish-blue.
Before the late 19th century, no primordial paint Adam could
christen a wall color a single name because there were no
stable paint species. Each professional house painter mixed
his colors on the spot by eye (not by a predetermined recipe)
and was therefore seldom, if ever, able to reproduce the exact
same shade. In 1867, the first ready-made paint was patented,
and in 1892, Benjamin Moore brought out a revolutionary powdered paint called Muresco, a kind of instant freeze-dried mix
to which one simply added water and stirred. It was an exciting innovation heralded by interior decorators and contractors, even if it was available in an admittedly limited palette
(namely, white). Only after World War II, with the rise of home
ownership and suburbanization, did the average consumer
succumb to the appeal of the do-it-yourself movement and
begin to paint his walls himself, without the help of the professional painter. He was thus thrown into an unprecedented
intimate relationship with paint manufacturers and retailers
which, before World War II, had largely dealt with gruff contractors who knew precisely what they wanted and didnt need to
be seduced by the rhapsodic poetry of paint names. The deprofessionalization of painting thus gave birth to a whole new
literary genre: the lyrical if infantilized rhetoric with which companies began to captivate the novice, who insisted that paint
products have enticing names, not just the numeric formulae
printed on each chip.
A spectrum analysis of paint names yields a distinct vision of
the consumer. For one, she is female, as can be seen in the preponderance of such stereotypically girlish colors as Ballet Slipper, Pink Fairy, Cinderella, Debutante Pink, Pussy Willow, and
Light Chiffon. For another, the divisions between her senses
are at best permeable. She perceives the world synesthetically through a euphoric haze, with sight collapsing into taste
and touch into smell. She not only sees colors, she hears them
(Melodious Mauve, Green Melody), smells them (Citrus Sachet,
Patchouli), feels them (Dusty Mink, Soft Satin), and tastes them
(Tangy Taffy, Pizza Pie). In order to appeal to the consumer,
paint manufacturers create colors that suggest a nearly mystical state of arousal, the sensual tempest stirred up by virtually
all contemporary advertisers who sell products by instilling us
with a false vision of the body, one afflicted with an almost neurasthenic sensitivity. Paint names quiver with an inexplicably
voluptuous agitation, which we are meant to find contagious,
so electric that our senses become unstable, clouded by the distortions of hype.
According to this anatomically incorrect vision of a body
that responds to the world far more keenly than we really
do, the primary organ for experiencing colors is not the optical nerve but the taste bud, which discerns in colors mouthwatering flavors, especially those that cause cavities: Orange
Marmalade, Spice Cookie, Crme Brle, Toffee Crunch, and
Belgian Waffle. Paint names are high in sugar, cholesterol,
opposite: a random sampling of Benjamin Moores white paint chips

and empty calories, from Almond Cream and Applesauce

Cake to Red Gumball and Lime Meringue. Although we live in
an extremely visual culture, the paint-namer is often unable to
describe hues without reference to food, whose representation poses far greater challenges to the advertiser, since taste
cannot be conveyed through the available media, whereas
colors lend themselves to television broadcasts and glossy
magazines. Perhaps it is because of the very impossibility of
capturing in words the flavor of an apple or, for that matter, of
a gin and tonic, that the rhetoric of taste is far more advanced
than the rhetoric of color, and the paint manufacturer is forced
to piggyback on a more mature commercial language developed by an industry that has had to overcome insurmountable
obstacles to entice the consumer, who cannot yet taste the difference between a pixel and a Benday Dot, an audio frequency
and a video signal. Perhaps also the ineloquence of publicity
departments in the face of the color wheel reveals that a visual
culture like ours has never really examined the assumptions
that structure its experience of the world, or has come to rely
so heavily on images that it has lost the ability to discuss them
and has been reduced simply to evoking them, as if the mere
act of their presentation were an adequate substitute for their
description and analysis. Our eyes may have improved as we
abandon words for special effects and computer graphics, but
our tongues have become lazy.
Food names are also a convenient disguise for the very
opposite of food: for the inedible, for Cobalt2-Ethylhexanoate,
Titanium Dioxide, 2- (2-Butoxyethoxy)-ethanol, and, of course,
lead, all of which cause birth defects, cancer, mental retardation, sterility, silicosis, and damage to the liver, lungs, and
central nervous system. It is not coincidental that paint
manufacturers the gourmets of scrumptious nomenclature
advise us to use their products in well-ventilated rooms, keep
them out of the reach of small children, and seek immediate
medical attention if swallowed, ironic precautions for a trade
that names colors after things that are expressly designed to be
swallowed, even devoured, as well as inhaled like the headiest
of perfumes. The transformation of paint into an ersatz beverage, snack, or cologne is a way of banishing the specter of the
skull and crossbones, since the ultimate test of a substances
harmlessness is our ability to ingest it. The spurious connection manufacturers make between the paint can and the dinner
plate provides an abstract, literary antidote to a very concrete
poison, which seems infinitely less virulent when it is likened,
however rhetorically, to a Hot Toddy, a Crisp Won Ton, a Lime
Tart, and a Sweet Honeydew Melon.
Toxicity wears another mask, the imaginary ingredient.
Colors were once identified by the substances from which they
were made: cochineal, a brilliant red pigment produced by
pulverizing the bodies of thousands of cochineal insects,
(parasites that live on cacti); azure from azurite, a blue copper
ore first powdered and then washed in soap, gum, and lye;
iris green, made from the sap of iris flowers thickened with
alum; and saffron, from the golden yellow spice produced by
grinding the dried stigmas of crocus flowers. Now, the paint
manufacturer actively conceals the substances from which his
colors are made. In fact, virtually no naturally occurring pigments
are in use today. With only a handful of exceptions, col42 ors are created in laboratories through the artificial com-

bination of inorganic chemicals fused under abnormally high

temperatures. It should come as no surprise that there is no sesame in Sesame, tarragon in Tarragon, or oregano in Oregano,
just as there is no okra in Pickled Okra, pineapple in Pineapple
Sage, or brandy in Brandied Pears. And yet paint companies still
hark back to an age in which names identified a colors primary
ingredient, as if their product line had not been concocted in
Pyrex flasks full of toxic catalytic agents bubbling over Bunsen
burners, but plucked out of fields (Sunflower, Yellow Begonia),
harvested from trees (Fresh Peaches, Honey Maple), or fished
out of the ocean (Pale Coral, Tropical Seaweed Green). Paint
names are small white lies that suggest the pigment was found,
not made, distilled from the leaves of geraniums and the pulp of
papayas, a lyrical fib that at once allays consumer fears about
toxins and elicits nostalgia for a lost bucolic world.
Whether it is a bundle of palm fronds or a palisade of granite, the wall, which we have decorated for at least 9,000 years,
chronicles the history of mans fight against nature. This protective obstruction was once natures enemy, the barrier that
sheltered us from elements we simultaneously feared and
worshiped. It is now natures tombstone, a victory monument
that shows how completely we have vanquished our environments, how we no longer fear them but view them instead as a
source of recreation and refreshment, a luxurious spa in which
to soothe frazzled nerves, a Sylvan Whimsey, a Sunlit Glade, a
Sweet Meadow, a Green Pasture. The wall no longer excludes
nature but rather brings the out-of-doors inside with us, where
we live our lives amidst a color idyll, a pastoral of Prairie Winds,
Summer Rains, Woodland Ferns, Spring Tulips, and Green
Jungles. The wall is not a barricade but an imaginary window
that has eliminated the division between outside and inside
and repotted our gardens right in our kitchens and bedrooms,
or, perhaps more accurately, built our kitchens and bedrooms
smack on top of our flowerbeds.
With the rise of cities, the walls real enemy is not nature
but other human beings who lead secretive lives on the
opposite side, lives that are contiguous with ours but that we
seldom see, that make their presence felt only by means of
late-night quarrels, the distasteful smells of cooking, creaking
box springs, and the constant murmur of flushing toilets. Overcrowding and urbanization have given the wall new meaning.
Ever since the first loose stone was piled on top of another,

crude partitions have delineated property and thus served

as architectural extensions of our sense of identity, a way of
saying to our enemies mine, a deed of ownership we sign in
bricks and mortar. As we are herded together by overpopulation and are forced to abandon the luxury of detached dwellings for small apartments, the architectural ramparts of our
identities are besieged by the madding crowd, which would
claim its share of the ever-dwindling space available in which to
lead lives that have become more and more solitary the closer
we live to each other. The poetry of paint names is based on
a misanthropic aesthetic, one that pretends that our walls are
not communal property, are not shared, that there is nothing
behind them but the green sward, wide open spaces devoid of
other people, vast horizons of Island Dawns, Arizona Sunsets,
Big Skies, Mountain Forests, Pink Mesas, and Burning Sands.
Paint provides us with a psychological barrier from our neighbors, a way of achieving a sense of self-containment and allowing our imaginations to revel in that most pressing desideratum
of urban life space, the empty clearings available for a song on
the color preview palette.
In the Juicy Fruit world in which we live, our sense of wonder at
color has diminished to a state of bored acceptance, the indifference of the chromatically privileged to their wealth. Color meant
so much more to us when we lived in black and white rather
than a harshly colorized world, when the purple reserved for royalty was painstakingly made from millions of tiny droplets of ink
excreted by shellfish, and when blue was produced from lapis
lazuli imported at exorbitant cost from Persia, usually in order
to paint the now oxidized robes of the Virgin Mary. In fact, ever
since the Industrial Revolution made colors commonplace, we
not only take color for granted but are somewhat suspicious of
it, and associate garish clothing in particular with the tastelessness of the proletariat. Before pigment was mass-produced in
factories, color was a luxury that only the well-to-do could afford,
whereas peasants and workmen were forced to settle for various
shades of brown a color that is, not surprisingly, almost entirely
absent from the medieval and early Renaissance painters palette. When the common people finally experienced their color
liberation, the class associations of the spectrum were reversed,
and upper- and middle-class men in particular frowned upon the
proletariats unbridled experimentation with gaudy jackets and
flashy cravats.
When I gasped in horror at the riot of colors that I had so
mistakenly created in my rooms, I was in part responding to this
snobbish prejudice against vibrant hues, to my undemocratic
urge to tone down and mute my color scheme, opting for tasteful pastels that never draw attention to themselves, that fade,
quite literally, into the woodwork. My fear of making embarrassing gaffes also stems from the association I make between
bright colors and the marketplace, which, as Ruskin once libelously said of Whistler, dashes the paint pot in our faces, affronting us with acid-pink awnings and flashing neon signs. We mark
the distinction between the public and private world with stark
color differences, retreating from the kaleidoscope of dots and
pixels that assault us on the streets into the cozy banality of an
unassuming palette.
But perhaps our preference for unassuming earth
43
tones has an even deeper psychological origin. Our

skittishness before the color excesses of consumerism may

suggest a direct, if entirely unconscious, correlation between
taste and camouflage, between our love of subdued tones and
our fear of predators, our desire to blend into the foliage and
become all but invisible. The display of bright colors is a key
part of mating rituals, of the dalliances of birds that unfurl flamboyant plumage or lizards that inflate iridescent throats. Only
when one is flirting, however, does one risk becoming such
an easy target and then only in hopes of attracting a very
special type of surprise attack, a fatal ambush by Cupid and
his arrows. When I balked before the mess I had made of my
walls, was I in some dark, forgotten corner of my mind, the
reptilian brain that still resides in the swamps from which we
emerged, reacting to the way I had violated my self-protective invisibility? Does the evolutionary basis of good taste lie
not in self-expression, as we are taught to believe, but in selfnegation, self-effacement, the eminently practical desire of the
animal to survive in comfort in a lair that even the most sharpeyed species, a step or two higher on the food chain, would
be hard-pressed to spot amid the brambles from which it is
deliberately indistinguishable?

Things Fall Apart:

An interview with George Scherer
Jeffrey Kastner

A professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at Princeton University, George Scherer is a materials
scientist and a leading researcher in the field of stone conservation. Educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Scherer began his career in industry, working for companies
including Corning and DuPont, where he specialized in sol-gel
processing, a low-temperature method for producing ceramics
with consumer applications including scratch-resistant coatings
for eyeglasses. In the late 1980s, Scherer attended a conference
where George Wheeler, a conservator at New Yorks Metropolitan Museum of Art, discussed the use of various treatments,
including sol-gel technology, in the preservation of art objects
and architecture made from stone. After arriving at Princeton
in 1996, Scherer began a research program into the effects of
various environmental factors on stone artworks and monuments and potential ways to counteract them. Speaking on the
phone with Cabinet editor Jeffrey Kastner, Scherer discussed
the threats posed to stone by water, salt, wind, and pollution; the
utilization of predictive modeling in forecasting their impact on
various types of stone; and the potential application of such models in speculating about the long-term fate of objects ranging
from marble sculpture to the face of Mount Rushmore.
What are the main environmental threats to stone?
Water is basically the problem. The conservator at the
Cloisters says that 90% of art conservation is controlling the flow
of water, and thats right. Many times you can do a lot by just fixing the roof and the downspouts and that kind of thing. One main
mechanism of deterioration is freeze-thaw damage and another
is salt crystallization. You can get salt into materials from a variety
of directions sometimes its in the groundwater, sometimes you
can leach it out of the mortar, and sometimes it forms directly by
chemical reaction with air pollution. And once those salt crystals
start to grow, they can cause a lot of damage.
Are most treatments designed primarily to protect stone from
harmful environmental effects or to stop deterioration thats
already started? Are these two very different kinds of processes?
They are different kinds of processes, and we may try to do one
or the other or both. For instance, if you have an object thats
going to remain outdoors and its beginning to deteriorate, you
would like to stop whatevers doing the harm and restore some
of its strength. Sometimes you can stop the problem and sometimes you cant. Suppose I have a sculpture out in the middle of a
plaza theres nothing I can do to stop rain from hitting it, so its
going to get wet and it may not even be possible to prevent water
from getting into it. You could imagine putting a water-repellent
coating on the top surface, but if its standing out in the open,
theres a good chance that water will rise up from the ground by
capillary action, the way it rises into a sponge. And if you cant
stop water from getting into it you cant stop frost damage. So
maybe the only thing you can do is to try to restore some strength
to the stone and so youre just treating the symptom and
44 not the cause. There are other cases where you can treat

the cause. So if you have small object sitting on a pedestal, you

can take it inside and put a water-repellent coating on all of the
surfaces so that water cant get into it from any direction. And
then you can eliminate the cause of the problem.
Are there treatments that do both things?
There are treatments that do both and treatments that only do
one. For instance, putting a water-repellent coating on the material doesnt restore any integrity to the internal structure. On the
other hand, there are things you can soak into the stone, because
most stones are surprisingly porous and will soak up material
that will provide, say, water repellency and at the same time act
like a glue to restore strength to the material.
Weve been talking a lot about water repellency, but
generally speaking thats something that conservators are wary
of. You can put a coating on a wall of a building youre trying to
conserve, but you cant necessarily stop water from getting in
through a leaky roof or rising up from the foundation. And if you
let water get into a wall that has a sealed surface, then the water
cant get back out, and a freezing event can destroy the whole
surface.
So you have to be careful what youre trapping inside?
Exactly. The tendency is to use breathable coatings at the least, if
not to avoid water repellency altogether, because its dangerous
to trap moisture inside.
One main area of your current research deals with salt damage,
with a process that works to reduce the destructive tendencies of salt crystals.
Yes. What I particularly like about that is that were attacking the
mechanism and not just dealing with the consequence. Most of
the things that people do to defend against salt have to do with
restoring strength or controlling the flow of water, but what
were trying to do is to deal with cases where you cant prevent
the water from getting in. For instance, you have a cathedral
thats too immense to treat and you may not be able to prevent
the water from getting in, but this treatment would allow the
crystals to come and go without doing any harm.
You know, the Sphinx is being damaged and there are
reports by Egyptian experts who claim that the damage is mostly
being done by salt, and that it has to do with the rise and fall of the
Nile water table. When the water rises, it brings salty water up
into the Sphinx and then when it dries out, the salts precipitate
and do harm. And this is a case where you cant get underneath
the object and stop the water from rising up. Now its also possible that theres an important issue of thermal shock, because the
temperature changes quite a lot. And there was a recent paper
that said you could go out in the morning and hear the Sphinx
popping. It claimed that that was because the salts were precipitating; but you could argue that maybe it was the temperature
going up.
Another important issue, of course, is acid rain. Limestone,
the material the Sphinx is made from, is relatively soluble in acid
and so is marble, whereas sandstones are not. Just the natural
acidity of rainwater will dissolve marble and limestone away at
a rate such that medieval marble sculpture would be showing
serious distress. As the acid runs down it converts the calcium
carbonate into a soluble salt that washes off. Natural rainwater

in the most pristine environment is slightly acidic because of the

CO2 thats naturally in the air a pH of 7 is neutral and you bring it
down to 5.6 with the natural CO2 concentration. Incidentally, the
greenhouse effect, the increase in CO2 in the air, has almost no
impact on that, because you could double the amount of CO2 in
the air and it would make very little change in the acidity. What
really changes the acidity is other kinds of air pollution so if
youre in New York City, the pH of the water could be down to 4
because youve got sulfates and nitrates and other things from
burning fossil fuels. And those things bring down the water pH so
much that they grossly accelerate the dissolution.
How important is geography?
A marble sculpture sitting in a pristine environment will decay
slowly, and the same sculpture sitting in New York might decay
40 times faster thats the difference between a pH of 4 and of
5.6. So if you have a medieval sculpture sitting in a little village in
Italy where its quite clean, it would show distress. A sculpture in
Rome would have been fine up until about 1850, but in the 150
years since it might have lost all the features of its face. You can
find dramatic photographs that show a sculpture photographed
in the 19th century and it looks perfectly okay it might be a little
dirty, but all its features are there and 60 or 100 years later it has
no face.
So the Sphinx might also be showing the effects of the Cairo
metropolitan pollution?
Yes. Youd also want to find out which way the wind was blowing.
Prevailing winds carrying pollution are an issue. What about
wind erosion in general?
I think thats a pretty minor effect. From what Ive read about this,
the sand grains arent easily picked off the ground by the wind.
Typically the grains that are relatively heavy dont get picked up
more than about a meter and the Sphinx, youll recall, is sunk in
the ground, in a pit. In fact, that pit is large enough that the sand
grains that come across fall into the pit and dont hit the sculpture. But in the past, you know, it was buried in the sand and in
that case it was being scoured by the sand that was actually able
to come right up to the surface and hit it. And at various times
over these thousands of years, the levels of the dunes varied. So
apparently theres a considerable amount of damage that was
done by erosion in past centuries, when it was buried, and the
damage would only occur right at the line where the tops of the
sand dunes were.
So there are a lot of different things we need to be thinking
about wind, geography, the relation of geography to pollution
patterns.
In the city, the sheltering of neighboring buildings and the direction of the wind can also have a big effect. And its not unusual to
find that one wall or one corner of a building is deteriorating much
faster than another, because it gets more wet, or whatever.
Are there models that can predict the effects of these various conditions on different objects? Could you take the David,
for instance, and put it in Florence and turn the time
45
machine to 100 or 200 years from now and get a sense

of what might be happening to it based on these kinds of variables?

In some cases there are, and the easiest one is acid dissolution.
Because you can measure how fast a marble or a limestone dissolves in acid. And if you know that it will take off a millimeter in
50 years, then you can extrapolate how long it will be before the
nose is gone. For that kind of thing, you would need to know the
level of pollution and the pH of the rainwater and how much rain
falls in a year in that location.
But is the decay regular enough so you can say a millimeter
is coming off the surface of the whole thing? Or is it conceivable that a millimeter lost in a certain place could then weaken
some feature and cause it to fall off?
Its a very good point. It wouldnt lose surface uniformly all over
the rain for instance would probably hit it from one direction or
another. Moreover, as the water runs down the cliff, the acid in
the water is consumed by reaction with stone, so it becomes
more dilute, and the resulting damage is not uniform over the
surface.
Could we play this game with Mt. Rushmore? Its not necessarily the case that the decay would be consistent over a large
feature-rich environment like that.
I dont know offhand what kind of stone it is, but in a place like
that, I would guess that air pollution isnt a big problem. Freezethaw damage certainly should be. You could imagine that there
might be a weak layer at the base of the nose you dont have
to wear away the nose from the tip back, you could just snap it
off. So the heterogeneity of the cliff is an issue. If theres a weak
layer somewhere, then thats where the damage will happen and
everything in front of it could come off.
What about vegetation?
Things like lichen dissolve the stone. The way they get a foothold
is that they exude acids and they can chew away at the surface
and then send their roots down. There are some pretty dramatic
photos of roots embedded in various kinds of stones theyre
capable of chewing up anything.
Everything from bacteria to algae to mosses and higher
plants are capable of invading stone. The little guys will dissolve
away the surface and get a foothold, but the rate at which they
do damage is probably not so great. But as the higher plants
move in, theyre capable of sending their roots down and really
doing macroscopic damage. Youve seen seedlings growing up
through asphalt they can sink their roots in and their roots swell
and they can generate enormous pressures.
Like when the tree in front of your house flips your sidewalk
up?
Exactly. So you could easily imagine that happening on
Mt. Rushmore. You can use biocides to prevent plants from invading. I dont know if they actually send people out to climb around
and pull out saplings, but that could be a major cause of deterioration if a plant opens a crack then the water gets in. Or it could
work the other way around, where you have a fairly nice surface
of stone that soaks up moisture and then in a sudden freeze,
you get cracking from the freezing and that opens up an
46 opportunity for plants to get in.

Is there a way to use models to forecast the long-term future

of a large-scale formation like Mt. Rushmore? Presumably the
weakening of the wrong area could lead to a catastrophic case
of decay that cant be forecast because you cant know where
its going to get weak.
Honestly, I doubt you could very accurately. You can do a
predication like that under certain particular circumstances that
youve touched on already if the materials homogeneous and it
decays away at a uniform predictable rate and it doesnt have any
veins in it. But in the case of a mountain, thats not likely to be the
case. There are going to be faults in it and there are going to be
places where moisture or plants or roots can get in and then you
can have chunks coming off at a time. I mean you could have a
whole ear or a whole nose fall off. In principle, you should be able
to look around at the structure of the cliff and figure out where the
danger spots are if you can find porous layers or pockets where
water could get trapped. If you were to show me a vein that was
different from the bordering material, I could say, This looks like
a place we should divert water away from, but I wouldnt be in a
position to say, Its going to fail in 50 years. I would be surprised
if you could really project forward 500 or 1,000 years.

The Six Grandfathers, Paha Sapa, in the

Year 502,002 c.e.
Matthew BuckinghaM

The image overleaf shows what geologists believe the Six Grandfathers will look like in the year 502,002 C.E. Located just south
of the geographic center of the continental United States in the
Paha Sapa, or Black Hills, this mountain has also been called
Slaughterhouse Peak, Cougar Mountain, and is now referred to
as Mount Rushmore. Much older than the Alps, Himalayas, and
Pyrenees, the Paha Sapa and Six Grandfathers were formed
when subterranean pressure raised the earths crust into a huge
elliptical dome 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous
period. Today the 6,000-sq mile granite outcropping is visited
by two million tourists each year, who go there to gaze up at the
massive portraits of four American presidents Washington,
Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Lincoln carved into the Six Grandfathers between 1926 and 1941 by the sculptor Gutzon Borglum.
The first descendants of Europe to enter the Paha Sapa
were ponies progeny of the sixteen horses Hernn Cortz
brought with him from Spain to the New World. The Taos
Indians introduced them to the Kiowa in the 1600s. In the 18th
century, European westward expansion displaced the Sioux
from their native woodlands, who then, in turn, displaced the
Kiowa, acquiring their horses as well as the Paha Sapa.
Napoleon Bonaparte never saw the Louisiana Territory
that France had claimed under the doctrine of discovery. In
1803 US President Thomas Jefferson was prepared to pay the
French $10 million for New Orleans and the Florida peninsula,
but sensed that financially troubled France might be willing
to bargain. In the end Jefferson bought all the land from the
Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from the Gulf
Coast to Canada for $15 million about three cents an acre
doubling the size of the US . One year later, while exploring and
mapping the vast territory, Lewis and Clark began bestowing
symbolic citizenship on Native Americans by wrapping newborn Indians in the American flag.
Deemed unfit for civilization, new maps labeled the Paha
Sapa the Great American Desert, and the US Government
designated it as a Permanent Indian Country. Americans
like the Astor family in New York quickly replaced French and
English fur trading companies doing business with indigenous
people across the Louisiana Territory, earning up to half a million
dollars annually. In the summer of 1845, US Army Colonel S. W.
Kearny arrived at the Laramie fork of the Platte River and gave the
Sioux a flag made up of a series of diagonal lines, nine stars and
two hands clasped in friendship on a blue background. This was,
he told the Indians, the flag of the Sioux Nation.
To protect trespassing whites and ease tensions between
warring Native nations, the United States negotiated the first
Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1851. Native signatories agreed to live
on designated lands, including the Paha Sapa, which the treaty
promised to them forever. When the South seceded from the
Union, two pieces of legislation previously blocked by southern
Congressmen were passed: the Homestead Act and the Pacific
Railroad Act. The first granted 160 acres of land to any European-American who claimed it. The second transferred 170 million acres of public land to the transcontinental railroad companies, who resold it to finance construction of their rail lines and

insure development of towns along their routes. They also used

their influence over eastern newspapers to gain public support
for westward expansion and the inevitable Indian wars to follow. General Phil Sheridan, who commanded the US Army in the
west, enthusiastically observed that the new railroads would
bring the Indian problem to a final solution.
When gold was discovered in the Colorado and Montana
territories in 1864, white prospectors invading indigenous hunting grounds triggered a series of bloody conflicts. Quelling
native revolts was financially prohibitive. The monthly expense
for maintaining the US Army on the Plains was two million dollars $150,000 for each Native American killed. Humanitarians
back east, who had not faced conflict with Native Americans for
nearly 100 years, were outraged by the bloodshed in the west.
The Interior Department, charged with managing Indian affairs,
reasoned that it would be easier, less expensive, and more palatable to exterminate a culture than a people. The department
strategized the reservation system and offered the Fort Laramie
Treaty of 1868, which again guaranteed Sioux land rights to
the Black Hills forever. The treaty yielded to all Sioux demands,
marking the only time in its history that the United States negotiated peace on enemy terms.
But the economic depression following the Civil War
revived American fantasies of finding gold in the west. Under
the pretense of surveying the Black Hills for the US Army, George
Armstrong Custer violated the Treaty of 1868 when he led an
expedition into the Paha Sapa in search of gold. Custer, who
graduated last in his class at West Point but made general at
age 23, brought newspaper reporters, a photographer, a botanist, a geologist, and several professional miners with him. Halfway through the trip Custer dispatched a scout with a telegram
declaring he had found gold in the roots of the grass. Later,
Custers geologist denied any knowledge of gold in the Paha
Sapa.
President Ulysses Grant ordered the Sioux borders closed
to prospecting and sent a second expedition to the Black Hills
to assess its real estate value. Many soldiers guarding the Hills
deserted to become prospectors themselves. Some officers
urged miners to stake claims on their land before throwing
them out. After receiving cautious confirmation of gold in the
Black Hills from the second expedition, Grant secretly ordered
the army not to stop prospectors from entering the Black Hills.
Bounty hunters began collecting as much as $300 per Native
American killed.
Nervous for the safety of whites settling in the Black Hills,
Grant and the Interior Department invented a provocation to
justify declaring war on the Indians. In December 1875, the
Government ordered the Sioux tribes that had camped for the
winter in the Yellowstone and Powder River Valleys to abandon
their hunting grounds and return to the reservation an impossible order to carry out in the dead of winter. In the spring the
US Army assembled to attack the violators, but the Sioux and
Cheyenne were preparing as well. During the annual Sun Dance,
Sitting Bull had a vision of US soldiers riding their horses upside
down into his camp and falling to the ground, dead. In the vision
the corpses had no ears because white men never listen.
Nine days before the nations 100th birthday, Crazy Horse and
others defeated Custer and the 7th Cavalry in the battle
48 of Little Big Horn. The only survivors were a few army

horses. One, named Comanche, who was too injured to be of

use to tribal warriors, was nursed back to health by the US military and later exhibited and mythologized as the sole survivor
of Little Big Horn. The resounding defeat and its timing fueled
US anti-Indian sentiment even more. Grant offered the Sioux
the option of selling the Black Hills or starving to death. One
tenth of the Sioux population signed the 1877 agreement to
sell. Congress approved the act even though signatures from
three-fourths of the tribe were required for legal ratification. The
Sioux were moved out of the Black Hills and off of their hunting
grounds onto permanent reservations. Over the next twelve
years these Sioux lands were divided and radically reduced. The
long period of armed conflict ended in 1890 with the massacre
of more than 146 Sioux at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
Around 1900, a mining interest in New York City hired a
young lawyer named Charles Rushmore to travel to the Black
Hills to check land titles on its mines. One day, noticing a mountain peak in the distance, the lawyer asked if it had a name. His
guide jokingly replied that it was called Mount Rushmore. The
name stuck.
In 1923, the poet and South Dakota state historian, Doane
Robinson, came up with an idea to preserve what he perceived
to be the waning spirit of the American West. His idea, which
he hoped would also increase tourist revenues, was to commission a sculptor to transform a few of The Needles tall,
narrow, granite rock formations in the Black Hills into
memorials of major figures from the grand narrative of the American West. Enormous head-to-toe portraits of Custer, Lewis and
Clark, Red Cloud, and others would stand along a new highway
designed to lure automobile tourists away from Yellowstone
National Park. To do the work, Robinson invited one of Americas most famous sculptors at the time, Gutzon Borglum, the son
of Danish Mormon immigrants who, a generation before, had
made the ten-week trek along the Mormon trail through indigenous lands to Brigham Youngs New Jerusalem, Salt Lake City.
When Doane Robinson contacted Borglum, he was
embroiled in a struggle for control over a similar carving in Stone
Mountain, Georgia, a massive bas-relief monument to the Confederacy depicting its heroes Lee and Jackson marching across
the mountain followed by their troops. Shortly after Stone Mountain was initiated, it was used as the site of a ceremony to revive
the Ku Klux Klan in the 20th century. Many of the people funding and supervising the Stone Mountain carving were members
of the re-born Klan. Borglum himself joined the Klan in order to
exert more influence over the monument, ultimately becoming involved at the highest levels of the organization, working
behind the scenes in an attempt to elect a KKK member to the
White House. Internecine fighting among Klan leadership over
presidential politics and the funds for Stone Mountain resulted
in Borglums firing.
In South Dakota, Borglum found The Needles unsuitable for carving, and chose instead the Six Grandfathers. Naturalists attacked the plan, saying it desecrated the Black Hills
natural beauty. Doane Robinson defended it, stating God only
makes a Michelangelo or a Gutzon Borglum once in a thousand
years.
Borglum convinced Robinson that the project should be
less regional and more nationally patriotic. He proposed to

You should have a poster attached to this page. If you do not, there has been a
mistake of some sort. Please contact your nearest Cabinet Office.

make a Shrine of Democracy that would include two to four

presidential portraits, an entablature inscribed with a terse 500word history of the United States, and a hall of records where
the founding documents of American democracy would be
preserved and sacralized. When plans for the monument were
made public, newspaper reporters began phoning Charles
Rushmore in New York to find out what he had done to deserve
having a mountain named after him. Embarrassed about the
truth, he made a $5,000 donation to the monument.
As at Stone Mountain, money and politics slowed
Borglums progress. When President Coolidge announced he
would spend the summer of 1927 in South Dakota, the Mount
Rushmore Committee leapt at the chance to garner his support.
Hanging Squaw Creek was renamed Grace Coolidge Creek
after the Presidents wife. It was also stocked with trout confined by hidden nets. After finding the fishing a little too easy,
Coolidge gave it up for the summer, saying that he was either
the best fisherman alive or the luckiest.
Borglum worked on Mount Rushmore for fifteen years.
One million dollars was spent, 84% of which was federal money.
Despite telling Congress that the monument would have no
meaning without the Hall of Records, funds were never appropriated to finish it. Borglum also intended to carve the presidential portraits to the waist, but when he died in 1941 only the
faces were near completion. The US government restricted further spending on the memorial, allocating just enough money
for Borglums son, Lincoln, to finish the hair and faces on the
four heads. Even then the likenesses were not actually complete. Gutzon Borglums design intentionally left three extra
inches of granite on the surface of the sculpture so that nature,
in the form of wind and water erosion, would finish carving
Mount Rushmore for him over the next 20,000 years.
After World War II the Paha Sapa continued to attract
symbolic readings and was proposed as a home for the United
Nations. Promoters claimed the area was equidistant from
important national capitals and that the sparsely populated
landscape might inspire moral and spiritual reflection the way
similar landscapes had fostered Christianity, Buddhism, and
Islam. Another massive sculpture to honor Churchill, Stalin, and
Franklin Roosevelt was even proposed.
Although the UN made its home elsewhere, Doane
Robinsons vision of tourism in the Black Hills was fulfilled. By
the end of the century, white-owned businesses in the area
were earning $100 million annually. Sixty miles east of Mount
Rushmore, the Pine Ridge Reservation of the Oglala Sioux
remains one of the poorest regions in the US , with an average
annual unemployment rate of 80%. In the 1950s, President
Eisenhowers Urban Relocation Policy attempted to terminate
rural reservation life altogether, forcing Native Americans into
cities. An unintended result of this program was that many
Natives of the next generation, disillusioned with city life,
returned to the reservations where elders and native tradition
inspired new forms of political resistance modeled on black
activist and feminist movements. In 1970 and again in 1971,
members of the American Indian Movement (AIM ) reoccupied
Mount Rushmore for a total of thirteen weeks, demanding that
the US honor the treaty of 1868 and also return lands seized
from Pine Ridge during World War II.
50
In 1980, after decades of filing claims, the US

Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Sioux Nation, acknowledging that the Black Hills had been appropriated illegally by the US
government when it broke the treaty of 1868. But the court
also declared that the passage of time made the return of Sioux
lands impossible and ordered a $120 million reparation payment. The Sioux refused the money and in 1982 the Committee for the Return of the Black Hills was formed, consisting of
one representative from each Sioux tribe. The committee got
the support of New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley (Dem.), who
sponsored their legislation in Congress. Representatives of
South Dakota led the fight against the bill to return 1.3 of the
7.5 million acres of land the Supreme Court said belonged to
the Sioux. The bill was defeated in 1987. In 1990 further legislation over the Black Hills claim was defeated on Capitol Hill.
South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle (Dem.) established the
Open Hills Association in his home state, an organization dedicated to fighting future attempts by the Sioux to regain the
Paha Sapa. Daschle also began using Mount Rushmore to raise
campaign money, charging guests $5,000 dollars each for a
helicopter ride to the top of Washingtons head an area designated off-limits by the National Park Service.
The 1980 reparation payment, being held in trust by the US
government, has now grown, with interest, to about $570 million. 80% of Sioux tribal members recently polled affirmed that
the Black Hills are not for sale and said they support drafting
another bill to ask Congress for the return of the Paha Sapa to
the Sioux Nation.
Bibliography
Lincoln Borglum, Mount Rushmore (Las Vegas: KC Publications, 1977).
James Calhoun, With Custer in 74: James Calhouns Diary of the Black Hills Expedition, ed.
Lawrence A. Frost (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1979).
Ward Churchill, From a Native Son: Selected Essays in Indigenism, 1985-1995 (Boston:
South End Press, 1996).
Robert J. Dean, Living Granite: the Story of Borglum and the Mount Rushmore Memorial
(New York: Viking Press, 1949).
Gilbert Fite, Mount Rushmore (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1952).
Tim Giago, Crazy Horse Mountain and Mt. Rushmore Disgrace Black Hills, Indian Country
Today, 18 May 1998, vol. 17, no. 46.
Matthew Glass, Alexanders All: Symbols of Conquest and Resistance at Mount Rushmore, in David Chidester and Edward T. Linenthal, eds., American Sacred Space (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995).
Jesse Larner, Icon of Patriotism: Human Beings Are Lost Without a Collective Memory,
Indian Country Today, 11 May 1998, vol. 17, no. 45.
Edward Lazarus, Black Hills/White Justice: The Sioux Nation Versus the United States,
1775 to the Present (New York: Harper Collins, 1991).
Avis Little Eagle, Dont Sell the Black Hills, Indian Country Today, 29 June 1998, vol. 17,
no. 52.
Avis Little Eagle, Black Hills Land Claim Reaches Half a Billion: Mums the Word on Sioux
Claim, Indian Country Today, 4 May 1998, vol. 17, no. 44.
Howard Shaff & Audrey Karl Shaff, Six Wars at a Time: The Life and Times of Gutzon
Borglum, Sculptor of Mount Rushmore (Freeman, South Dakota: Pine Hill Press, 1985).
Judith Nies, Native American History (New York: Ballantine, 1996).
Rex Alan Smith, The Carving of Mount Rushmore (New York: Abbeville Press, 1985).
June Zeitner, Borglums Unfinished Dream (Aberdeen: North Plains Press, 1976).

Interpretations of the National

Park Service
Sharon Hayes

A few years ago, I traveled to upstate New York to satisfy a

long-standing desire to visit Eleanor Roosevelts historic home,
Val-Kill. The site is run by the National Park Service, an agency
of the US Department of the Interior, as is Franklin Delano
Roosevelts presidential home and the Vanderbilt Mansion, all
within a half hours drive of each other near Hyde Park, New
York. When I bought an admission ticket, the woman behind the
ticket window instructed me to join a small group in the waiting
area to wait for an interpreter to lead us through the home.
Amazed by the seemingly self-reflective assignation, I returned
to New York City eagerly reporting to friends that the enlightened National Park Service now calls its tour guides historical
interpreters.
The NPS currently administers 387 sites, approximately
120 of which are officially recognized National Historic Sites.
Originally established in 1916 to manage a growing number of
federally owned national parks, monuments, and reservations,
the Historic Sites Act of 1935 added to the NPS the responsibility of preserv[ing] for public use historic sites, buildings, and
objects of national significance for the inspiration and benefit of
the people of the United States.1 Influenced by the growth of
the museum industry in general as well as by larger social and
cultural trends, the NPS experienced particularly rapid expansion between the years 1963 and 1986, during which 72 historic
sites were added.2 While the agency was certainly influenced
by cultural trends toward social history that challenged the
practice of history as a narrative of influential figures as well
as by constructionist trends of the 1960s and 70s that called
attention to the subjectivity inherent in the writing of history, its
use of the term interpretation precedes such influence and is
grounded in a distinct genealogy.
There is an air of romanticism that permeates literature
written by the NPS as well as by its external boosters detailing
the historic beginnings of the national park system and the later
creation of its custodian, the NPS . In most of these accounts
there is a floating constellation of founding fathers, whose
individual encounters with a splendid and beautiful landscape
supposedly elucidate the moment when the national park
idea3 came to fruition. Similar publications attempt the same
with regard to the development of interpretation as an educational tool within the NPS . While the word interpretation was
referred to frequently in the early literature of the NPS , it was not
officially taken up until 1941, when the Branch of Research and
Education was renamed the Branch of Interpretation. C. Frank
Brockman, a career interpreter at Mount Rainier National Park,
traces the NPS use of the term interpretation to John Muir, a
naturalist studying the regions of Yosemite Valley and Sierra
Nevada. Brockman quotes Muir: Ill interpret the rocks, learn
the language of the flood, storm and the avalanche. Ill acquaint
myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the
heart of the world as I can.4 Though written in the 1870s, 40
Connie Gephart (one of the designers moms) ready to interpret at the Augustus
Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site.

years before the establishment of the NPS , this heavily circulated quote establishes the preeminence of interpretation as a
tool of translation and illumination. Muir stands in not as a park
visitor, but as Brockmans original interpreter. Within this construction, the interpreter is an expert visitor, someone who has
had the time and the training to see harder, farther, and deeper,
and to understand what the average person cannot. Even as late
as 1976, NPS Director Gary Everhardt promoted a similar definition of interpretation as translation: ...millions of park visitors
over the years have needed help to translate that which is perceived into that which relates personally to them as individuals
and to bring into focus the truths that lie beyond what the eye
sees. The guiding hand is the park interpreter.5 Interpretation
acts not as an admission of the subjective construction of historical narrative but as a tool of translation, which, if done well,
is barely noticed, perceived merely as a conduit of information.
From its inception, interpretation has played an additional
role in the promotion of individual parks and the park system
as a whole. Early NPS administrators generally believed that
the more the public understood about the natural and historical wonders they encountered, the more frequently they
would return to the site. The foundational role of the park visitor is clearly established in the early relationship of educational
promotion to the promotion of park tourism. The engagement
of the visitor was seen as essential to the perpetuation of the
NPS and its fulfillment of its national objective: preservation.
As Freeman Tilden points out in his 1957 examination of interpretation in the NPS , Through interpretation, understanding;
through understanding, appreciation; through appreciation,
protection.6 The NPS s current working definition of interpretation reiterates the centrality of the visitor: Interpretation is
a communication tool which facilitates a connection between
the interests of the visitors and the meanings of the park.7
In the context of the historic sites, interpretation becomes even
more necessary and central to the visitors experience. At many
NPS National Historic sites, a visitor is not allowed to view the
site except on a guided or interpreted tour. Often these narratives have all the markings of a complicated understanding of
historical narrative. Visitors to the Edgar Allan Poe National
Historic Site are actually given a tour of a completely empty
house. As there is no documentation of what the Philadelphia
home looked like when Poe, his wife, Virgina, and her mother,
Maria Clemm, inhabited it, the NPS cleared away the houses
decorative elements including furniture, wallpaper, moldings,
etc., when it acquired the house in 1978. The tour is composed
of a series of acknowledged speculations of what might have
been there, as well as a history of the sites occupancy and interpretation prior to the NPS s ownership. Similarly, on the tour of
Eleanor Roosevelts home, the interpreter spoke in great detail
about the process of re-constructing the house: She identified
which pieces of furniture were real and which were replicas,
she explained how the rooms were reconstructed from detailed
photographs taken at Eleanors death. These acknowledgements do not erase the lingering presence of an idea of objective historical truth. The assumption, sometimes iterated, sometimes not, is that if they learn how Poe and his wife furnished
their home, if they acquire the original Eleanor Roos52 evelt furniture, then these sites can become historically

accurate. Similarly, although the NPS officially encourages multiple meanings of a site, when you go to several tours of Eleanor
Roosevelts house, you realize that the interpretations function
much like an oral history; they are re-tellings of the same story
using slightly different language and slightly different emphasis,
but maintaining the wholeness of the narrative, projecting the
assertion that no matter who tells the story, the conclusions are
the same. Interpretation, in this context, effectively validates
the mimetic, objectivist history that each site is grounded upon,
obscuring the fact that the interpretation is an interpretation of
an interpretation.
Like the NPS itself, individual interpreters stand in a precarious position: charged with the monumental task of exciting
people to stewardship while negotiating the front lines of such
public interaction at sites imbued with emotional and symbolic
significance. In a recent interview, Corky Mayo, the current
Chief of Interpretation of the NPS , said: There are a lot of hard
decisions that are made when you have 20 minutes to explore
a topic. While the NPS policy allows for their interpreters to
broadly expand the narrative of the site, he acknowledged that
most interpreters take a safer road than the agency itself. This
deferral is probably as individual as the interpreter him/herself. On my second tour of Eleanor Roosevelts home, someone
asked if Roosevelt was a lesbian. In an improvised defense, the
clearly uncomfortable interpreter answered, We dont know.
We werent there. Although the response directly contradicts the objective of historical preservation, her denial was, of
course, not surprising. Referring back to the NPS definition of
interpretation: a communication tool which facilitates a connection between the interests of the visitors and the meanings
of the park, it might be that this denial failed. But it is, perhaps,
exactly in such a failure that interpretation, as a revelation of the
subjective construction of historical narrative, succeeds. And
in the vast national park system with its 4,000 interpreters, this
insistent failure of interpretation its inability to function either
as a wholly effective tool of education or propaganda is what
makes a visit so interesting.

1 Barry Mackintosh, The National Park Service (New York: Chelsea House Publishers,
1988), p. 42.
2 Ibid, p. 43.
3 Barry Mackintosh, The National Parks: Shaping the System (Washington, D.C.: Division of
Publications and the Employees Development Division, National Park Service, 1991), p. 10.
4 C. Frank Brockman, Park Naturalists and the Evolution of National Park Service
Interpretation Through World War II in The Journal of Forest History (vol. 22, No. 1,
January 1978), p. 26.
5 Gary Everhardt Foreword to the Third Edition in Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our
Heritage (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), p. xi.
6 Freeman Tilden, op. cit., p. 38. The altruism of the NPSs protective mandate is a
frequently asserted myth, which is, of course, more complicated then is narrated. The NPS
is, after all, an agency of the government. As FDR writes in a letter to Congress supporting
the passage of the Historic Sites Act of 1935, The preservation of historic sites for the public benefit, together with their proper interpretation, tends to enhance the respect and love
of the citizen for the institutions of his country, as well as strengthen his resolution to defend
unselfishly the hallowed traditions and high ideals of America.
7 Interview with Corky Mayo, NPS Chief of Interpretation, 8 January 2002.

Soothe Operator: Muzak and modern

Sound Art
Susette Min

In his 1967 address The Eco-Logic of Muzak, for Muzaks Scientific Board of Advisers, Dr. James Keenan, an industrial psychologist from Stanford University, spoke of Muzak as being
synomorphic with the modern world and interrelated with all
matters of time and place: Muzak helps human communities
because it is a nonverbal symbolism for the common stuff of
everyday living in the global village.1 Keenan characterizes
Muzak not merely as background music, but as a language
that builds utopias through sweet and soothing harmonies.
Better known as a sonic backdrop (rather than an intrusion) for everyday activities within public spaces, Muzak creates a mellow-yellow environment that brightens up ones days,
recharges ones energies, alleviates stress, and calms frayed
nerves.2 Indeed on 29 July 1945, after a B-24 bomber crashed
into the Empire State Buildings 79th floor, the canned music
became known as an effective tranquillizer that pacified anxious people stuck in the glass-encased observatory nine floors
above. Today Muzak functions, as Professor Gary Gumpert aptly
puts it in a 1990 documentary on background music, as just a
kind of amniotic fluid that surrounds us; and it never startles us,
it is never too loud, it is never too silent; its always there.3 For
the socially inept, Muzak works as a prophylaxis to fill in awkward pauses during a conversation and, at its most functional,
it serves to mask dissonant noises from street construction or
building renovations. For most people, however, Muzak is synonymous with harmless background music that samples tunes
from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, or it is seen as just another
vehicle for broadcasting songs already in circulation. This latter
development goes back to 1984, when Muzak began offering
foreground music or, in laymans terms, programs of current
hits by original artists.
On the surface, Muzak as an artfully contrived regimen
of unobtrusive harmonies and pitches; metronomic repetition; melodic segments that overlap into a tonal wash seems
annoying at worst.4 Yet Muzak produces a place where bodies
listen and circulate within commodified walls through metaphorical acoustic wallpaper. It operates as anesthetic or what
Joseph Lanza calls an audioanalgesia: a process that dulls
the ability to listen critically.5 In other words, Muzak produces
a programmed environment that enables one to relax in order
to work more efficiently, and to browse more intently in order to
consume. Muzak sonically rambles with a purpose.
In fact, Muzak is scientific to its very core. Masterminds
like Frederick Winslow Taylor, author of Principles of Scientific Management (1911) and not Ludwig van Beethoven are
Muzaks central influences. The Taylor system determined,
through time and motion studies, the most efficient methods
by which to organize modern industrial work. The correlation between music and the psychological and physiological
responses it evoked was of great interest to industrialists, managers, and engineers. Before Muzaks official naming in 1922 by
Brigadier General George Squier, Thomas Edison had already
conducted phonographic mood tests in factories in 1915 to
determine the extent to which music masked disruptive noise
and raised morale. But it was Squiers refined implementation

of high-frequency radio signals through low-frequency power

lines and his pioneering vision of centralized transmissions
within a rationalized system of stimulus codes that revolutionized the mechanization of music as well as the world of telecommunications. After discovering that he could send radio music
over power-lines, Squier formed a company called Wired Radio
through which he began to sell canned music to different consumer businesses. Squier eventually changed the name of his
company from Wired Radio to Muzak by combining the words
music and Kodak, a popular company headed by George
Eastman, which, by the 1920s, was known worldwide for its
jingle, You press the button, we do the rest.6
The structural elements (beats per minute, play frequencies, etc.) that make up Muzaks compositions and tracks are
studied, then meticulously selected and calculated. Developed
in the 1960s, Muzaks Stimulus Code is based on an hourly
cycle of gradually changing intensity that climaxes every fifteen
minutes while purporting to reenergize human activity. Within
each of these segments, tunes are ordered from the least to the
most stimulating. In the late 1940s, Dr. Harold Burris-Meyer and
Richard L. Cardinells experiments in music composition (elimination of loud brasses and vocals and emphasis on strings and
woodwinds) had revealed a direct increase in production efficiency. Muzak executive Don ONeill implemented their experiments and made the Stimulus Progression the core of Muzaks
innovation and success. Over the years, the Stimulus Progression has been honed and improved technically by engineers
such as Ben Selvin and in studies conducted by Lever Brothers, Fairfield Universitys language laboratory, as well as by the
US Army Engineering labs. The Stimulus Code, with its values
of rhythm, tempo, instrumentalization, moods, and ensemble
size, combined with strategies of sequencing, timing, and volume (vocal impact), culminates in the Stimulus Progressions
Ascending Curve. The Curve works with and counters the
Fatigue Cycle in order to stimulate and reinvigorate workers to
be more efficient and focused.7
In the late 19th century, fatigue had replaced boredom
in hindering surplus production. That is, fatigue, as a central
nervous and psychological phenomenon, became, according to
historian Anson Rabinbach, the most apparent and distinctive
sign of the external limits of body and mind, the most reliable
indicator of the need to conserve and restrict the waste and misuse of the bodys unique capital its labor power.8 The brusque
tempo of the city, the routinized labor, and the constant running
of the factorys machines linked the experience of fatigue with
the demands of industrial society. Studies and experiments on
fatigue and its inverse, energy conservation and conversion, figured the workers body as a productive force and as a political
instrument whose energies could be subjected to scientifically
designed systems of organization.9
The Stimulus Progressions Ascending Curve creates a
sense of forward movement to counteract the workers Fatigue
Cycle by acting against the cycles efficiency curve. The finale
at the end of a cycle is a more upbeat tune that coincides with
the cycles peak, followed by fifteen minutes of silence, which
gives the listener a break that prevents Muzak from becoming
opposite: Muzak box from the 1950s. Photo Vincent Mazeau. Courtesy the Mazeau
Muzak Collection

a distraction. Stimulus Progression is a system that provides

people with a psychological lift, an unconscious sense of
forward movement achieved through programming sound in
fifteen-minute blocks.
From another perspective, there is a large and growing
movement of different factions that have passionately advocated for the eradication of Muzak or the boycott of places of
business that utilize Muzak. These movements have centered
on the perceived intrusion of Muzak into public space and
on its canned-culture assault on individualism and creativity.
There have been many attempts to eliminate Muzak, whether
through legislation, high profile campaigns, or attempted buyouts such as heavy-metalist Ted Nugents $10 million bid to
purchase the company in order to destroy it. Last year in the
British House of Parliament, Salisbury MP Robert Key brought
forth his Ten-Minute Rule bill that would outlaw Muzak in
almost all public places. The measure lost despite the efforts
by high-profile organizations such as Pipedown, whose Campaign for Freedom against Piped Music is supported by wellknown figures such as author Stephen Fry, actor Tom Conti,
and conductor Sir Simon Rattle.
Also in this category are the composers of ambient music
who share a similar aversion to Muzak and who seem to have
the most at stake in distinguishing themselves from its effects.
Although at times the aural distinction between Muzak and
ambient music may be tenuous at best, the difference seems
to lie in the latters attention to the acoustic structure of an
environment and an appropriation of it through composition
and style. Brian Eno, who first coined the term ambient music,
sums it up best in the liner notes from his record Music for
Airports/Ambient 1 ( 1978). Brian Eno argues that whereas
Muzak serves as lightweight background music, ambient
music focuses precisely on the spatiality of what makes up a
background its idiosyncratic atmosphere and acoustic surroundings. Eno writes, Muzaks intention is to brighten the
environment by adding stimulus to it (this supposedly alleviating the tedium of routine tasks and leveling out the natural
ups and downs of the body rhythms). [In contrast] ambient
music is intended to induce calm and a space to think. Ambient musics use of repetitious rhythmic patterns, attention to
the timbre-based qualities of a human voice rather than the
actual lyrics, and the visualization of the vertical or architectural color of sound, tend toward the maintenance of a singular and even balance of tone and noise that is aimed to better
suit the encompassing spatial dimensions of an environment.
Ambient music invites one to pay attention to the noise and
sounds surrounding our daily lives, whereas Muzak standardizes it in order to control space.
Essentially, Muzak is a system designed to eliminate
wasteful energy. However, it has taken up multiple guises in
todays global, postmodern era. The moving target of Muzak
has shifted from the realm of production to the realm of consumption as it colors the landscape of commodities. Today the
music may be varied and even hip and eclectic, yet its effects
of uniformity and intensification of consumer consumption
are sinister. The mode of address has diversified in its offering
of tunes that cross the intersections of race, class, sex, and
gender. On one hand, Muzak gives the illusion of a
56 democratic space, an unlimited choice of songs rang-

ing from urban beats to country currents to Fiesta Mexicana

to jukebox gold. On the other hand, it effaces the listener, and
turns the body into a site of experimentation and mass production: a passive yet industrious automaton.
Muzak as the bad object operates almost like a colonial
tool, producing a sonic landscape laden with metaphorical maneuvers of invasion, dispossession, and surveillance
through mechanized sound. It has the potential to seep not
only through walls, but to become part of the foundational
structure of a building. In their recent move to update their corporate image, Muzaks officials now present themselves not as
a group of scientists but as audio architects, interior designers who specialize in audio imaging the spa, restaurant, or
boutique near you. Due to falling revenue and increased competition, Muzak has been forced to update its corporate image
with the help of the multi-disciplinary design firm Pentagram.
Vice President of Marketing for Muzak, Kenny Kahn, hails the
change as follows in an article focusing on its corporate makeover: we have a new way of talking about the company. The
product has a face Pentagram gave us a visual foundation
that lets us actively and creatively show people what music
can do for them. Design has not only been great for Muzaks
business; design has given Muzak its soul.10
Muzaks threat to create panoptic spaces that produce
automatons is barely, if at all, perceived. As Georg Simmel
wrote back in 1903 about the resilience of the human body
under the strain of modernity, our ears adjust to the constant
hum of disruptions and urban noise, and we continue to just
go with the flow. Even Joseph Lanza, who looks critically at
Muzak, somewhat redeems it at the conclusion of his book as
he writes, Elevator music (besides just being good music) is
essentially a distillation of the happiness that modern technology has promised. A world without elevator music would be
much grimmer than its detractors (and those who take it for
granted) could ever realize.11
Yet the contemporary art of Annette Weisser, Ingo Vetter, and David Schafer makes Muzak strange, disrupting its
smooth operations and our passive reception. More importantly, their art challenges us to consider how man-made elements of place from the sound coming out of the walls to the
lights on the ceilings alter our perceptions, motivations, and
formations of subjectivity. In RESITE, German artists Weisser
and Vetter propose to build a sound system within the sound
system already installed in the central square of Zeewolde, a
town located in Holland.12 By overlapping ambient music composed of sounds they collect around the square with a system
already playing Muzak, Weisser and Vetter highlight the specific qualities of an environment instead of muffling it with
Muzak in order to, in the words of Brian Eno, accommodate
many levels of listening without enforcing one in particular.13
Through more confrontational means, Los Angelesbased artist David Schafer tweaks Muzaks role as soothe
operator by fiddling with its Stimulus Progression in the CDs
x10R.1 (two second gap) and x10R.2 (variable gap).14 They
are works of art that can be heard over a stereo or, more effectively, through a Walkman. Ironically, it was the Walkmans
emergence in 1979 that momentarily disrupted the seamless
stream of Muzak piping out of office public-address systems,
insofar as it allowed for the creation of individual private sonic

spheres within the public sphere. Schafers purposely cacophonous CDs provoke an intense feeling of being out of place and
out of sorts.
Schafers Times Ten Resequenced with Variable Gap
(X10R.2) presents a medley of well-known tunes by Muzak
composers and arrangers: Les Baxter, Bert Kaempfert, Andre
Kostelanetz, Paul Mauriat, and Hugo Winterhalter.15 By studying the physiological and psychological effects and applications of Muzak, Schafers CD turns Muzak inside out, revealing
its abject intentions and effects. In his selection of Muzaks
greatest hits based on their varying instrumentation and
moods, Schafers CD medley begins with a chorus of haunting
voices followed by a variation of overlapping melodies that
become excessive, disorienting, almost nauseating. At different moments within the duration of its play (58.41 minutes to
be exact), one can discern fleeting instances of recognizable
TV and film tunes, from The Godfather theme to Frances Lais
score for A Man and a Woman. Catchy, saccharine tunes (better known as champagne music) crescendo into an orchestral ensemble of violins, horns, and harps with brief breaks
of applause that explode the monaural sound of Muzak. In
contrast to the sense of distended time that Muzak offers, the
noise in Schafers CD is obtrusive and chaotic, condensing
time to produce a claustrophobic space. Visually, I imagine the
effect would resemble something like the shattering of a vase
with shards of glass exploding everywhere or a stroboscopic
flickering of pea-green, burnt-sienna, and pungent-yellow
colors. In other words, listening to x10R.2 is far from a pleasant experience, but it is a fascinating one.
In the spirit of the Situationists and John Cage, Schafers
tactics undermine the soothing tunes of Muzak. At the same
time, Schafer, an astute operator himself, knows both how
to manipulate and recede into the background. Listening
to Schafers CD will not train one to be like Mucho Mass, the
character in Thomas Pynchons The Crying of Lot 49 who discerns Muzaks string compositions and rhythmic ebb and flow.
Rather, in contrast to the low level of attention that Muzak
thrives on, Schafers CD forces one to pay attention in
57
a kind of drunken stupor. The experience of listening

to Schafers CDs is not pretty, but it pokes a hole in Muzaks

seductively orchestrated operations, as it simultaneously revitalizes the ritual use of our perception.
Sample tracks of Schafers work can be heard under issue 7 on Cabinets website at
<www.immaterial.net/cabinet>
1 Quoted in Joseph Lanza, Elevator Music: A Surreal History of Muzak, Easy-Listening, and
Other Moodsong (New York: Picador, 1994), p. 150.
2 See Lanza, Elevator Music, especially the bibliography, pp.225-266; Jacques Attali,
Noise: The Political Economy of Music, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1985); Bill Giffords special issue on Muzak in the online magazine
Feed at <www.feedback.com/95.10gifford/95.10gifford1.html>.
3 Lanza, p. 5.
4 Ibid., p. 3.
5 Ibid, p. 11.
6 David Lindsay, The Muzak Man, American Heritage of Invention and Technology
vol. 14, no. 2 (Fall 1998), pp. 52-57. Also see his House of Invention: The Secret Life of
Everyday Products (New York: The Lyons Press, 2000).
7 Lanza, pp. 48-49.
8 Anson Rabinbach, The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity
(New York: Basic Books, 1990), p. 6.
9 Rabinbach, p. 2.
10 Kenny Kahn, Muzak on Key, The Journal of Business and Design, vol. 7, no.1, available
at <www.cdf.org/7_1_index/muzak/muzak.html>.
11 Lanza, p. 233.
12 Their proposal can be found on <www.verbeelding.nl/ukinfo3_b.html>.
13 From Brian Enos liner notes to Music for Airports/Ambient 1.
14 David Schafers x10R.1 (two second gap) and x10R.2 (variable gap) were released as a
double CD in early 2002 on the Transparency label. See <www.transparency.tv>.
15 For some, the Muzak composers and arrangers selected by Schafer may seem outdated insofar as Muzak has adopted in its recent compilation of tunes soft hits produced in
the 1980s and 1990s. Bill Gifford writes, As Muzak evolves, narrowing the gap between
itself and popular music, it has become pops Doppelgnger. On the new Muzak, a Steely
Dan tune still sounds like a Steely Dan tune; Bonnie Raitt like Bonnie Raitt, more or less. But
not quite See the special issue on Muzak in Feed magazine.
above: Muzak wire from the 1950s. Photo Vincent Mazeau. Courtesy the Mazeau
Muzak Collection

birds of north america sing hip-hop

and sometimes pause for reflection
amy jean porter

Hungry for God

Gregory Whitehead
When I read the report in the Telegraph that a number of rare
illuminated manuscripts, including the splendid Winchester
Bible, had disappeared without a trace from the famed Spence
Collection of the British Library, I thought immediately of my old
acquaintances, Sybil Townsend and Rachel Thompson, who
belong to a special breed of bibliophile, their desire for possession of unique and precious texts taken to an extreme. Bluntly
put: They eat books.
I had first contacted Townsend and Thompson in 1985,
while in the process of researching a radio essay, Dead Letters. They agreed to speak to me on strict condition that I
would do nothing with the taped material. I recall their envious glance when I told them about my interview with Dr. Mary
Dilthey, the distinguished curator in charge of the Spence,
comprised mostly of illuminated manuscripts, many theological in nature, chance survivors of the fires and invasions that
had ravaged the sanctuaries of their fabricators. An elderly
artisan of the Old School, Dr. Dilthey had been engaged in
a long, demoralizing struggle against the collections infestation by various species of beetles: Anobium domesticum,
A. eruditus, A. Paniceum, A. pertinax, A. punctatum, and A.
striatum; Acarus cheyletus and A. eruditus; Dermestes lardarius; Aecophora pseudospretella; Sitodrepa paniceum; Attagenus pellio; Lepisma saccharina; Ptinus fur; Antherenus varius;
Lyctus brunneus; Catorama mexicana; and Rhizopertha dominica, indifferent to anything but fuel and reproduction.
I still carry the handmade bookmark she gave me as a
keepsake, inscribed with an aphorism by Michel Eyquem de
Montaigne: Man cannot make a worm, yet he will make gods
by the dozen.
I had not communicated with Townsend and Thompson
who shun e-mail and use only public telephones since 1993
or so, and had no idea how to find them. Fortunately, we share
a common friend in London, who encouraged me to fly over
immediately. He knew how to contact them, and would arrange
a meeting. At Kennedy, security was still tight in the wake of
the errant shoe bomber, and the late flight was half empty. I
used the two vacant seats in my row to sort through the various
letters and copious notes in my bibliovoria file, paying particularly close attention to the passages I had copied from Wade
O. Crumpstons Hungry for God, the definitive account of an
obscure medieval heretical sect named the Khunrathians, after
their leader, Johannes Khunrath, whose beliefs centered around
the ritualized practice of eating the Word:
The records left by those who would, in the end, become
his tormentors, indicate that Khunrath was a master of impersonation, fluent in the tightly regulated idioms of the varied
monastic orders. In the Khunrathian universe, the ability to
inhabit the face and voice of monks across multiple communities clearly played a critical role in restoring unity to the Word
of God. Migration into the collective spirit of the Word, accomplished by becoming one with a sociologically closed community, subsequently projected into the direct textual intermingling Khunrath secured through the selective ingestion of
the disciplines most sacred texts. Such signature tra62 versal of voice and text became even more dramatic

during his eleven years in the Middle East, where Khunrath

would pursue a radical union of the Word, via a broad array
of hermetic intestinal gestures, on a field where theology had
failed, and blood had been spilled. (p. 58)
Further on... While it is difficult to ascertain how many disciples continued to pursue the neo-Khunrathian ethic of Word
incarnation in the years following his public evisceration in a
bean field outside of Cordoba, we do know that the practice of
bibliovoria sacra took root in several of the monastic orders that
had formerly been his targets, and that brothers would meet in
the scriptorium on nights prescribed by the Khunrathian calendar, to engage in lengthy rituals of song and feast, marked
by ecstatic glossolalic outbursts, followed by a final collective
inhalation of the designated manuscript, consumed in a frenzy
of breath and mandication Word into mouth; God into flesh.
(p. 139)
I had also made a photocopy of the woodcut image
from the frontispiece, the only known portrait of Johannes
Khunrath: a bible ablaze in his belly, eyes closed, mouth open,
hands reached out to the sky.
On arrival at Heathrow early the next morning, I took the
express tube to Paddington, and then on through Highgate to
East Finchley, where Walter Sculley, my Townsend/Thompson lead, had generously offered to put me up in the empty flat
above his shop. Sculley is an American dealer in celebrity body
parts who relocated his business to London in the late 1980s
because, by his own account, Brits dont ask so many questions, and in my business, you cant put a price tag on privacy.
The last time I visited, he had just taken delivery on a highly speculative investment in the remains of an individual once touted
as the next Che Guevara, a Peruvian guerillero named Gonzalas
Rodrigos. After watching him unpack the shrink-wrapped parcel for long-term storage in the freezer, I understood the high
premium Sculley placed upon discretion.
Emma, Sculleys cheerful Oxford-educated assistant, met
me at ground level, and led me down to the shop, suffused by
its distinctive blend of pungent odors: formaldehyde, coffee,
incense and several others I dared not try to classify. No matter
how many times I visit, the sheer volume and variety of materials lining the walls of the shop never cease to astonish me:
stacks of boxes split open with a protruding tibia here, a jagged spinal column there; a shelf of single shoes placed directly
above a neat sequence of skeletal feet; the display case full of
mysterious orbs and globs eerily suspended in viscous fluids;
an entire wooden panel adorned with a series of 100 fingers,
named and framed Churchill, Chaplin, Mary Queen of Scots;
a signed photograph of Ronald Reagan and Marilyn Monroe, adorned with a laminated latex glove beneath his image,
and a laminated lock of hair beneath hers; and the long Wall
of Fame, where Sculley keeps track of who is hot and who is
history, cross-referenced with a long dark corridor of steel trays
and boxes.
Sculley was aware I was returning to New York the very
next day, and came straight to the point, Theyll meet you at
the Royal Thumb & Thimble in an hour, and then joined Emma
in the wet room, from which I could hear the thin whine of
a high speed drill. After dropping my overnight bag upstairs,
and taking a quick shower, I set out on foot through a light
drizzle to find out what had become of my old friends. The Royal

Thumb & Thimble was Sculleys favorite London pub, a brisk

half hour walk from the shop, in the general direction of Kentish
Town. First attracted by the name (fingers of fallen aristocrats
were perennial top sellers), Sculley favored the RT&T because it
played neither music nor television.
When I arrived, the two veteran bookeaters had already
established themselves at a corner table in a small side room.
I ordered a pint of Murphys, and sat down between them.
Lovely to see you again, Gregory, but you may as well know
straight away, nary a nibble of the Spence in this corner, said
Sybil. I glanced at Rachel, who confirmed, Not a single leaf.
But surely they knew something? Of course we do, luvvie, birds
of a feather, and all. Relax and enjoy your pint hell be here in
a few minutes.
I found it hard to conceal my disappointment when the
Spence bibliovore turned out to be Michael Monihan, a minor
Canadian performance artist who created a little splash in
the art world a few years back by eating a leatherbound copy
of La Divina Commedia in the Piazza San Marco during an
unsanctioned performance at the Venice Biennale. Michael
had gained considerable weight since then, his face puffy, his
eyes dim and deeply set, like two glass marbles at the bottom
of a frog pond. Its out of control, he said. I cant get enough.
Some other body. Taking root. You eat Word, thinking total
control. Then it starts to eat you back. At this, Rachel said,
We warned you, though, Mikie, didnt we, dearie? Leaning
towards me, Sybil added, He wouldnt listen to us, even after
we told him we had to swear off the sacra years ago, nothing
these days but the odd tidbit of Hardy or Lawrence, much better
for the hormones, you see.
Rachel picked up the thread, But Mikie, poor sod, got
hooked, didnt he then? Then Monihan said, If I dont get my
forty-odd pages of quality Word per diem, Im not worth a lick.
At this, he reached into his leather portfolio and removed a beautifully illuminated page of text (I only caught a brief glimpse, but
it appeared to be taken from a Carolingian sacramentary), tore
off a long strip, rolled it up into a tight roll, returned the rest of the
page to the portfolio, and began to chew.
I signaled the bartender to draw me another Murphys
while Monihan continued, in a walkie-talkie staccato, Eat
more, need more .... chew round the clock .... tired all the time
.... no mobility ..... target the high density ..... British Library ....
Spence.... best score in town.... Winchester .... primo pulp....
have to feed ... The Beast. He took a long pull from Sybils
bitters, the boost from the fresh ingestion of text kicking in,
his reptilian eyes burned in their sockets like the headlamps of
two spelunkers trapped in a narrow passage. I am so close,
Whitehead, so very close, understand? Soon, there will come
a threshold, a crossing, an index, very soon, there will be a final
page, Kabbalah, Muhammad, Job, I dont give a bloody fig, and
then the man known as Monihan will be no more, for he shall
become One with . He did not bother to finish the sentence,
but instead took a final quaff from Sybils diminished pint, stood
up, belched loudly, swept his scarf around his thick neck, and
was gone.
I asked whether Mary Dilthey was still the curator of
The Spence, and if so, how a gas bag like Michael Monihan
could ever manage to slither past her vigilant gaze.
64 Rachel, who was now digging into a heaping portion

of shepards pie, chuckled, and said You always fancied grand

dame Dilthey, didnt you, luv? Mikie has her pretty well hooked,
convinced her that bibliovoria was the only way to kill the
bugs, that her own body offered a more secure environment
for her beloved manuscripts than the infested stacks at the
Spence. So old mother Mary grants Mikie the Bibles, the Judaica and the Korans, while she tucks into all the rest. Addiction is
a terrible thing!
Whether from the image of Mary Dilthey eating book
with Michael Monihan, or from contemplating what manner
of colonoscopy would now be necessary to enjoy the riches of
the Spence, or from the smell of Rachels pie, a wave of nausea
was beginning to build deep in my soul, so I paid our tab, bid
farewell to the two bibliovores, and returned to Sculleys flat.
When I awoke from a fitful sleep, London was dark, but a light
still burned in the basement. I took the back staircase down to
see what the old bone trader was up to. I found him at a small
table in the archive room, surrounded by cardboard boxes full
of what appeared, from a distance, to be bird nests. He asked
me how my meeting had gone at the Thumb, and I recounted
the entire degenerative tale, from the idealistic universalism
of the heretic Khunrath to the cynical gluttony of the junkie,
Monihan. After I had finished, Sculley walked across the room
and removed a bottle of Wild Turkey and two silver cups from a
small cabinet, and returned to the table.
I dont care whether its hunger for the Universal God or
some corpse-sucking maggot, he said, as he poured the bourbon, it all comes down to the same tin of beans. I took a big
swallow of Turkey, waiting for Sculley to continue. God lives
forever, so the trick is, you have to find a way to get closer to the
action. The three religions youre talking about, the true believer
can do just that. Since the flesh is the Word, all you have to do is
eat a few chunks of holy writ and youre in. Jackpot. Theres just
one little problemo.
Sculley reached down and placed one of the cardboard boxes
on the table. You know whats in this box? I stared down at
the bird nests, which I could now see were tangled clumps of
hair, but all I could think of was Sybils shepards pie. Taliban
beards, he said, bought em by the pound from a dope dealer
in Kandahar. Figure the Mullah might be in there somewhere,
maybe even Big Binny himself. Speculative buy, but you never
know, I get DNA confirmation some day, and were talking a
major bingo, put em together with a Dubyah eyelash, and you
have a moonshot.
Sculley noted I had drained my cup and poured me
another. He also selected one of the beards (removing a single
hair for his inventory database), cut about a twelve inch square
of white muslin from a bolt under the table, placed the beard in
the center of the square, tucked up the corners into what looked
like a large beggars purse, then tied off the top with a length of
thin black ribbon, saying: So theres the moral for your story.
Though I had a vague sense of where Sculley was heading, my
tongue felt like an old gym sock, so I drained the cup in one big
swallow and stared back at him, blankly.
The world is full of people who want to eat God, live
forever, he said. I know, because many of them are my clients,
and the rest are my inventory. I had one client, he spent
65
ten years collecting authenticated slivers of the old

cross, paid a fortune, black market, mostly, bribes to the Vatican, you name it, very delicate business. By the end, he must
have had at least ten inches of Holy wood. So what does he do?
I had a fairly good idea, but gestured for him to continue. He
pops open a bottle of 1962 Lafite one night, and proceeds to
eat his whole collection at one sitting. He paused for a moment
to return the Wild Turkey and cups to the cabinet, then said
For the next couple of days, he struts around, high on the Holy
Ghost, spouting all kinds of Pentecostal gobbledygook, in fact,
hes so high on the Almighty, he fails to notice hes leaking
major blood from the other end. The wood chips must have torn
his intestines to shreds, maybe they carried some kind of bug,
all I know is, by the end of the week, the mans half dead.
Sculley placed his box full of facial hair back under the
table, took out a clean handkerchief from the pocket of his
smock, mopped up a few dribbles of bourbon, then dabbed at
a smear of nameless gunk on the arm of his chair. When he
wakes up in the hospital post-op, he discovers hes wearing a
bag, and Im not talking about a Gucci money belt. Finds out
the cross went up in smoke, medical refuse, incinerated with
the rest of the op-slop. Next day, he goes into a coma and never
comes back.
The dealer continued to jab at the gummy glob, that
released a sour aroma from the effort. Sooner or later, Old
Wormy needs to be fed, and when it comes to theology, Old
Wormy is not a fussy eater. Inferring from my stupor that I
was unlikely to say anything for the rest of the evening, Sculley
picked up the Talib purse, tossed it into my lap, turned off the
lights in the main shop, and left me alone in his eerie storehouse
of memories and dreams.
Note: Wade Crumstons Hungry for God (Sparrows Press, 1981) is lamentably out of print.
The editors of Cabinet are studying the feasability of an offprint republication of extended
excerpts. Whiteheads interview with Walter Sculley was published in the first issue of
Cabinet, and information about his movie, The Bone Trade, directed by John Dryden, is
available at www.bonetrade.com. Dead Letters is available as a staalplaat CD, or by contacting Gregory Whitehead directly: gregor@berkshire.net.

Not Your Name, Mine

Paul Schmelzer

A few years back, I had lunch with an 8-year-old named Spencer

and his father, Ron. We were at an outdoor restaurant in Madison, Wisconsin, and one of that towns favorite sons, jazz musician Ben Sidran, sat at a nearby table. Ron urged Spencer who
has Asbergers Syndrome, a milder variant of autism to get an
autograph, and Sidran, accustomed to such requests, gladly
obliged. But when he handed the autograph back to the boy,
Spencer retorted, Not your name, mine! The musician scribbled out his own name and rewrote the boys.
Six months ago, inspired by this inadvertent deconstruction of celebrity, I began writing to artists, writers, actors, and
political figures asking them to sign my autograph. A simple
enough premise, intended to both examine celebrity what
does it mean that Yoko Ono signed the name of a complete
unknown? And what is the value of that signature? and celebrate those who have shaped my beliefs. Ive considered
what these responses might mean to me its Zen-like, this
repetition; its egotistical; its a way of stealing energy from
those I respect; it fits into an art historical context alongside
explorations by Richard Prince, Bruce Conner, Alan Berliner,
and others. But in the end, as much as I wanted the project to
critique one aspect of the society of the spectacle, Im always
left with the selfish glow of excitement: someone famous
signed my name.
More than 50 celebrities have so far contributed to the
project, and another 40 either didnt understand it and signed
their own names (damn you, James Brown!), or left the autograph business to their handlers, who mailed out preprinted
8x10s. (A rare response: Mikhail Baryshnikov, who took the
time to write, Not interested. Thank you a full four syllables
longer than my name.)
Here is a sampling of those whove participated.

1.

2.

3.

4.

1. Edward O. Wilson, 2. Frank Gehry, 3. Ben Sidran, 4. Billy Bragg,

5. Jenny Holzer, 6. Bonnie Blair, 7. Yoko Ono, 8. Annie Sprinkle,
9. Kim Gordon, 10. Laurie Anderson, 11. Spalding Gray, 12. Maya Lin,
13. Doris (GrannyD) Haddock 14. Pat Buchanan, 15. David Sedaris,
16. Henry Louis Gates, 17. Fats Domino, 18. Sen. Paul Wellstone,
19. Naomi Klein, 20. Merce Cunningham, 21. Winona LaDuke.

5.

6.

7.

66

14.

15.

8.

16.

9.

17.

10.

18.

11.

19.

12.

20.

13.

21.

failure

blackness. GOD gave the Earth

so that living things could flourish
ated a man and called him Adam.
sons for doing this was to prove to
goodness would always triumph

as populated by angels, and those

e not good enough in GODs eyes
o hell forever. These were known
ls. When the Devil noticed what
g to do, he saw to it that humans
good ended up in hell. These lost
demned to Eternal Damnation in
ch was a horrible place burning

placed in a beautiful and verdant

OD had made especially for him,
en was like paradise, in fact it was
adise (although most of the Earth
the time). It was also known as the
thly Delights. Adam ran around
ruit and vegetables, and playing
als, in a state of innocence. But
was not an animal and had the
h, he became bored and wanted
k to. So GOD removed one of
ile he was asleep and from it he
a woman. Eve was just like Adam
particular physical features. Their
ductive) organs were what differin fact made them opposites,
and Eve didnt realise this because
w what these organs were for.
e Adam and Eve were very happy
t of their time discovering what
m, eating fruit and stroking the
who were their friends. But they
weary of their perpetual state of
bliss. They became dissatisfied
and wondered why they should
s will.

tree in the garden that GOD had

not to touch. It was called the Tree
and on no account were they to
Eve was most curious to know what
tree would taste like and one day
seductive serpent persuaded her
d never notice just one fruit. The
ed apples. Adam was horrified, but
him to pick just one, and have a
t into the apple.
ant the sky turned black, and a
Thunder roared, lightning flashed
owled, terrifying Adam and Eve,
experienced bad weather and had
was happening to them. Cowering
oice of GOD told them that they
o the forces of evil and picked
Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge.
r innocence for ever and would
s yearning for what they had lost.
with him to make the storm stop,
y were sorry and would never disbut he said his decision was irrevwould have to live with their missaid that they had committed the
nd that this is what they would
us for the event would henceforth
he Fall. Since Eden wasnt enough
had determined that unless they
ked for the rest of their lives, the
him in Heaven but would be conres of Hell. This put the Fear of

terrible catastrophe, GOD banm Eden for ever. Distraught and

m and Eve were now at the mercy
which was often bad when before
en lovely. Significantly, they often
guilty, which was a new and conFurthermore, they had realised
s were different, and became both
epelled by each other. They were
their nakedness and covered their
g leaves. In short, they discovered
and they had sexual intercourse
n Eve giving birth to a child. Thus
e began to multiply, and everyone
rom Adam and Eve.
ad to eat, and so they learned how
y cultivating the land and killing
developed an instinct for survival,
ed to kill each other. Hunted by
nimals became shy and developed
hiding and running away. Being
ered the hierarchy of the animals,
ugh unlike Adam and Eve they
nnocence. None of this would have
dam and Eve had not tasted the
t, but in fact, it was all part of
plan. His plan ensured that they
difference between good and evil
motivated to have faith in him.
nd carried on reproducing, farmnd building, spreading out over
of the Earth until they were related. They developed cities, indusagriculture and entertainment. To
they constructed laws, moral vald territories. They had even begun
ibe and explain the place Earth on
d, to try to work out how they got
would happen to them after they
w that they had a Creator, who
a man and was called GOD.

of the Earth had become blas

existence of GOD, since it seemed
do no wrong in his eyes. Sex was
avourite pastimes, and they had
cate all the time, not necessarily
ose of producing children. They
other and were becoming obsessed
ossessions and power. They treated
y, and they no longer saw themto each other and to the animals.
hole they knew the difference
nd evil. Those who had seen GOD

whole book in her name. Certainly she was the

daughter of a prophet or some similarly well
known man. Cain and Abel were the sons of Isaac.
They had an argument which resulted in the accidental murder of Abel by Cain, who threw a rock
at his head. Cain was forever scarred by this event,
and the Mark of Cain, whether real or metaphorical, came to be symbolic.

he Prodigal Son left the family home because

his father divided up his land between his
three sons, and he wasnt happy with his lot. He
went off to seek his fortune in the world, which
nearly broke his fathers heart. In his absence, the
other stay-at-home brothers squabbled over the
third share of land, and became greedy, idle and
lazy. Although they had at first seemed to care
more about their father, because they had stayed at
home, the farm went to rack and ruin. Meanwhile
the Prodigal Son did not fare any better than he
would have done if he had stayed at home and
worked his plot of land. So he returned to claim it
back. His father forgave him for leaving. This is
known as the Return of the Prodigal Son.
There was also a king who was asked to adjudicate over a maternity dispute. Two mothers were
claiming the same baby. He declared that the only
way to settle the problem was to cut the baby in
half, wisely realising that the real mother would
rather give the baby up, than let it die. When she
did so, he restored her child to her, since her care
for the childs life had proved to be greater than
her desire to keep it for herself.

aniel was an important leader, who was

unfortunately thrown into a lions den. He
managed to avoid being eaten by talking to the
lion calmly. Jonah was also persuasive he ended
up in the belly of a whale after being swallowed,
but persuaded the whale to open its mouth and let
him walk free.

oses is the most famous person in

the Old Testament, followed by Abraham,
Noah, Elijah (who was once fed by ravens when he
was starving), Solomon, and David. They were all
leaders of tribes, mostly in Egypt and Israel, and
often direct descendants of each other.
Moses achieved numerous and incredibly
important things for his people, helped by GOD.
He began life as an abandoned child, and was
found floating in a basket, stuck in some bulrushes on the river Nile. He grew up to be precociously intelligent and wise, and became a prophet and
a religious leader of his tribe. He could see that
things were going seriously wrong with the
human race and this worried him gravely.
Moses, like other prophets, was prone to seeing strange things which were made to appear to
him by GOD. The spontaneous combustion of the
Burning Bush is a dramatic example. These
visions made him all the more faithful to GOD,
since they were so incredible. So when GOD asked
him to climb to the top of a mountain in the
desert, he didnt hesitate. He fasted while he was
up there (the idea of fasting was to become
closer to GOD by ignoring the demands of your
mortal body).

od revealed to Moses ten rules for his people

to live by, and instructed him to have these
Commandments engraved on stone tablets so that
everyone could read them. They were: Thou shalt
not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not covet
thy neighbours possessions, thou shalt not commit
adultery, thou shalt not take the Lords name in
vain, thou shalt not worship graven images, thou
shalt love thy neighbour as thy would thyself, thou
shalt honour thy father and mother, and there
were two more.
These formed the basis for the establishment
of a group of followers called the Chosen Few.
Many joined them because they felt that things
were going from bad to worse, and they wanted
something to believe in. They were afraid of
dying and going to Hell and the promise of
Heaven comforted them. The fear of GODs
wrath was the lynchpin of the belief system.
GOD was known to be good, and only to be feared
if his Commandments were disobeyed. He told
them to Moses to make it easy for people to
follow his guidance, giving them the incentive of
life in Heaven.
At this point the people began to fall into two
camps those that followed Moses and the other
prophets, and those that decided that if this GOD
were invisible to them, he probably didnt exist.
Therefore they chose their own deities and made
statues and pictures to represent them. Since the
Bible is about a particular GOD and how to carry
out his wishes, obviously it does not specify any
other GOD who is worthy of worship. One of the
Ten Commandments forbids the worship of
graven images, and this is how the Jews came to
have no representations of GOD. The Words of
GOD were enough to represent him.

he story of the Writing on the Wall during

a feast in a temple, some anonymous automatic writing appears on the wall, which strikes
terror into the hearts of those that see it.

od told his people not to make offerings to

him, only to pray and to make sacrifices of
animals. There is lots of sacrifice in the Bible, usually involving lambs, rams, and calves. GOD even
asked Abraham to sacrifice his own son, Isaac, to
prove his faith. Abraham knew that GOD would
not ask this without good reason, so he complied
with the request, prepared an altar, and had his
son placed on it, ready for the sacrificial sword.
While the knife was poised above his sons heart,
Abraham had a vision of GOD, and before his very
eyes his son was turned into a lamb, and he killed
the lamb instead. Abraham had passed the ultimate test of faith to love GOD more than his
own flesh and blood.
Sinners against GODs word in thought (very
important) or deed, began to make him very

hen some tribes were starving in the desert,

GOD showed his mercy by providing them
with food. Overnight fine flakes fell from the sky,
which were like bread when eaten in quantity. At
dawn a heavy dew was deposited and this was
sweet to taste like honey. Flocks of quails were all
around. The people ate the quails, the honeydew
and the flakes, which were called manna this is
known as the story of the Manna and Quails.

great famine was prevented by Joseph, the

son of Jacob, a Canaanite, (who was the son of
Esau) and the head of a tribe. (Jacob had an eventful life he was sleeping in a field one night, resting his head on a stone, and dreamt he saw a ladder reaching up to a cloud. In addition, at some
point in his life he had to wrestle with some
angels). Joseph was one of twelve sons, of whom
the youngest was called Benjamin. But Joseph was
the favourite. His father had given him a beautiful
Coat of Many Colours, which made his brothers
very jealous. They were also irritated by the fantastic dreams he had. So they resolved to get rid of
him, and somehow they did. Joseph ended up
working as a baker in the kitchen of a rich man
called Potiphar. Word got around that he could
interpret dreams, and eventually he became
Potiphars right hand man. All Josephs dream
interpretations proved correct, and by paying
attention to them Potiphar managed to amass considerable wealth. Unfortunately, Joseph caught
Potiphars wifes eye and she tried to seduce him.
Potiphar found out and thought that it was Joseph
who had been the seducer. He had him thrown
into a dungeon.
Even from prison Josephs interpretative talents stood him in good stead. He interpreted his
fellow prisoners dreams, and when Pharaoh got
word of his talents, he summoned him to his
palace. He had a dream which really worried him
in which seven thin cows ate seven fat cows, but
did not derive any nourishment from them. Joseph
predicted seven years of bumper harvest followed
by seven years of famine. He advised the king to
stockpile food in the good years and then ration in
the bad years. Sure enough, the predictions were
correct, the people followed Josephs advice, and
no one starved. His position as the Pharaohs advisor was secured.
However Josephs good-for-nothing brothers
in Canaan were not so lucky. They had not heeded
the warning and were going hungry. In the end
they went to Egypt to throw themselves at the
mercy of the Pharaoh. They were received by
Joseph, and didnt realise he was their long lost
brother, although he recognised them. He had a
dream in which he saw eleven stars bowing down
to his star, and had interpreted this to mean that
the brothers did feel remorse for their sins. Before
he gave them food, Joseph decided to play a trick
on them, to see if they had an ounce of goodness in
their hearts.
He planted a silver cup or something in the
bag of the youngest, Benjamin, whom he loved
the most. Then he accused all ten of them of stealing the cup, and it was found. The brothers tried
to clear his name, and insisted that they be punished instead of him feeling retrospective guilt
for what they had done to their other brother.
They said it would break their fathers heart to
lose two sons. So Joseph, satisfied, pardoned them,
and revealed his true identity. They were incredulous until he showed them his multi-coloured coat.

unleashing a rainstorm of unprecedented scale.

For forty days and nights it rained in torrents and
the land was flooded as far as the eye could see.
The water level continued to rise until all living
and breathing things were drowned. Noah, meanwhile, on GODs instruction, had loaded a breeding pair of every species of creature on to the Ark,
two by two, and he and his family were floating
safely on the floodwaters. They drifted around for
ages, until one day Noah sent a Dove to find out if
there was any dry land. The dove returned carrying an olive branch in its beak, which was a sign of
hope. Eventually the Ark came to rest on the top
of what had been Mount Ararat. The Ark was
unloaded, and the animals went forth to increase
and multiply.
This is how GOD started again Noahs sons
and their wives became the ancestors of a new
people. They were very grateful to GOD for sparing them, and their faith in him increased. As the
waters receded, the Ark was left high and dry, and
fertile land uncovered, so that Noah and his
descendants could grow plenty of food. There is an
unfortunate postscript to this story Noah abused
one of his granddaughters, and was found out. He
was confronted by the rest of the family and had
to repent. After this new beginning, GOD took a
firmer hand in the destiny of his people. He wanted them to establish a homeland and centre for his
worship. He promised his Chosen Few lands of
their own, which they called the Promised Land.
They were nomadic tribespeople, living in the
desert in Egypt. The Promised Land turned out to
be Jerusalem in Israel, but first they had to get
there, and fight Egypt for it. Moses and Abraham,
King David, and Solomon were all leaders at various times. Several generations later they reached
their goal, and became known as the Israelites.

historic episode took place that of the

Parting of the Waves, also known as the Red
Sea Crossing. The Chosen Few were travelling in
the desert and had run out of food. Their route lay
through the wilderness, and their morale was very
low. Egyptian troops were closing in on them and
they were cornered. GOD told Moses to hold his
staff aloft and the waters of the Red Sea would
part, opening the way to safety. Moses did this and
the sea rose up, forming a towering canyon with
walls of water, and the sea bed was dry. They
began the long crossing, but were pursued by the
Egyptians. When the Egyptians reached the middle of the sea bed, GOD turned it to mud, so that
their progress was slowed and they couldnt catch
up with Moses and his people. Once the Chosen
Few were safely on the other side, in Jordan, GOD
allowed the waters to close over the Egyptians and
every single one of them was drowned.

nother tale of how weakness can overcome

strength is that of Samson the strong man.
He succumbed to the charms of a woman named
Delilah who was fascinated by his fabled strength.
In an unguarded moment he revealed to her that
his strength was only preserved if his long hair
was left uncut. One night when he was asleep she
cut off his hair. Samson was awoken by the shouts
that the temple was collapsing. He could have held
up the main supporting beam and saved the temple, but his strength had been taken from him by
Delilah. His faith had lapsed, momentarily, but
fatally. The temple collapsed and crushed those
that were in it to death.

he founding of Jerusalem, or Zion, City of

GOD, is described at great length in the parts
of the Old Testament that are devoted to economics, laying down of laws, the division of land, and
establishment of a political hierarchy. Battles were
frequent, the Battle of Jericho being particularly
famous. Joshua signalled the attack with trumpets
made from rams horns, and the Walls of Jericho
were pulled down. Further stories are told in
Deuteronomy, Judges, Leviticus (named after
Levi), and Ecclesiastes. Philistines, Pharisees,
scribes, and money-lenders all played their part
in the life of the city. David was a major player, he
was at this point a king, and his son was called
Solomon (who had a wife called Bathsheba).
Solomon was known for his wisdom (the Wisdom
of Solomon), and there is a whole book devoted to
a long lament about Jerusalem and the journey to
the promised land, called the Song of Solomon, or
Song of Songs. It tells of sitting by the river of
Babylon and weeping for the memory of Zion.
Babylon, which was destroyed by GOD, was a city
dedicated to pleasure, and it had one of the seven
wonders of the world, the Hanging Gardens. It
came to represent the unattainable, or what could
only be attained by those who were good.
Jersualem was the holiest place for the Israelites,
but they werent permitted to build temples or
worship there, as the rulers did not recognise their
new religion.
Rituals and rules were established, and
sacred places and objects began to emerge. Some
men wore a small box tied to their foreheads,
called a phylactery. It would have contained a bit
of scroll. A bunch of marjoram might be used as a
brush and dipped in blood, to daub the front door
of a house for some reason. Soil was often sealed in
some kind of vessel, as were scrolls.

avid the Giant killer was the son of someone

famous and the father of Solomon or the
other way around. He was to become king of his
people, who lived in Israel and were amongst
GODs Chosen Few. When his people were being
terrorised by a giant. David fought the giant and
killed him with his slingshot, earning himself the
name giant-killer.

ods general opinion of human kind had not

changed. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah
gave him most cause for despair. These were sinful
places, full of fun palaces, dens of iniquity and
vice. Anyone with any moral fibre was bound to
leave, as did Lot. But Lots wife wanted to stay, and
was so difficult to persuade, that once he did get
her on to the road out of town, Lot made her
promise not to look back, thinking that she would
be too tempted to return. Temptation did indeed
get the better of her, and she was turned into a
Pillar of Salt. Those that remained had the idea
of building a tower to reach Heaven, where they
were convinced even greater delights than the sins
of the flesh awaited them. The Tower of Babel
was a magnificent folly, with steps spiralling up
the exterior and lots of windows. It was the highest building in the world, and it really tried GODs
patience. He didnt destroy it, but he gave all the
different races in the city different languages, so
that communication and thus the building project,
was impossible. The cacophony of voices coming
from the tower came to be known as babble. The
tower never reached heaven.

t wasnt just Lot who was looking for a better

place to live. Noah had been told by GOD to
build a boat, and he obeyed, for he could see that
the people of Sodom and Gomorrah were on a
slippery slope. He started construction of the huge
vessel, assisted by Mrs Noah, his sons Shem, Ham

he best sacred vessel by far is the Ark of the

Covenant. The Convenant is the dead sea
scrolls, or some other part of the first writing
down of the Old Testament. GOD required Moses
to have this made at the same time as he dictated
the Ten Commandments. It was a portable chest
with shoulder rests, and had a golden angel on
each of the four corners. The Ark was carried
around by Moses and wherever it came to rest was
a most sacred and holy spot. It was like a portable
temple, and it ended up (in the Old Testament at
least) in the temple in Jerusalem.

he end of the Old Testament has the

Israelites waiting for the birth of the
Messiah, the son of GOD, who will be sent to save
them from themselves.

he story begins with Joseph, a carpenter who

lived on the shores of Lake Galilee. He had a
wife, Mary, but they were childless. In fact Mary
was a Virgin. One day an angel called Gabriel
appeared to Mary, and he had wings like drifted
snow and fiery eyes. He may actually have
appeared to her as a dove. Gabriel told that she was
with child, her (this event is usually referred to as
the Annunciation), and that the child was very
special, because he was the Son of GOD, a manifestation of GOD on Earth. He was to be called
Jesus when it was born and he had been sent to
Earth by GOD to take away the sins of the Earth.

were full, however one inkeeper, seeing Marys

condition, offered them his stable in Bethlehem,
and that is where Jesus was born. Mary wrapped
the baby in swaddling clothes and laid him in
a manger.

he shepherds and the kings arrived at the stable just after Jesus had been born. He was sitting in Marys lap, and she was dressed in blue.
Joseph and the ox and ass that lived in the stable
were staring at the child in adoration. The newborn child had a powerful and precocious influence over all who set eyes on him. The shepherds
and kings prostrated themselves before him, and
laid their gifts at his feet. The shepherds brought
lambs as gifts. Lambs are very important symbols
in the Bible. Soon the glad tidings of great joy
spread, and crowds of people came to the stable in
Bethlehem to worship Jesus. Cherubim and
seraphim (small childlike angels) hovered above
the stable.

esus grew up a carpenter like his father. He was

always a special child and as soon as he was old
enough he began travelling around, making
friends and telling stories. It was clear that he had
extraordinary powers of perception, and these
soon made him famous in Galilee. He gathered a
band of loyal followers who became known eventually as the Apostles, the Disciples, or simply,
The Twelve.

esus was always trying to make good honest

people feel the power of GOD, and to have
more faith and believe in themselves: you are the
light of the world/salt of the Earth, dont hide
your light under a bushel and if your slate is
clean, then you can throw stones, were some of
his favourite sayings. But what really got people
excited and increased his following was his ability
to achieve the impossible. All his life he performed what became known as Miracles. The
most mundane of these occurred at a wedding at
Cana, when there was no wine, so Jesus had them
fill several barrels with water, which flowed out as
wine, this is referred to as the Water into Wine
miracle. More dramatic was the Feeding of the
Five Thousand an occasion where his followers
had gathered to hear him preach, but there was
nothing to feed them with except one loaf and one
fish. Jesus bade people to look in their baskets and
lo! there was fish and bread for everyone (also
known as Loaves and Fishes). Along the same lines
he told a farmer, whose crops had failed, to sow his
barren field with pebbles instead of corn, and have
faith in GOD. Sure enough the stones grew into
fat ears of corn which thrived.
Medical miracles were even more amazing
people were constantly coming to be healed of
their ailments by Jesus. (The miracles only worked
if people had true faith). A man who had never
walked got up from his bed and walked unaided. A
blind man regained his sight. Most impressive was
the Resurrection of Lazarus, who was actually
dead and in his tomb until Jesus arrived, when he
rose form the dead and breathed again. But surely
the best miracle was the Walking on Water. When
they were out fishing one day, to prove to a doubting disciple that GOD was really acting through
him, Jesus stepped out of the boat and simply
walked on the surface of the sea.
The miracles were really tests of faith, and
Jesus himself had to prove his own loyalty to his
Father. Naturally his tests of faith were harder to
endure. His forty days in the desert with the Devil
were the worst ordeal (apart from the final days
of his life). The Devil took him flying over the
desert and showed him some truly fabulous
things. He tempted him with riches and power
beyond all imagining, and doubtless in more subtle and devious ways. But Jesus resisted everything, content to walk around in his simple robe
and sandals and get food where he found it.

he disciples were Matthew, Mark, Luke, John

the Baptist, Peter the Rock, Paul, Simon,
James, and three others. Because some of them
were fishermen by trade, and they went around
converting people to the faith preached by Jesus,
they were known as fishers of men. The fish is
thus an important Biblical symbol, and actually
symbolises Christianity itself. Ritual total immersion in water was the method used to welcome
people into the faith. This was called baptism. The
disciple called John did most of this baptising, for
which he was known as John the Baptist.

aptism was usually done in a river John was

often to be found up to his waist surrounded
by waiting crowds performing a mass baptism. He
had long hair and a beard, like Jesus. Because of
Johns active role, Herod thought he was a threat
and had him thrown into jail. Herod had a mistress called Salome, with whom he was so besotted
that she could ask anything of him. Her famous
Dance of the Seven Veils only fanned the flames
of his desire for her. Salome provoked Herods
jealousy by trying to seduce John in his prison cell.
She was fascinated by his piety, and saw it as a
challenge. He, of course, resisted all her advances
but Herod was so jealous that when Salome, angry
that John had spurned her, asked Herod for his
head on a plate, he acquiesced. When Salome
received the head she kissed its lips and declared
that she had possessed John at last.
Just as John was seen as dangerous by Herod,
so Jesus was attracting the attention of both
Herod and Pontius Pilate of Jerusalem, for being
called the King of the Jews. His power over the
rabble was increasing, and it was beginning to
look as though it might lead to riots. Herod interrogated Jesus and asked him how he dared to call
himself the King of the Jews, but Jesus said, it is
you who call me that. Herod thought this very
insolent, and said that he would leave it to Pilate
to deal with. It is implied that he was a little
afraid of, or in awe of Jesus.
n Jerusalem Jesus had two enemies among the

arrest him. Judas eventually agree

grudge against Jesus), but at leas
take the money.

esus knew that his time on E

over. He summoned his Discip
Supper. They all bathed each oth
brought a bottle of expensive
anointed Jesus feet using her h
Judas, feeling guilty, objected ang
Mary (who was a prostitute) wa
doing this for Him. Jesus told him
only throw stones if his own slat
hint that he knew what was go
Judas said that the money spent o
could have gone to the poor and
even angrier. He told the Disciples
sufferings of the poor, they should
for the good things in life. He urg
argue but to make the most of t
what little time he had left.
Jesus passed round some bre
wine, which he wanted everyone
with him. He asked that they
when they eat and drink, saying
will represent his Body and the
This ritual became known as the
disciples were incredulous when J
going to leave them. Jesus became
them, for they were all a bit drun
that not only was he to die in nex
also that very night, one of the tw
ever having known him, and anoth
him. Peter, he said, would deny h
before the cock crows, and Judas w
with a kiss.

esus wanted them all to stay a

with him in the garden of G
one by one the wine got the bette
and he was alone in his final hours
knew that this was GODs will
Pilates soldiers accompanied by C
arrest him and Judas marked h
treacherous kiss on the ear. W
awoke it was too late and they to
off for questioning. Peter eventua
he knew Jesus and just as he repe
third time, the cock crowed and h
he had done.
Jesus was taken to see Pilate,
him about his motives and offered
he renounced his GOD. Pilate w
by such a charismatic man an
inclined to let him go, even try
responsibility back to Herod, who
Galilee, where Jesus was born. B
Caiaphas and his supporters, Pila
ed that only the emperor Caesar
gious ruler, and that Jesus must th
demned to death. The fickle crow
for blood and when Pilate offered
prisoner, they demanded that it
robber, rather than Jesus. Pilate ga
Jesus to be crucified. He called for
and publicly washed his hands of

n a Friday Jesus was taken to

was made to wear a purple ro
of thorns and to carry the cross o
route to the Mount of Olives was
ple and several times he collapse
tion. The disciples, Mary Magdal
ents were gathered there and a ma
of Arimathea. They endured the
and two thieves being nailed to
had a nail driven through each
through both feet. There was a sig
cross above him with four letters
spelt King of the Jews.

esuss time on the cross is

Crucifixion, or the Passion (in
pain). Jesus asked for water and on
gave him a sponge soaked in vine
never complained or cried out, bu
why he had forsaken him. A sol
side with the point of his lance a
to the ground. Eventually Jesu
ghost. As he breathed his last, he s
give them, for the know not wha
thee I commend my spirit. And h
body and ascended to Heaven th
as the Ascension.

he next day, Saturday, his frie

body down and the two Mary
in a linen shroud for his burial in
boulder was rolled in front of the e
Sunday, the disciples went to visi
discovered that the stone had be
and the body was gone. Only the sh
At first they thought the tomb h
but then Jesus appeared to them
that he had gone Heaven, wher
forevermore on GOD the Father
am the Resurrection and the
Although his mortal body was no
(or Holy Ghost) had merged to be
and was with them on Earth. This
the Father, the Son, and the Holy
known as the Trinity, or Three in
Three. The disciples, he said, mu
work on Earth and found the Ch
Peter was given this task and was
on which the Church was foun
return to Earth is known as the R

nce the Church was founde

were kept busy writing th
preaching in the name of the Lor
ties are documented in Pauls and
the Ephesians and the Corinthian

he final word in the New Te

John, in the book which
Revelations made to him about
world after Jesus. This is not writ
Baptist, but by a hermit who live

BLACK BOX

Tom Vanderbilt
In 1997, a Garuda Airlines Airbus 300-B4 crashed into a highland
jungle slope near Medan, North Sumatra, killing 224 people. As
Indonesian police and military teams, aided by aviation investigators from other countries, combed through the dense Sumatran canopy for the missing flight data recorder, it was reported
that clairvoyants from a neighboring village had been called in
to assist on the search.
The story seems drawn from the portfolio of J. G. Ballard:
The sophisticated electronic device submerged in the primeval
Indonesian murk, the search teams straining for the ping of the
homing beacon as local seers delved into their own visions to
locate the signal, Western rationalism run headlong into Eastern mysticism, nature already crawling over and reclaiming the
aluminum-and-plastic debris field of this flight into terrain.
And yet the opposition between the black box recorder
or, more correctly, flight data recorder (FDR) , and its accompanying instrument, the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and the
Sumatran clairvoyants may be more of form than function, for
indeed there is a kind of mystical quality to the black box, this
device that, rather than looking ahead in a clairvoyant sense,
is able to look back on the past, presenting through its myriad
recorded variables a lineage of how history was, and how it
might have been. If the mystics suggest Tiresias, the blind
prophet of Greek mythology able to see forward, then the black
box is akin to the character Er, that figure introduced in Platos
Republic who is able to report from beyond the dead.
And so to a culture already fecund with survivor stories whether survivors of political brutality, broken homes, or
the manufactured reality contests of Hollywood is added the
ultimate sole survivor: this humble black box, which in fact is
usually painted Day-Glo orange for obvious reasons of visual
reconnaissance (but is often charred black upon retrieval).
Air disasters, despite their relative rarity (compared to deaths
caused by smoking, industrial accidents, or car crashes), have
become a collective vessel for anxiety, a testing of our larger
faith in the promise that technology, so quickly made obsolete, may someday make death itself obsolete. Thus after
each crash we look eagerly, and more than a bit accusatorily,
toward another bit of technology, the black box, whose survival
reaffirms our faith in technology even as its message may
ultimately undermine it although, admittedly, many crashes
are attributed to human error.
While true black box data is in fact incomprehensible to
most of us, the transcripts of the CVR have entered the lexicon,
collected in Malcolm McPhersons The Black Box: All-New
Cockpit Voice Recorder Accounts of In-Flight Accidents,
deployed in the off-Broadway play Charlie Victor Romeo, and
even used as the narrative inspiration for the hypertext work
of Alistair Gentry (100 Black Boxes). They are predictably chilling exchanges, with an oft-recurring theme being the lack of
cognizance by pilots as to what is actually taking place they
previous page: Emma Kay, The Bible from Memory, 1997 (detail). This image
previously appeared in Cabinet issue 5 but suffered from numerous typographi-

70

cal errors introduced at the printer. We apologize to Emma Kay, whose work we
admire greatly.

are missing what is called situational awareness, dependent

only upon data that may in fact not be telling the truth. Yet
even the survival of black box data may not help establish the
truth. In the case of EgyptAir flight 990, which dropped mysteriously into the Atlantic Ocean half an hour after departing
from JFK , the CVR and FDR seemed to tell the following story:
After the captain and copilot had excused themselves from
the cabin (for different reasons), a cruise co-pilot left alone
in the cockpit soon uttered the words Tawakkalt ala Allah,
disengaged the autopilot, pulled up on the throttle and put the
airplanes elevators into a steep descent position. The plane
plummeted so rapidly that EgyptAirs computers back at
JFK decided the data was incorrect and as the crew rushed
back to the cockpit they were unable to correct the situation
as the co-pilot uttered the same words again. As The Atlantic
reported, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)
interpreted the voice and data record as showing a controlled
descent, i.e., intentional. There it might have ended, save
for the Egyptian governments insistence the NTSB was misinterpreting the data not only that of Boeings engineers,
but of the pilot. The pilots utterance did not mean, as the
NTSB had it, I rely on God, but rather, I put my fate in Gods
hands; or, more grandiloquently, I depend in my daily affairs
on the omnipotent Allah alone. Rather than a preface to suicide, he was praying in response to some failure condition
not revealed by the black box recorder (a bomb, a missile, or
the weather were all given as reasons). The black box, its data
supposedly telling a value-free, neutral story, had thus entered
the age of postmodernism as decried by Alan Sokal: Its truth
was deemed relative, open to multiple interpretations.
For all of its cultural notoriety, the black box recorder as a thing
has received little attention, becoming an object lesson of the
larger phenomenon of the Black Box itself, i.e.: An abstraction of a device or system in which only its externally visible
behavior is considered and not its implementation or inner
workings. The black box has come to have a host of associative meanings, mostly seemingly pejorative: for example,
in his final article, architecture critic Reyner Banham chided
architecture as a discipline for being a black box oblique,
secretive, mystifying for the sake of its own self-propagating
grandeur. Area 51, or Dreamland, that mysterious off-themap quadrant in Nevada, is often called The Black Box, and
indeed its signature export, the Stealth bomber, is perhaps the
ultimate black box, for not only are the Stealth bombers inner
workings carefully concealed beneath its inky exterior, but its
external behavior is also impossible to consider, on radar at
least. Transparency, along with technology, was one of the
key projects of utopian modernism, and nothing flies in the face
of that more flagrantly than the black box, which now reads as
a symbol of the covert void: Right now Echelon is a black box,
said the director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) ,
speaking of the National Security Agencys global eavesdropping system, and we really dont know what is inside it.
As an object, however, the black box recorder should not
be overlooked, for it might be the purest representation of the
function of design in one form. As multiple observers have
noted (e.g., Christopher Alexander in Notes on a Synthesis of
Form, and Henry Petroski in To Engineer is Human: The Role of

Failure in Successful Design), failure is one of the most essential factors in the best design: Only by what has not worked
do we learn to create what does work. Rarely is a product
ever final. Its form merely represents a transient compromise
between human need and technological ability, and the best
designers are those able to extrapolate failure out of a seemingly successful status quo. And thus it should come as no
surprise that, at the dawn of the jet age in the early 1950s,
the de Havilland companys Comet, the worlds first plane
powered by jet propulsion rather than propellers, suffered a
number of well-publicized crashes. There were stress tests,
there were wind tunnels, there was test data but once a
plane had crashed, it was not easy to discern why from the
wreckage alone (in those cases where the wreckage was
retrievable). With the physical body damaged beyond recognition and without witnesses present, who was to account
for the cause of death? The airplane needed a mechanism for
providing an autoautopsy.
Enter David Warren, a researcher at Australias Aeronautical Research Laboratories. An electronics buff whose father
had, ironically, died in one of Australias seminal airline disasters (the 1934 crash of the Miss Hobart), Warren was working
on the investigation of the first Comet crash in 1953 when he
proposed that cockpits be outfitted with a device that could
record up to four hours of speech as well as a variety of inputs
from flight instruments. In 1954, he circulated a paper, A
Device for Assisting Investigation into Aircraft Accidents, but
it was not until he fashioned a working prototype called the
ARL Flight Memory Unit that it began to receive some interest. Many doubted the necessity or practicality of the device,
however. The pilots union even hinted at sinister motives: the
device would be a spy flying alongside.... No plane would take
off in Australia with Big Brother listening. As Australia then
boasted the worlds best airline safety record, it was slow to
take on the project, which gained faster ground in England.
In 1958, the British firm of S. Duvall & Son released its Red
Egg recorder, which quickly became a market leader globally.
After a series of airline accidents in the 1960s, it was Australia,
strangely enough, that then became the first country to require
mandatory flight data and cockpit voice recorders.
Today the FDR market is dominated by companies like L- 3
Communications, which generates about $2 billion a year in
revenue selling FDR s. We are the Sears Roebuck [of the FDR
industry], with a catalog of all kinds of these high-tech boxes,
its CEO has said. Given that the ultimate role of the black box
is to improve the design of airplanes, there have been any
number of improvements to the black box itself, which has
seen its recording mechanism go from engraving on a wire to
loopable magnetic tapes to solid-state flash memory. While
the first recorders measured only a handful of instrument readings, the latest generation of recorders have capacities for measuring some 700 readings. Todays recorders feature remote
sensing beacons that are activated when submerged in water,
and one company has even developed what it calls DFIRS , or
Deployable Flight Incident Recorder Set, which can be ejected
from a plummeting plane and safely parachuted to Earth. Early
on, the various black boxes were kept in the cockpit, but contemporary models are stored in the rear, often somewhere

near the back galley as one manufacturer explained it, the

whole front portion of the airplane provides a crush zone, which
assists in the deceleration of tail components, including the
recorders, and enhances the likelihood that the crash-protected
memory of the recorder will survive.
There are some 20,000 planes that depart on any given day
in the United States alone, the vast majority of which proceed
without incident. Black boxes play no small part in this achievement, having helped to provide the electronic fingerprints necessary in understanding such phenomena as wind shear, wing
ice, or electrical failures. The design of airplanes has proceeded
in response to the data laid out by black boxes, and the Federal
Aviation Association (FAA) , understandably, is intent on requiring carriers to outfit planes with the latest black boxes: the older
the black box, the greater the chance it will fail to record some
variable in the ever more complex workings of a jumbo jet. Failure is an aberration in commercial aviation, yet as the statistical
profile grows more encouraging, so too does the imperative to
learn the reasons for a crash which, according to the numbers,
should not be happening. No wonder the black box recorder is
far more rugged than the airplane itself a thin aluminum shell
so fragile that pilots in an emergency landing must dump fuel
to prevent undue stress upon the gossamer frame. Black boxes
are subjected to any number of tests, the static crush, the
pierce test, the crash impact test, the fire test, each with
their own otherworldly sets of pressures and temperatures. The
forces of one or all of these tests were presumably exceeded in
the World Trade Center attacks, as the black boxes are said to
have been destroyed. This represents a failure by black boxes,
but as such it was part of a larger failure by airport screeners,
by flight school directors, by rental agencieswho had not envisioned the entire scenario of catastrophe. September 11 was a
kind of social black box recorder for America: From the failure
we will presumably never allow a commercial airline to again
be used as a weapon, nor will we underestimate the threat of
terrorism within our borders.
Since the onset of the industrial age, the idea of providing
machines with diagnostic systems has been alluring: Charles
Babbage envisioned putting black boxes of sorts on railway
cars, while the Wright Brothers installed a device for measuring propeller revolutions. Now, everything from NASCAR race
cars to the space shuttle are equipped with black boxes, Detroit
is investigating black boxes for its own products, and a company called DRS Flight Safety and Communications Corp. is
making a push into black boxes for shipping. As the company
president explained, deployable recorder technology can be
used on any platform from which data survival and recovery
are essential. All around us, failure is being read, divined from
the bones of the technological dead design thus marches on.
No product is ever perfect, but failure pushes us toward perfection, and every form is a compromise between the failure
of yesterday and the promise of tomorrow. The human body
itself is in this threshold zone: In societies not marked by
endemic war or poverty, one can assume to live longer than
ones forebears, but not perhaps as long as ones successors.
The form keeps evolving. The human body, with its myriad sensors and indicators, its inner workings kept carefully
72
concealed and rarely considered, may be the ultimate

black box. The lesson, for either man or machine, is clear: None
of us outlive our data.

In the interest of national security, we urge readers not to go to http://www.l-3ar.

com/html/f1000_1.html and look at images of black boxes on L-3 Communications site.

Crash Covers

Jeffrey Kastner
On an early August day in 1937, a plane trying to make a
landing in what was then known as the Panama Canal Zone
hit heavy weather and crashed in the waters of the Mosquito Gulf. Among the items on board later fished out of the
southern Caribbean was some 43 pounds of mail, which was
taken to a bakery in the nearby coastal town of Cristobal
to dry out and then returned to the local post office. Before
sending it off again to its intended recipients, local postal
authorities stamped each item with a simple four-line
message explaining its detour: Recovered from / Plane N.C.
15065 / Aug. 3, 1937 / Cristobal, C.Z.
Since the first fixed-wing aircraft on an official mailcarrying flight successfully traveled the five miles between
Allahabad and Naini Junction in India on 18 February 1911,
millions of airplanes have safely and reliably carried billions
of items around the globe via airmail. However, for the collector of wreck mail (a branch of philately dealing in memorabilia from various misadventures that have interrupted
scheduled mail service, whether by land, by sea or, in this
case, by air) this rule is less interesting than the rare exceptions to it. Kendall Sanford, a Geneva-based philatelist,
has amassed a large number of what are commonly referred
to as airmail crash covers envelopes that bear damage, incidental markings, or official cachets resulting from or related to
air accidents specifically those involving either Pan American or Imperial Airways, Britains first overseas international
carrier. The examples on the following pages including a
letter from an office of the Ford Motor Company in Buenos
Aires to another in Edgewater, New Jersey, recovered from the
Cristobal disaster come from his collection.
Few activities in our everyday life represent as much of a
leap of faith as the act of putting something in the mail. We readily consign materials constituting the full range of our relationships and obligations from birthday cards to bill payments
to the maw of a mechanism we only vaguely understand; we
buy into, without reservation, the idea that everything will
turn out fine in the end. And it is remarkable how often it does.
Important pieces of correspondence almost always get where
theyre going; private information exchanged between people
typically stays private; items of value consistently reach their
destinations unmolested. No doubt it is this sense of inevitability about the mail, the generally high degree of assurance that
usually accompanies its use as well as our changing relationship to it in an increasingly digital age that makes its rare failures all the more poignant. And it is this intersection between
the rare and the poignant that makes such philatelic artifacts,
indeed all such souvenirs, so prized.
As Susan Stewart, the author of On Longing, has
observed, the souvenir distinguishes experiences. We do not
need or desire souvenirs of events that are repeatable, she
writes. Rather we need and desire souvenirs of events that are
reportable, events whose materiality has escaped us, events
that thereby exist only through the invention of narrative. Our
experience of mail tends to be point-to-point: we know
73
origin and terminus, but what lies between remains a

mystery. Crash covers expose the shape of the network, open

a window on a usually clandestine system, and invite the introduction of narrative. And there surely is something of both
triumph and calamity in them only by being found did they
come to be celebrated; only by being lost did they come to be
desired. Their status as objects is based on a delicate calibration of success and failure, and on the uncanny way they carry
the evidence for both in their very materiality fulfillment and
flaw written together like a postscript on a faded piece of stationery.
Cabinet wishes to thank Kendall Sanford for his assistance with this article. For more
information, see his website at <http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Ken_
Sanford/>
Overleaf: Kosher Butcher: Crash of Imperial Airways Corsair, near Faradje,
Belgian Congo, 15 March 1939. En route from South Africa to Juba, Sudan, the
plane lost its way due to bad weather and heavy fog. As it descended through the
clouds, the captain landed on a straight stretch of water. It turned out to be a narrow river, the Dangu, and the aircraft hit a submerged rock which ripped open its
hull. The cover shown here was addressed to Paris, France, where an explanatory
cachet was applied.
Yankee Clipper: Crash of the Pan American World Airways Yankee Clipper,
Lisbon, 22 February 1943. The flying boat Yankee Clipper crash-landed in the
Tagus River at Lisbon. Ninety-three bags of mail were salvaged in water-soaked
condition. Shown is a cover to Nice, France, which was not yet occupied. The cover was censored by the Portuguese and the Americans, and thus has censor tape
on both the left and right sides.
Ford: Crash of Panagra Sikorsky Flying Boat, Mosquito Gulf, Panama, 3 August
1937. See Jeffrey Kastners text for further details.
Red Cross and note below: Crash of the Pan American World Airways China
Clipper, Port of Spain, Trinidad, 8 January 1945. The flying boat was en route
from Miami to Leopoldville, Belgian Congo. On landing at Port-of-Spain, Trinidad,
it encountered a severe storm and crashed. One hundred and thirteen pounds of
mail were recovered, dried out, and returned to Miami for redistribution, where
the letters received a rubber stamp cachet RECD IN DAMAGED CONDITION/
CONTENTS APPARENTLY OK /Miami, Fla. The cover shown here is from the Inter-

national Committee of the Red Cross in Washington, DC, and is addressed to a

delegate in the Belgian Congo. As this was still wartime, it bears US and Belgian
Congo censor tapes. On arrival in the Belgian Congo, someone added the handwritten explanatory note in French.

Shades of Tarzan!:
Ford on the Amazon
Elizabeth Esch

Though it is widely acknowledged to be the most American of

American companies, it is more accurate to describe the Ford
Motor Company as having been built by the whole worlds
labor, land, and natural resources. By the end of the 1920s, Ford
was operating factories on every continent, in over 20 countries, and was selling more cars, trucks, and tractors than any
other manufacturer. In the US , the 100,000 workers in the mammoth River Rouge Plant in Detroit came from over 70 countries.
Determined to vertically integrate that is, to own and thus
to control all the raw materials that went into making a car
Ford purchased ships, railroads, ports, forests, plantations,
coal mines, iron mines, sand pits, and farms across the US and
around the globe.
As represented by Diego Rivera in his 1932 Detroit
Industry frescoes in Detroit, Fords strategy linked nature to
industry through human toil and creativity. Among the most
beautiful images in Riveras frescoes is a Brazilian rubber
tapper. Separated by a smooth ocean from the Rouge Plant,
then the largest auto factory in the world, the rubber tapper bends in a graceful, time-tested stance into the latex-producing heveas brasilis tree. Existing as an unchanging conduit between the past and the present, the figure is meant to
suggest the mutually beneficial relationship that Rivera imagined was possible between industry and nature, technology and
tradition, progress and continuity. Yet even as Rivera painted,
the Ford Motor Company was hard at work destroying the possibility he imagined in the rainforests of Brazil.
Backed by a state department eager to free American
industry from British domination of the rubber market, Ford,
Firestone, and Goodyear had all pledged their allegiance to
producing American rubber in Sumatra, Brazil, Liberia, and
Malaya. In 1927, Ford purchased 2,500,000 acres of land in the
state of Para in northern Brazil as the site for its rubber plantations. By spring 1928, the Ford-owned Lake Ormoc had set
sail from Detroit for the newly founded Fordlandia. Carrying
enough provisions to house and care for the American staff
for up to two years, and to construct a powerhouse, sawmill,
radio station, and hospital, the Ormocs arrival on the Brazilian
coast signaled the beginning of a short but lethal misadventure
in the history of Americas imperial adventures.
A company publication reported: The first obstacle that confronted Ford was the almost impenetrable tropical jungle. But
it had to be cleared and for every 40 acres a clearing gang of
20 native workers was organized. As early as the summer
of 1929, 1,500 acres of rainforest had been slashed, burned,
and planted with rubber saplings. By 1930, 3,000 acres were
cleared, and the infrastructure of the plantation administrative offices, barracks, a clinic had been constructed. Intent on
conquering the very ecology that had nurtured the trees it was
there to turn into product, Fords willful ignorance in the face of
decades of local knowledge of rubber production is staggering.
Within a year, the first 1,500 acres of trees planted were
76
all killed by a fungus common to the region. Grown in
their natural environment, rubber trees are protected

from the spread of the disease by the shelter of other plant

life and the distance between them. Ford, having planted
the trees in rows on barren land, could not stop the fungus once
it started.
This was just the beginning of the companys problems.
Convincing enough people to live and work on the plantation was the largest challenge it faced, and one it was never
able to win. The company clearly thought its plan of creating a waged labor force of single men who slept in barracks,
punched time clocks, and worked 11-hour shifts was not
only agreeable but generous in contrast to the quasi-feudal
social arrangements on other plantations. At Fordlandia, workers were paid in money as opposed to company scrip, and
thus were not tied by debt to the plantation, although they
were still required to work off the costs of their own transportation to the plantation, and to pay for their own food,
hammocks, and tools. Fords managers had been certain that
in the beginning plenty of laborers can be recruited on the
Tapajos and neighboring rivers. These men when well fed
and cured of hook worm, malaria etc. will make good laborers.
But Ford was consistently proven wrong, and recruiting became
a constant necessity.
An early report by Carl LaRue, who scouted the Amazon
region for the company, offered the following:
The dwellers of the Amazon Valley are of three main stocks:
Portuguese, Indian and Negro. ...
Admixture has gone on so long that it is difficult to distinguish the different types. The mixture is not a particularly good
one from a racial standpoint but it is by no means a bad one ...
The fate of these people is more tragic because they are not possessed of the stolidity of the orientals, but have enough of the
white race in them to suffer keenly and long intensely for the better things.

The companys own racism severely limited its ability

to create Ford workers out of the people living in the region,
as well as its capacity to get them to stay at Fordlandia once
they were recruited. Ranking the people they encountered
in degrees of savagery and tameness, Ford managers
projected their white supremacist fantasies onto the bodies
of the tropical people they needed to produce their product.
From a tour of villages he had been sent to inspect, one labor
recruiter sent a telegram which read, Even if they were tame
they are lazy and undisciplined. The company replied, Suggest we only take 100 with the distinct understanding that
they are subject to discipline or they will be of no value. They
must guarantee to do steady work every day or they would
be without value and if they cannot talk Portuguese we might
be better off without them.
Every colonial administration has its own idea of what it
means to tame savages. In Fords case, the measurement was
clearly capitalist work discipline. A tame worker wore shoes,
lived on the plantation, returned to work the day after being
paid, and worked for 11 hours through the heat of the day. In
kind, taming savages was not unlike what Ford did in Detroit:
there, the company required male immigrant workers to study
opposite: Small pickup truck coming down a narrow road close to Fordlandia,
ca. 1940. Courtesy The Henry Ford Museum.

English and have their homes and wives inspected before they
could qualify for the five-dollar-a-day wage. Social control is a
necessary part of making people perform alienating wage labor.
But in degree, Fordlandia was different. The men Ford sought
to recruit as wage workers lived in the region of Brazil that had
once provided more than 90% of the worlds rubber. They came
from long traditions of skill, and while they worked in hierarchical networks that accessed the global economy, their work
was autonomous and it built communities. Indeed, the poverty
the company encountered when it arrived in the region was
the result not of the nature of rubber tapping, but of the global
economy from which the Brazilian rubber tappers had been
eliminated. Using seeds smuggled out of Brazil and nurtured in
Kew Gardens, British companies had launched large-scale rubber plantations with which indigenous rubber tapping methods
could not compete.
Mirroring the Brazilian eugenics movements obsession
with disease and sanitation, the American managers at Fordlandia lived in a constant state of fear of the tropics, which
included its people and its ecology. Hospital visits and inoculations were compulsory, as was the wearing of shoes (to guard
against hookworm). Doctors played an increasingly significant
role in the management of workers on the plantation;
77
the hospital was the place where sick workers were

distinguished from the just lazy ones: the latter were fired.
Fords extravagant commitment to its own ideas of how
work should be organized and workers managed, perfected
in its auto factories in Detroit, made little sense in Brazil. Yet
the less those ideas seemed to work, the more tenaciously
and absurdlythe company seemed to cling to them. In an
exchange of letters with steam whistle manufacturers, a manager expressed concern that the company had not yet found a
whistle that could withstand a tropical climate, or that was loud
enough for workers on all sides of the plantation to hear it. Of
course, the company had scheduled the whistles at 5:30, 6:00,
6:30, 7:00, 11:00, 11:30 am; noon; 3:30, 4:00, 4:30, 5:00, and 5:30
pm. But of what use is all this precision if no one can hear the
whistle? And what good is punching time cards if time is not uniformly understood? As one manager put it, Owing to the fact
that our daily labor is punching time cards, it is imperative that
time signals be controlled. Otherwise the hours of operation are
not uniform throughout the plantation. Indeed, Ford management thought electric service would be advisable throughout
the plantation in order to accommodate time clocks and bells
similar to those in the factory.
A strike in December 1930 revealed the depth of disgust
the workers felt toward the highly controlled living arrangements on the plantation. The strike began when workers in

the cafeteria were told they would have to wait in line for their
food, rather than have it served at their tables. When they
confronted managers about the new policy, the workers were
told that the Company now and then puts new rules into effect
but it was always for the betterment of the workers. Not satisfied with the betterment program, workers immediately
banded together as the managers fled by boat. Targets of
destruction during the strike included the cafeteria, all the time
clocks, the punch card racks, and all the trucks.
The Ford workers presented a list of demands to management which included the dismissal of two managers who were
considered particularly vicious; access to the docks and river
without passes; the right to visit neighboring villages; the elimination of the rule that prohibited the consumption of alcohol;
the end of the requirement to eat in the company cafeteria;
and the cessation of arbitrary firing. In response, the company
called in the Brazilian military, which arrested more than 30
ringleaders. Following the strike, Ford required its workers to
be photographed when they were hired, and agreed to a police
proposal to create passports for all workers, which contained
their fingerprints and previous police records.
In 1934, after clearing 8,000 acres of rainforest, Ford admitted defeat at Fordlandia. Marking a radical shift in strategy, the
company abandoned virtually the entire plantation, save what
it would use for research purposes, and bought over 700,000
acres of land 80 miles away. The new plantation, named
Belterra, promised better growing conditions and easier
access. The move to Belterra coincided with another shift in
policy, as management decided to allow some men to bring
their families to live on the plantation and build housing for
them. Fantastic fears that the plantation would be overrun by
poor women and their children who would require care but
could not work had guided past policy. But as fewer and fewer
men were willing to uproot themselves from their communities
and families, and more and more single men left after working on the plantation for a short period of time, the company
conceded. Having succeeded in creating neither a loyal nor
a disciplined workforce, Ford set its sights on the workers of
the future: children.
In a letter to Detroit, a manager at Belterra described the
youngsters who are growing up on the plantations [as] our
best prospects for future employees. Photos of President
Vargass visit to the plantation show smiling children waving
Brazilian flags which bear the slogan Order and Progress.
One photo in a Ford promotional brochure bears the caption:
Shades of Tarzan! Youd never guess these bright, happy
healthy school children lived in a jungle city that didnt even
exist a few years ago!
If Fordlandia became the site for experimentation with
heveas brasilis, Belterra became the site for experimentation
with people. Virtually every activity on the plantation carried the potential for Fordist ideas about nationalism, thrift,
science, and progress to be shaped into behavior-modifying
campaigns. With the introduction of family living at Belterra
came the imposition of a multitude of requirements. School
was compulsory for adults The night shift is reserved for
adults and the one who refuses, goodbye and for
78
children. Required uniforms were provided by the

company: Boys wore outfits similar to Boy Scouts and girls

neat white pleated skirts and white blouses. The decision to
provide uniforms to those children who could not afford them
was defended by one manager who noted, It is our opinion
that the psychological effect on the morale of all the children
justifies the expenditure. Working from a textbook called
Moral Education: My Little Friends, children studied Portuguese, geography, Brazilian history, arithmetic, and geometry.
Described by one writer as a childrens paradise, the residents of Belterra learned American folk dancing, an obsession
of Henry Fords, and were entertained by Ford-made motion
pictures. So successful did the company think this practice
was that Edsel Ford proposed to make films about the plantations and show them at points along the Amazon and northern
Brazilian coast in order to entice workers to this irradiating
center of civilization.
From its inception in the late 1920s until 1940, no significant amount of rubber was exported from Fords plantations
to Detroit for use in auto production. One manager wrote that
a great amount of work has been done... and a great deal of
money spent but... very little has been done along the lines
of what we came here to do, namely plant rubber. In spite
of Fords poor production record, its plantations started
to receive a tremendous amount of attention in the early
1940s due to the changed global political situation. The US,
worried that access to rubber would become increasingly
threatened, sought to support the development of production
in the western hemisphere. Both Time and Fortune magazines
asked to visit, though both were denied. The Detroit Times ran
a series of articles on the plantations that was republished as
a small booklet supporting the war effort. Harpers, Cosmopolitan and Business Week all ran features on the plantations in
1944. The caption underneath a photograph of a time clock in
Business Week read: And time clocks incongruous devices
in the customarily indolent atmosphere of a steaming Amazon
jungle measure the workers 11-hour days.
In 1941, Ford published its own promotional pamphlet.
The Ford Rubber Plantations told the story of the lucky Brazilian people who were being civilized through the generosity
and vision of the company. Describing both the natural and
built environments at Fordlandia and Belterra, the pamphlet
seems designed to lure potential managers and scientists,
as well as investors in the US. The homey pamphlet set out
to give you some idea of the problems that are involved in
this vast project and of the methods by which they are being
brought to successful conclusion, and reminded the reader
that the Ford Rubber Plantations of Brazil represent but
one of many Ford Motor Company projects for the scientific
development and utilization of natural resources... projects
that in no small measure make possible the building of finer
and finer cars at low prices within the reach of more and more
people. The scary specter of wasteland and the jungle featured prominently in the story of natives being brought into
the fold of modernity: Paved roads, cement walks, comfortable homes, electric lights, telephones this might be any
midwestern town. But it is Belterra, buried deep in the jungle
opposite: Automobile stuck in mud on road to Fordlandia, ca. 1940. Courtesy
The Henry Ford Museum.

of Brazil.... Yes, there is even a golf course a sporty 18 holes

at Fordlandia. Beautiful clubhouse, tropical foliage and 700
miles from civilization.
One journalist was moved to note the participation of the
plantations schoolchildren in the creation of Latin-Saxonian
unity: Undismayed by isolation, these boys and girls are going
ahead, playing their part in a great movement that is not only
setting an example for satisfied workmen and helping to unify
the Western Hemisphere but producing a necessary product
for the Americas in the Americas.
But if the automobile remained a necessary product,
natural rubber did not. With the introduction of synthetic
rubber in the US, Ford and the American government found
a new solution to its production worries. Having estimated
in 1941 that the Ford plantations would produce from 30 to
40 million pounds of high-quality rubber during the next ten
years... and thereafter a minimum of 10,000,000 pounds per
year, in 1946, the company left Brazil more abruptly than it
had arrived, departing virtually overnight. The plantations were
sold back to the Brazilian government for $250,000 a fraction
of the sum of $20 million that Ford had poured into the project.

79

Hashima: The Ghost Island

Brian Burke-Gaffney

Seen from a distance, Hashima Island might be mistaken for

the Japanese counterpart of Alcatraz rising from the ocean
like a ragged slab of concrete, or perhaps a gambling resort
with deserted hotels. Few casual observers would ever guess
that, only 40 years ago, this tiny island was the site of a thriving
community with the highest population density on earth.
One among 505 uninhabited islands in Nagasaki Prefecture, Hashima lies in the East China Sea some 15 kilometers
from Nagasaki, its naked crags striking a stark contrast with the
verdant peaks of nearby islands. A closer look reveals clusters
of unpopulated high-rise buildings pressing up against a manmade sea wall, a battered shrine at the top of a steep rock cliff,
and not a single tree in sight.
The clue to the islands mystery lies in coal mining.
Reached by long descending tunnels, coal beds below the bottom of the ocean near Hashima disgorged huge quantities of
high-grade coal for almost a century. But in 1974 the inhabitants
abandoned the island to the wind and salt spray, leaving behind
only unneeded belongings and a few stray cats that could not
be captured.
An Energy Chronology

The history of Hashima Island reads like a chronology of

changes in Japans energy policies from the Meiji Period to
modern times. For centuries the people living on Takashima,
a large island near Hashima, are said to have collected coal
from exposed beds and used it as a household fuel. They called
it goheita after the man by the same name who, according to
local legend, stumbled on coals combustible properties by
inadvertently lighting a bonfire on the black rock.
When transportation networks improved in the 18th and
19th centuries, the people of Takashima began to sell their coal
abroad, primarily to salt-makers on the coast of the Seto Inland
Sea. One of Japans most important industries at the time, saltmaking, had relied traditionally on resin-rich pinewood as a fuel
to boil seawater, but it was suffering from the ongoing depletion of pine forests. Coal was deemed the ideal alternative to
pinewood.
At the time, Takashima Island was part of a feudal domain
administered by the Fukahori Family, a branch of the Nabeshima
Clan of present-day Saga Prefecture. Seeing the profits gleaned
from the coal trade, the Fukahori Family usurped the management rights, assigned the islanders the role of subcontractor
and labor force, and established coal profits as one of the pillars
of the local economy.
This system was still firmly in place when Japan opened
its doors to the world in the late 1850s and Nagasaki gained
new importance as the closest port to China and a stopover
for foreign commercial ships and naval vessels. This was also
a time when Britain, America, and other Western countries
were replacing their sail-rigged tea clippers and warships with
steam-driven ships. The resulting demand for coal prompted
Nabeshima Naomasa, lord of the Nabeshima Clan, to expand
production capacity of the mine on Takashima.
81
Nabeshima turned to Scottish merchant Thomas

B. Glover (1838-1911) for help. Until then, the coalmining method on Takashima had been primitive: miners
simply chipped away at exposed surfaces with picks and then
moved on to other sites when the coal ran out or the holes
became too deep to dig safely. But Glover imported modern
mining equipment from Britain and hired British mining engineers to drill a vertical-shaft mine on the island. In April 1869,
the drillers struck a coal bed some 45 meters underground, and
Japans first modern coal mine started production.
The enormous success of the Takashima coal mine filled
Nagasaki coffers with foreign currency and sparked a rush to
develop mines on nearby islands including the until-then
useless heap of rock called Hashima.
Hashima Coal Mine is Born

While assuming exclusive rights to work the Takashima mine,

the Nabeshima Clan allowed the Fukahori Family to tap the
veins of coal streaking across other nearby islands. After
several failed attempts, the family finally installed a shaft mine
on Hashima in 1887, inhabiting it for the first time. Three years
later, though, it sold the island to Mitsubishi Corporation for
100,000 yen. The now world-famous company had expanded
rapidly after its inception as a shipping enterprise in 1873,
and had purchased the Takashima Coal Mine in 1881.
The years that followed witnessed a remarkable surge in
Japans industrial capacity and military might, encouraged by
victory in both the Sino-Japanese War (1894 -1895) and RussoJapanese War (1904 -1905). At Hashima, Mitsubishi launched
a project to tap the coal resources under the sea bottom, successfully sinking a 199 - meter-long vertical shaft in 1895 and
still another shaft in 1898. The company also utilized the slag
from the mine to carry out a series of land reclamations, thereby
creating flat space for industrial facilities and dormitories.
Completed around 1907, the high sea-walls gave the island the
appearance of a battleship riding the waves. The resemblance
was so uncanny that a local newspaper reporter dubbed it
Gunkanjima (Battleship Island), a nickname that soon replaced
the official name in common parlance.
Hashima was producing about 150,000 tons of coal annually and its population had soared to over 3,000 when, in 1916,
Mitsubishi built a reinforced concrete apartment block on the
island to alleviate the lack of housing space and to prevent
typhoon damage. This was Japans first concrete building of
any significant size. Americas first large-scale concrete structure the Ingalls Office Building, in Cincinnati had been built
only 14 years earlier.
A square, six-story structure built around a dingy inner
courtyard at the southern edge of the island, the building
provided cramped but private lodgings for the miners and
their families. Each apartment consisted simply of a single,
six-tatami-mat room (9.9 square meters) with a window, door,
and small vestibule more like a monks cell than an apartopposite: Hashima in the late 19thcentury, prior to the major reclamations from
the sea. Courtesy Nagasaki Prefectural Library.
overleaf: Residential apartments on Hashima. Photos Carl Michaelvon Hausswolff, 2001.
page 84: The last pupils form the words sayonara Hashima in the schoolground
in 1974. Courtesy Takashima-cho.

ment, but still a major improvement over previous living

quarters. Bathing, cooking, and toilet facilities were communal.
This building was followed two years later by an even
larger apartment complex on the sloping rock at the center
of the island. Then the tallest building in Japan, the E-shaped
apartment block had nine stories on the ocean side and three
on the rock side.
One multi-story apartment block followed another until
the tiny island bristled with more than 30 concrete buildings.
Even during the 11-year period before and during World War
II, when not a single concrete building went up anywhere else
in Japan, the construction of apartment blocks continued on
Hashima as part of national efforts to meet the tremendous
wartime demand for coal.
As a result of these efforts, Hashimas annual coal production reached a peak of 410,000 tons in 1941. But it was
an achievement that exacted a heavy toll in human suffering.
While Japanese youth disappeared onto the battlefields of
China, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific, the Japanese government forcibly recruited large numbers of Koreans and Chinese
to fill the empty places in its factories and mines, and many
of these men perished as a result of the harsh conditions and
a starvation diet.
Hashima was no exception. By the time the atomic
bomb rattled the windows on Hashima apartment blocks and
Japan surrendered to the Allied forces in August 1945, about
1,300 laborers had died on the island, some in underground
accidents, others of illnesses related to exhaustion and malnutrition. Still others had chosen a quicker, less gruesome death
by jumping over the sea-wall and trying in vain to swim to
the mainland.
Suh Jung-woo, one of the Korean laborers fortunate
enough to survive the ordeal, remembered Hashima in a 1983
interview:
I was one of two boys forced onto a truck in my village and
taken to the government office, where several thousand other
Koreans ranging in age from about fourteen to twenty had been
gathered. After a night at an inn, we were taken by truck to a
nearby city, then by train to the port at Pusan and ship
from Pusan to Shimonoseki. About 300 members of the
82

group, including myself, were then taken by train to Nagasaki,

where we arrived the following morning. All of us were being
sent to Hashima.
I had relatives in Japan, not only my parents in Nagoya but
also family members living in Sasebo. I thought that no matter
where I was sent in Japan I would be able to escape and find shelter with them. But as soon as I saw Hashima I lost all hope.
The island was surrounded by high concrete walls, and
there was ocean, nothing but ocean, all around. It was crowded
with concrete buildings as high as nine stories.... We Koreans
were lodged in buildings on the edge of the island. Seven or eight
of us were put together in a tiny room, giving each person no
more than a few feet of space.
The buildings were made of reinforced concrete and
had mortar on the outside, but the interior was filthy and falling apart.... We were given uniforms like rice bags to wear
and forced to begin work the morning after arrival. We were
constantly watched and ordered around by Japanese guards,
some of whom were wearing swords.
The mine was deep under the sea, the workers reaching it by elevator down a long narrow shaft. The coal was carried out from a spacious underground chamber, but the digging
places were so small that we had to crouch down to work. It was
excruciating, exhausting labor. Gas collected in the tunnels, and
the rock ceilings and walls threatened to collapse at any minute.
I was convinced that I would never leave the island alive.
Four or five workers in fact died every month in accidents.
Modern concepts of safety were nonexistent. The corpses were
cremated on Nakanoshima, the little island beside Hashima.

The end of World War II brought radical changes to

Hashima Island and an important new purpose for its product. Instead of fuel for warships and steel for cannon shells,
the coal from Hashima forged the tools for Japans recovery
from the pit of humiliation and defeat. Ironically, however,
it was another conflict the Korean War (1950 -1953) that
catapulted the coal mines, and virtually every other Japanese
industry, into a golden period of prosperity and growth.
The population of Hashima reached a peak of 5,259 in
1959. People were literally jammed into every nook and corner of the apartment blocks. The rocky slopes holding most

of these buildings comprised about 60 percent of the total

island area of 6.3 hectares (15.6 acres), while the flat property
reclaimed from the sea was used mostly for industrial facilities and made up the remaining 40 percent. At 835 people per
hectare for the whole island, or an incredible 1,391 per hectare
for the residential district, it is said to be the highest population density ever recorded in the world. Even Warabi, a Tokyo
bedtown and the most densely populated city in modern Japan,
notches up only 141 people per hectare.
Hashima contained all the facilities and services necessary for the subsistence of this bulging community. Elbowing for space in the shadows of the apartment blocks were a
primary school, junior high school, playground, gymnasium,
pinball parlor, movie theater, bars, restaurants, 25 different
retail shops, hospital, hairdresser, Buddhist temple, Shinto
shrine, and even a brothel. Motor vehicles were nonexistent.
As one former miner put it, one could walk between any two
points on the island in less time than it took to finish a cigarette.
Umbrellas were also unnecessary: a labyrinth of corridors and
staircases connected all the apartment blocks and served as
the islands highway system.
Equality may have reigned in the corridors, but the allocation of apartments reflected a rigid hierarchy of social classes.
Unmarried miners and employees of subcontracting companies were interned in the old one-room apartments; married
Mitsubishi workers and their families had apartments with
two, six-mat rooms but shared toilets, kitchens and baths;
high-ranking office personnel and teachers enjoyed the luxury
of two-bedroom apartments with kitchens and flush toilets. The
manager of Mitsubishi Hashima Coal Mine, meanwhile, lived in
the only private, wood-constructed residence on the island a
house located symbolically at the summit of Hashimas original
rock.
Indeed, Mitsubishi owned the island and everything on
it, running a kind of benevolent dictatorship that guaranteed
job security and doled out free housing, electricity and water
but demanded that residents take turns in the cleaning and
maintenance of public facilities. Thus the people of Hashima
huddled together, all under the wing of The Company and all
bent on a common purpose.
But coal is not edible. The community depended completely on the outside world for food, clothing and other staples.
Even fresh water had to be carried to the island until pipes
along the sea floor connected it to mainland reservoirs in 1957.
Any storm that prevented the passage of ships for more than
a day spelled fear and austerity for Hashima.
The most notable feature of the island was the complete
absence of soil and indigenous vegetation. Hashima, after all,
was nothing more than a rim of coal slag packed around the
circumference of a bare rock. A movie shot there by Shochiku
Co. Ltd. in 1949 was aptly entitled Midori Naki Shima (The
Greenless Island).
The initiation of a planting campaign in 1963 was a sign
of the residents first hard-won taste of leisure. Using soil from
the mainland they made gardens on the rooftops and enjoyed
the unprecedented pleasure of home-grown vegetables and
flowers. It was around this same time that electric rice cookers,
refrigerators and television sets became standard appli83
ances in the islands apartments.

But the optimism did not last long. Hashimas fortunes started
on a downhill slide in the late 1960s when Japans economy
soared and petroleum replaced coal as the pillar of national
energy policies. Coal mines across the country began to close.
Mitsubishi slashed the work force at Hashima step by step,
retraining workers and sending them off to other branches of its
sprawling and booming industrial network. The coup de grce
came on 15 January 1974, when the company held a ceremony
in the island gymnasium and officially announced the closing
of the mine.
The subsequent exodus proceeded with amazing speed.
The last resident stepped onto the ship for Nagasaki on 20
April 1974, holding an umbrella up to a light rain and glancing
back woefully toward the empty apartment blocks.
The End Result of Development

Now desolate and forgotten, Hashima guards the entrance

to Nagasaki Harbor like a strange, dead lighthouse, attracting
little more attention than the visits of tired seagulls and the
curious stares of people on passing ships. But the symbolism
is hard to ignore. The tight-knit Hashima community was
a miniature version of Japanese society and it straddled a
landmass that, except for the lack of water and greenery,
mimicked the entire archipelago. The islands present forlorn
state is a lesson to contemporary Japan about what happens to
a country that exhausts its own resources and depends solely
on foreign trade. Taking note, the Japanese government has
used photographs of Hashima in full-page national newspaper
advertisements calling for conservation of energy.
During its 84 - year career under Mitsubishi, the island produced some 16.5 million tons of coal. The miners tunneled deep
into the sea bottom, the builders carefully utilized every precious square meter of island property, and the islanders made
valiant efforts to lead a comfortable and dignified life. But few,
if any, of these people included the closing of the mine in their
plans.
In that sense, the dead island of Hashima delivers a lively
warning about the importance of foresight. It offers a view
of the end result of development, the fate of a community
severed from Mother Earth and engaged in a way of life
disconnected from its food supply. In short, Hashima is
what the world will be like when we finish urbanizing and
exploiting it: a ghost planet spinning through space silent,
naked, and useless.
There is currently a documentary on Hashima Island under production for Swedish television. The directors are Carl Michael von Hausswolff and Thomas Nordanstad.

84

The Floating Island

Paul Collins

In late 1942, Lord Louis Mountbatten the British militarys

Chief of Combined Operations paid a visit to Winston Churchill
at his official country home, Chequers. Mountbatten had with
him a small parcel of great importance. A member of Churchills
staff apologized that the Prime Minister was at that moment in
his bath.
Good, said Mountbatten as he bounded up the stairs.
Thats exactly where I want him to be. Mountbatten entered
the steaming bathroom to find Churchill in the tub. It was generally not a wise thing to interrupt Sir Winston in his bathtub.
I have, Mountbatten explained, a block of a new material
that I would like to put in your bath.
Mountbatten opened his parcel and dropped its contents
between the Prime Ministers bare legs in the water. It was a
chunk of ice.
Rather than bellow at his Chief of Combined Operations,
Churchill stared at the ice intently and so, standing by the
bathtub, did Mountbatten himself. Minutes passed, and still
they looked into the steaming depths of bath water before
them. The ice was not melting.1
Ice is strange stuff: brittle when struck suddenly, yet malleable
when pressured over a period of time. With low but steady
pressure, this plastic deformation can continue indefinitely.
Above all, ice is unpredictable. Molded into a beam, it will
fracture at loads anywhere from 5 kg/sq cm to 35 kg/sq cm.
Because it fails at unpredictable loads, it is not ideal as a building material. But what was bobbing about in Churchills bathtub
was no ordinary ice: it was pykrete.
Pykrete is a super-ice, strengthened tremendously by
mixing in wood pulp as it freezes. By freezing a slurry of 14
percent wood pulp, the mechanical strength of ice rockets up
to a fairly consistent 70 kg/sq cm. A 7.69 mm rifle bullet, when
fired into pure ice, will penetrate to a depth of about 36 cm.
Fired into pykrete, it will penetrate less than half as far about
the same distance as a bullet fired into brickwork. Yet you
can mold pykrete into blocks from the simplest materials and
then plane it, just like wood. And it has tremendous crush
resistance: a one-inch column of the stuff will support an
automobile. Moreover, it takes much longer to melt than pure
ice. But as strong and eco-friendly as it is, pykrete remains
forgotten today save among glaciologists, who express
bafflement over why no one has made use of it. I dont really
know why it has languished in obscurity, admits Professor
Erland Schulson, director of the Ice Research Laboratory at
Dartmouth College.2
Pykrete is the namesake of Geoffrey Pyke, who the Times
of London once declared one of the most original if unrecognized figures of the present century. His career began in 1914
when, as a teenager at Cambridge University, he landed a
foreign correspondent job by using a false passport to sneak
into wartime Germany. After getting tossed into a concentration camp, he fled the country in a daring daytime escape.
In the 1920s, he virtually created progressive elementary
education in Great Britain, all for the sake of his own sons
education. Pyke financed his own school by brilliantly riding

futures markets and controlling a quarter of the worlds supply of tin, a ploy which brought him to financial ruin in 1929. He
lived on as an eccentric hermit, publishing prescient warnings
of Nazism and proposing one of the first media watchdogs.
After the war, his freelance genius helped propel the creation of
the National Health Service.3
During the war, he appeared at the office of the Chief of
Combined Operations with a simple recommendation for
his hiring. You need me on your staff, the shabbily dressed
man explained to Lord Mountbatten, because Im a man who
thinks. What Pyke was thinking about just then was building
ships out of ice.
Pyke envisioned ships as vast and solid as icebergs. You
could make the sides of your boat tens of feet thick, hundreds
if you felt like it, and bullets or torpedoes would bounce away
or knock off pathetically ineffectual chunks. And when a torpedo did knock a chunk away so? You were floating in a sea
of raw repair material. Given how long it took pykrete
86
to melt, and the minimal onboard refrigeration equip-

ment needed to stay frozen and afloat, it would be months or

years before the boats exhausted their usefulness. In battle, the
ice ships could put their onboard refrigeration systems to good
use by spraying super-cooled water at enemy ships, icing their
hatches shut, clogging their guns, and freezing hapless sailors
to death.
Pykrete freighters could carry eight entire Liberty class
freighters as cargo, but Pykes dream was not to use them as
cargo ships but as aircraft carriers. One of the great disadvantages of aircraft carriers had always been that their short landing surfaces and cramped storage favored small planes with
foldable wings and light armor. The most desirable fighters, like
Spitfires, were not an easy fit for carriers, and bombers were
altogether out of the question. Pykes logical conclusion
above: The roofed-over test model of Habbakuk resting on Patricia Lake in
early 1943.
opposite: Canadian workmen assembling the protoype of the ship.
Photos courtesy National Research Council Canada

was to build a behemoth: the H.M.S Habbakuk, he called it.

Constructed from 40-foot blocks of ice, his Habbakuk would
be 2,000 feet long, 300 feet wide, with walls 40 feet thick. Its
interior would easily accommodate 200 Spitfires. The largest
ship then afloat was the H.M.S Queen Mary, which weighed
in at 86,000 tons. The Habbakuk would weigh 2 million tons.4
For a man who had had ice thrown into his bath, Winston
Churchill was surprisingly receptive to the idea. After reading the formal War Cabinet report on the Habbakuk project,
Churchill shot back a memo stamped Most Secret the next
day, on 7 December 1942. I attach the greatest importance
to the prompt examination of these ideas, he wrote. The
advantages of a floating island or islands, even if only used
as refueling depots for aircraft, are so dazzling that they do
not need at the moment to be discussed.
Mountbatten had already ordered Pyke and his colleague
Martin Perutz to produce pykrete in large quantities to test and
perfect it. Utmost secrecy was required, so Pyke set up shop
in a refrigerated meat locker in a Smithfield Market butchers
basement; his shop assistants were disguised British commandos. Their work was carried on behind a protective screen
of massive frozen animal carcasses. When Mountbatten came
to visit the operation, it was so hush-hush that Lord Louis had to
disguise himself as, of all things, a civilian.
It looked like an ordinary boathouse, tucked in on the shore
of Patricia Lake, just outside Jasper, Ontario. But it was not a
house at allit was the boat, with a tin roof stuck on top to make
the bizarre craft look like a boathouse.
The prototype Habbakuk was 60 feet long and 30 feet
wide, weighing in at 1,000 tons, and was kept frozen by a onehorsepower motor. The boat would not move very quickly,
and the enemy would hardly fail to see it coming, but this
hardly mattered. Surprise, Pyke theorized in his first
Habbakuk memo, can be obtained from permanence as well as
suddenness. The immense hull was just as strong as Pyke had
predicted, but Mountbatten eschewed the scientists reports
for a more direct testing method: hauling out a shotgun and trying to blow a hole into their precious prototypes side. He failed.
Meanwhile, the butchers backroom had produced
enough samples for Mountbatten and Churchill to take their
pykrete show on the road. Mountbatten unveiled the invention at a tense secret meeting of the Allied chiefs of staff at
Quebecs Chateau Frontenac Hotel in August 1943. With
the heads of nearly every Allied branch in attendance, the
outside of the conference room was filled with high-level
staff waiting to give their reports. British Air Marshall Sir William Welch was among them when they heard two pistol shots
ring out from inside the conference room.
My god, Welch yelled, the Americans are shooting the
British! Guards rushing into the conference room found Lord
Mountbatten holding a pistol amidst a scene of shattered ice
and mayhem. And yet some of the officers were laughing.
There was a very reasonable explanation for it all. Mountbatten
had set out two blocks of material and then pulled out a gun to
give the assembled chiefs a little demonstration. The first shot
had been at a block of pure ice, which shattered. Nobody was
much surprised by this. But the second shot proved
87
very surprising indeed. This time, Mountbatten shot a

piece of pykrete, and the bullet ricocheted right off the block
and zipped across the trouser leg of Fleet Admiral Ernest King. It
was quickly decided that Mountbatten had made his point.5
Churchill and Roosevelt soon came to an agreement that
the worlds biggest ship should be built. But one man was
conspicuously missing from these meetings: Pyke. The ships
inventor was stunned to discover that to appease the Americanswho were not too keen on pottering eccentricshe had
been cut loose from his own project. It hadnt helped that Pyke
had sent a cable marked Hush Most Secret back to Mountbatten. It read, in its entirety: CHIEF OF NAVAL CONSTRUCTION IS
AN OLD WOMAN. SIGNED PYKE .6
In the end, the Habbakuk was never built anyway. Landbased aircraft were attaining longer ranges, U-boats were
being hunted down faster than they could be built, and the
US was gaining numerous island footholds in the Pacificall
contributing to a reduced need for a vast, floating airfield.
And deep within the newly built Pentagon was the knowledge
that America already had a secret weapon in development to be
used against Japanan end to the war that would be brought
about not by ice but by fire.
The prototype ice-ship, abandoned in Patricia Lake, did not
melt until the end of the next summer.

1 This Chequers account is included in the only biography of inventor Geoffrey Pyke: David
Lampes wonderful 1959 book Pyke, the Unknown Genius (London: Evans Brothers, 1959).
2 Martin Perutz, Description of the Iceberg Aircraft Carrier and the Bearing of the Mechanical Properties of Frozen Wood Pulp Upon Some Problems of Glacier Flow, in Journal of
Glaciology, March 1948, pp. 95-104. Theres an entertaining modern experiment involving
shooting pykrete at http://www.geocities.com/Broadway/1928/pykrete.htm. The Schulson quote is from my 7 March 2001 email interview with him.
3 See Pyke obituaries The Fearless Innovator, The Times (London), 26 Feb 1948, p. 6; and
Everybodys Conscience, Time, 8 March 1948, pp. 31-33.
4 Due to an Admiralty clerks error, it was Habbakuk rather than the correct biblical name
Habakkuk. Pykes memos are available through the Public Record Office (www.pro.go.uk);
they are Admiralty files ADM 1/15672 and ADM 1/15677. Also see the London Illustrated
News, 2 March 1946, pp. 234 237.
5 War on Ice, Newsweek, 11 March 1946, p. 51.
6 Martin Perutz, Enemy Alien, The New Yorker, 12 August 1985, pp. 35-54. Perutz notes
that design flaws might have made the Habbakuk impossible anyway.

Old Rags, Some Grand

Scott A. Sandage

These Colors Dont Run, I keep reading. Small wonder, after

six months holding on by a thread to a speeding Eddie Bauer
Ford Explorer. There used to be some rule about burning a flag
when it gets torn or dirty. Does this mean it would be patriotic
to torch a sport utility vehicle?
By spring, the flags of September 11 looked like veterans
of Ground Zero. Even Presidents Day sales could not move
overstocks of red, white, and blue stickers, magnets, mugs,and
mittens. Twenty-six stripes for the price of thirteen! Patriotisms
pan had flashed. Again.
Up in the Bronx, George M. Cohan turned in his grave,
or rather in his tiffany-windowed granite mausoleum at
Woodlawn Cemetery the house that flag-waving built. Lets
hope they buried Broadways ur-hoofer in his tap shoes.
Any American who grew up in the 20th century learned the
songs of George M. Im a Yankee Doodle Dandy and Youre
a Grand Old Flag! rang out at scout jamborees and on fourthgrade field trips to cheer up the nursing home: Every heart
beats time, for the mud, soot, and grime.
A century ago, Cohan invented patriotism as we know it:
loud, brash, mass-market fervor at so much per stripe. Scion
of a vaudeville family, he made his Broadway debut in February 1901 in a musical called The Governors Son. Fifty -some
plays followed over three decades. To approximate
88
his versatility, imagine the talents of Irving Berlin, Neil

Simon, Spencer Tracy, Robert Preston, Gene Kelly, Bill Irwin,

Groucho Marx, Bob Fosse, Hal Prince, and David Merrick all
in the body of a racehorse jockey. Cohan found major success
as a composer, lyricist, playwright, actor (light and dramatic),
singer, dancer, clown, comedian, choreographer, director, and
producer.
And flag-waver. Yet, commodified patriotism was merely
an element in Cohans greater invention: American musical
comedy. Half a century before Rodgers and Hammerstein got
the credit, Cohan used songs and dances to tell integrated
stories. His patriotism was sincere, but he also knew how to
milk applause. Many a bum show, he once said, was saved
by the flag.
Leave it to Americans to forget the artistic innovation and
keep the gimmick. Despite (or because of) tributes by James
Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and Joel Grey in the
1968 Broadway play George M!, if Cohan is remembered at
all, it is as a professional flag-waver. In fact, Cohans flag-waving got him in trouble twice both times prefiguring todays
climate of thug patriotism and constitutional flag-protection
amendments.
In 1905, the toast of Broadway was grand marshal of
a parade for Civil War veterans. Riding next to a graybeard
who cradled a battle-torn flag in his lap, Cohan asked about
it. After a few words about Gettysburg, the old soldier looked
down and said, Shes a grand old rag. With ragtime all the
rage, a song called Youre a Grand Old Rag seemed just
above: Cohan and Hirano in Cohans flag-bedecked dressing room

the thing for Cohans next musical. Songsheets and Edison

cylinder recordings were already on sale when the show
(audaciously entitled George Washington, Jr.) opened to
scandal. The Daughters of the American Revolution (kneejerk, even then), and blowhards like President Teddy Roosevelt, accused the star of desecration. In a rare retreat for the
headstrong showman, Cohan recalled the sheets and
cylinders (missing a few that collectors prize today) and
rewrote the song into the piece of cheese most of us learned
too well. The 1905 incident proved a rule that George M.
coined: theres no such thing as bad publicity. But the events
of 1941 ended differently.
At 63, Cohan was battling abdominal cancer. More than ever,
he needed the help of his longtime valet, Michio Mike Hirano.
A Japanese immigrant from Shizuoka Prefecture, he had been
the showmans gatekeeper and confidante for decades. When
Hirano was busy, Cohan delighted in answering the telephone
in a heavy Japanese accent, to screen his own calls and frustrate the press. George M. even wrote a part for Mike in a
1936 Broadway play. Hirano had only one line, but it stopped
the show nightly by breaking Cohan into fits of laughter. By
1941, Hirano enjoyed minor Broadway celebrity as the stars
ever-present sidekick, backstage and at hangouts like the Oak
Room at the Plaza (where a bronze plaque still marks Cohans
secluded corner table).
Soon after Pearl Harbor, Hiranos visibility caught him in
the backlash against Nisei and Issei: immigrants and citizens
of Japanese heritage. Intelligence agents pronounced both
groups harmless, and not one case of espionage ever stuck.
Yet, as Greg Robinson relates in his new book, By Order of
the President, Franklin D. Roosevelt imprisoned more than
110,000 Japanese-Americans during the war, in what a classic
government euphemism termed internment camps.
Cohan tried to rescue Mike. On 18 December 1941, he
sent a long, urgent telegram to Attorney General Francis
Biddle, writing I will personally vouch for Mike Hirano. But
this was one string the ailing showman could not pull, despite
renewed fame. The war brought his music back in style, after

its eclipse by that of Cole Porter and the Gershwins. Franklin

D. Roosevelt presented him with a Congressional Gold Medal
in a White House meeting that framed James Cagneys cinematic flashbacks in Yankee Doodle Dandy. Of course, the film
did not portray Michio Hirano, not even for one line. Onscreen
and in life, Hirano simply vanished. Some said he went into the
camps; others, that he escaped to freedom, of a sort, in the
sweatshops of wartime New York.
The nations preeminent patriot died in November 1942.
He lived long enough to watch his life in the movies and to see
something more important. With the loss of Mike, Cohan finally
made the connection between jingoism and prejudice. He felt
very bad about that, his son George M. Cohan, Jr., told me in a
1988 interview. Never one for self-criticism, the old flag-waver
saw his own hand in Mikes fate.
The Cohan children had grown up with Hirano and looked for
him after the war, but in vain. They hoped he would show up
when a statue of George M. was dedicated on Times Square in
1959, but he did not. As late as the 1970s, reported sightings
had Mike selling oriental kitsch in Chelsea or upholstering furniture on the Upper West Side.
Cohans star still rises during wartime and on his birthday,
the Fourth of July, before burning out as quickly as a dimestore sparkler. At less fervent moments, were it not for dinner
theaters and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, nobody would
remember Cohan at all.
And of course, nobody does remember Michio Hirano. I
make an effort to think of him in parking lots and at tollgates,
when I see a shredded, sooty flag dangling from a gas-guzzling
Leviathan. And I cant help but think of Mike when todays
Attorney General or some other song-and-dance man uses
September 11 to defend ethnic profiling, arbitrary detentions,
and invasions of privacy. But I also think of Cohan and wish
that he had never rewritten the song we all learned in school:
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, keep your eye on that
grand old rag!
A recording of Youre a Grand Old Rag is available on the CD accompanying this issue.

The War of the Flea

Marvin Doyle

For the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.

It is clear to me exactly when it ended. I can fix the day, the

settinga windblown vacant lot in the San Gabriel Valley, with
a phone booth and a streetlight. The ultraviolet sizzle of the
Los Angeles sky at dusk is like nothing else. Three of us sat
in the car watching while our comrade, Alice, talked on the
phone, standing in a pool of light as it got dark around her.
We were quiet; everyones wheels were spinning.
Our little clandestine cell had been hunting in the Los
Angeles San Diego corridor for more than a year, looking for
a chink in the armor of the military-industrial complex, a gap
in the defenses of the war machine big enough to permit
delivery of one of our groups patented surprise packages. It
was early in 1973. Richard Nixon, an apparent sociopath, had
won a second term in the White House with false promises
of peace in Vietnam, while high-altitude bombings of civilian
populations continued across Indochina. Legal remonstrance
had proved futile. The Holocaust was fresh in memory
never again! and all-white police forces roamed the ghettos
beating and shooting black suspects at will. We had learned
in the civil rights movement the meaning of the categorical imperative: One does not stand idly by in the face of evil.
The need to act gnawed at us, and that afternoon we found
our opening.
Southern California bristled with military installations
and defense contractors, and there werent many that we had
not sniffed around. But all the airfields and weapons contractors girded their domains with razor wire and motion sensors,
and the longer we looked, the more helpless we felt. The best
we had done was at Air America, the CIAs notorious piratesfor-hire, who flew agents, mercenaries, weapons, and drugs
in and out of illegal operation zones in Laos and Cambodia.
One of our group, disguised as a nurse, had wandered through
an open gate at their complex in Van Nuys and made it all the
way into a hangar, where she saw crates of hardware stacked
and marked for shipment to Thailand. But she had no cover, no
excuse to be there, and had to scoot back out before she was
noticed, without seeing any kind of hole or corner where a device
could be lodged.
That day, on the edge of the desert, we found a hole. On
the outskirts of the last town in the valley a patchy grid of
scattered, weather-beaten ranch homes and trailers amid the
cactus and yucca lay a little backwater airfield, unfenced,
with a squadron of B-52s parked on the tarmac. Wed seen
these planes up close at military air shows, built low to the
ground with big openings around the wheel-wells where the
wings joined the fuselage. A small bomb planted there ten
sticks of dynamite with a pocket-watch fuse would cripple
the plane, and destroy it completely if its fuel tanks detonated.
As we drove incredulously past the disused lanes around the
fields edge, it was easy to picture an approach on bicycles,
with backpacks, posing as desert campers. Where the sage
grass grew in tall clumps, a bike -hiker could easily fade into
the twilight and wait for the wee hours.
Alice had been talking too long. The phone booth now
looked sinister under the streetlight, and I began to mis-

trust what was happening over the wire. It was a previously

scheduled, phone-booth-to-phone-booth call to our leadership contact on the East Coast, an exchange of information
on our activities and theirs, a quick update on strategy and
analysis routine communication that is the daily bread of a
serious political organization. After our breakthrough, we had
approached the contact exultantly, eager to share the news
and fully expecting the East Coast to be as joyous over the
discovery as we were.
To mount an action we needed to mobilize a considerable
array of human and material resources, which required full support of leadership. How could they not say yes? Our organization existed to shock and repudiate the war effort, and what we
viewed as the concomitant outrages of institutionalized racism
at home. With pinprick attacks on symbolic targets, this underground organization had defined a new genre of mil-itant, but
non-lethal, direct action annealed by the trauma of a 1970
bomb-building accident in New York City that killed three of its
members. Regrouped and rededicated, the group waged a brash
campaign of midnight attacks that held a mirror up to the pathological violence of the war, gave voice to the anger many others
felt, and mocked the FBIs inability to catch us. Destroying two
heavy bombers would drive our message home as never before:
No business-as-usual while the war goes on.
Why was I so uneasy when the call went on so long? In
our little collective, we often lost our way. Most of the group
were fugitives who had been forced to cut off contact with
their families and friends. We had only carefully-rationed meetings with our allies in the above-ground antiwar movement. For
safetys sake, we lived deliberately sterilized lives, almost entirely
dependent on each other for human warmth and stimulation.
Sometimes the only way to practice our intense political convictions was by analyzing our own behavior, on the seductive
theory that what is personal is political too. We could scarcely
dare to admit that only in these rare, transcendent moments
of action were we really living. Survival required ignoring the
precariousness of our existence. But in unguarded moments,
it inevitably impinged.
Alice hung up the phone and slouched back across the
crumbling pavement. She climbed in and we started off toward
the last of the light over the ocean. They dont want us to do it,
she said simply, and I realized with a sinking feeling that she was
relieved. A silence... Why? How can they think that? I did not
know how to say that I felt as if I was falling from a great height.
Weve been criticized a lot in the East, she went on. People
think just doing actions all the time is too macho. Sonia said
we need to just chill out for a while. Besides, think how heavy it
would be to do planes. It would be really bad heat. Really, really
bad for everyone.
Its all weve been trying to do for the past year, I said. But
the others were silent. Eventually, we speculated that our collective was perhaps not trusted, not thought competent. Years later,
I heard the theory that the leadership by this time was making
plans to disband the organization, surface, and seek plea bargains on the relatively minor charges most of them faced from the
wild street demonstrations of 1968 and 1969. A heavy action
against a military target would screw up the chances for lenient
deals. And playing in our own minds was dread of the
91
stress and toil that mobilizing for an action would entail.

That night, the four of us ceased to function regularly as the

fingers of one hand as we had, up to that time, to a commendable extent. We rode silently home, disconnected, spinning away
from each other into inner space. In the weeks that followed, we
all did our best to pretend that nothing irrevocable had happened.
But as time went by, we clung more and more to the abstractions
of political ideology and increasingly lost sight of the slender,
ineffable truth that had guided us and justified our extreme and
rarefied way of life that in the face of a great wrong, there is a
duty to act. Enforced isolation and the enormous pressure of the
odds finally tipped the balance of our existence too far inward.
The once-fresh hypothesis that our example would inspire a
spontaneous movement of the young and disaffected overgrew
its natural limits; it became a doctrinaire theory of international
class struggle in which revolutionary nationalist movements
in the Third World replaced the industrial proletariat of Marxs
vision as the vanguard. Study groups were formed. Work began
on a manifesto explaining our class stand. Organizing networks
to distribute clandestinely produced political tracts became our
de facto strategy for helping to build a political movement that
would support a revolution led by black and Third World insurgents. But while we dug in, the world moved on. Middle America
was turning against the war. The rafters were beginning to rattle
with the beginnings of an extraordinary transformation in the
lives of women. And by mid -1973, the Senate Watergate hearings had cracked open the putrid core of the Republican government right before our eyes. The fucker was going down!
The victory was as much ours as anyones. Others had
marched and thrown their medals on the White House lawn.
We had created a theater of the real, blown up the royal privy,
and made good on our promise that there would be no peace
at home while the slaughter went on. It was time to fold up our
tents and melt into the night. But we did not get it. Instead of
recognizing the war of the flea for what it was an artful game
of witness and confrontationwe fell for the delusion that
revolutionary change was at hand. A sclerotic, small-group
orthodoxy set in, built on fixed and unspoken absolutes. Blacks
had to lead; original sin clung ineluctably to the white race.
Feminism had to be ultra, fueling the compulsion to segregate humanity into orders of political purity. Succumbing to
the acquired habit of blocking out heterodoxical information,
we developed a tin ear for the dialectics of real life. Among
the many sins we were accused of, the only one that counted
was that we had become cognitively impaired. Our muddleheadedness helped to inflict on the next generation a legacy of
arid political correctness that hurt its chances of reaching higher
ground.
That night in the San Gabriel Valley was the beginning of
the end. But most of us did not realize we were through until a
long time after it happened. Some may not know it yet.
Further Reading:
Bill Ayers, Fugitive Days (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001)
Cathy Wilkerson, review of Fugitive Days, Z Magazine, December, 2001
Hal Jacobs, Weatherman (Berkeley: Ramparts Press, 1970)

92

93

The Short, Sad Life of Danny the Dragon

dirk libeer

Danny the Dragon, touted as the monster with a heart of gold,

was one of the star attractions of Freedomland, which opened
its doors in June 1960. Built at a cost of $33 million in the
Bronx, Freedomland is considered one of the greatest failures
in amusement park history. The size of Disneyland but shaped
like the continental US, the theme park had areas corresponding
to Americas geography and history. These included Chicago,
1871, San Francisco, 1906, The Old Southwest, 1890, and
Little Old New York, 1850-1900. A few days after opening, a
stagecoach overturned, injuring ten people and garnering much
bad press. But that was not the parks most pressing problem.
Word of mouth quickly spread that the half-finished Freedomland was boring. The attractions at Freedomland included a
Pony Express rider who changed horses; firemen who put out
one building of the Great Chicago Fire; a futuristic moving sidewalk which was little more than a horizontal escalator across a
small lake; a mule-driven merry-go-round; and a mysterious tunnel from San Francisco to the old Southwest.
Having lost $5 million dollars a year for three years, the
desperate management tried to salvage the situation by
installing thrill rides, but it was too late. Freedomland filed
for bankruptcy on September 15, 1964. The site is now home to
Co- op City.
Danny the Dragon was bought by the Great Escape in Lake
George, New York, where he was repainted and put to use. At
the end of 1996, Danny was finally taken out of service and
currently sits by his lonely self on the back road in the amusement parks maintenance area.
Cabinet wishes to thank Rob Friedman for his assistance. His website at http://ourworld.
compuserve.com/homepages/robfriedman/
is dedicated to the history of Freedomland. Much thanks also to The Journal of Ride Theory,
whose Bad Ideas issue was a valuable source for compiling the information above. JoRT is
available by writing to Box 2044, Portland, OR 97208.

above: Danny the Dragon as he appeared in a guidebook from ca. 1960. Courtesy
Rob Friedman
below: Danny the Dragon retired behind the maintenance yard at the Great Escape
. Photo Lorraine Rock.
previous page: Freedomland as illustrated in its guidebook, ca. 1960. Courtesy Rob
Friedman

Better Luck Next Time

Gregory Williams

Theres nothing like the knowledge of ones pending execution to inspire a need for comfort. As the 6th-century philosopher Boethius sat out his last days in a dungeon near Rome,
accused by King Theodoric of high treason, he penned his
Consolation of Philosophy, an imaginary discussion between
the condemned man and Lady Philosophy. The ensuing
debate pits the all-too-human sense of self-pity against the saving grace of rational thought, the only means of preventing a
lapse into pointless sentimentality. As a Christian, Boethius
did seek spiritual solace, but only insofar as it was reinforced
by the practice of a clear-headed, rigorous assessment of his
circumstances. A similar situation confronted Sir Thomas
More, who wrote his Dialogue of Comfort in the Tower of
London while Henry VIII and his cronies deliberated over Mores
demise, which happened in 1535 when he was beheaded. Like
Boethius, he invented a conversation, this one between two Hungarian relatives (stand-ins for the threatened English Catholics)
trying to come to terms with their likely deaths at the hands of the
Turks. For More as for Boethius, a period of anxious anticipation
and fear is made tolerable by the soothing words of an internal
dialogue.
The terms consolation, comfort, and condolence are
often used interchangeably in such contexts, motivated, of
course, by the presence of death. Letters of condolence in
particular have a long history, with records going back to the
ancient Greeks. While on a trip in 90 AD, Plutarch famously
consoled his wife upon learning of the death of their two-yearold child. He praises her dignified response to the tragedy:
It did not surprise me that you, who have never tricked yourself
out for theaters or processions and have always believed that
expense was useless in pleasures, should also have maintained
the same simplicity and modesty in time of sorrow.1 Stoic acceptance of grief was certainly not the only option for the mourning
relative, but it offered a measure of dignity and acknowledged
the fleeting nature of life with quiet resolve.
A more recent phenomenon in the category of loss management is the consolation prize, often associated with casualties
suffered in the sports arena. In the classical Greek games, prizes
were awarded only to the single victors, who typically received the
modest gift of an olive branch. They were also given all manner of
material rewards by the cities they represented, but the original
goal was to establish everlasting fame on earth, the sure route to
immortality. Defeat in the classical era was linked with a failure to
live on in legend. Only with the rise of the modern Olympics, first
held in Athens in 1896, did the practice of granting medals to second- and third-place finishers become established. Yet despite the
modern effort to make all talented participants feel recognized as
winners, there is still the sense that only absolute triumph will do.
Perhaps the most indelible memory taken from Olympic games
is the expressions of bitterness on the faces of the silver and
bronze medalists. Though they have clearly accomplished
a remarkable task, there can be nothing more depressing to
an athlete than to hear a sports commentator say, She gave
it an excellent try, but it just wasnt her night to take
96
the gold!

Indeed, constant advances in camera technology have

enabled television coverage of Olympic events to become
increasingly invasive. The number of angles from which an athletes every facial expression and bodily contortion is recorded
has raised spectator voyeurism to an uncomfortable level.
When Sarah Hughes upset the pool of favorites in womens
figure skating at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake
City, viewers were able to closely observe the corners of
Michelle Kwans mouth for signs of twitching as she grudgingly accepted the bronze medal. Even well after the award
ceremonies had ended, the network revisited the negative
aspect of the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat (the classic motto of ABCs Wide World of Sports) in such relentless
fashion that any sense of sympathy with the competitors was
lost. The whole experience gradually took on the air of a vast and
highly public wallowing in Schadenfreude.
The artists Mns Wrange and Tracey Moffatt take two different views of Olympic-scale downfall in their manipulation
of photographic documentation. Wrange concentrates on the
moment before the official results are announced, just when the
top two finishers from historic competitions pass through the ribbon. He highlights the instant of the photo-finish as the runnerup first becomes aware of the fact that it is all over. Out of the
sixteen images from this section of Wranges Encyclopedia of
Failure, a mere thirteen seconds collectively separates all victors
from the vanquished; 13 seconds from immortality must feel
like an eternity. Each of these temporal fragments brings to mind
Roland Barthess equation of photography and death. The click
of the shutter is a form of indirect violence, leaving the secondplace runner with a lifetimes worth of proof that victory is forever
irretrievable.
Moffatt, on the other hand, considers fourth place to be
the ultimate form of disappointment. To get so close to a medal
but to come up short can only be devastating. Like Wrange,
she focuses on that decisive shudder of recognition as it is
registered on the faces of athletes who will not be ascending
the platform to receive even a conciliatory ribbon. As Moffatt
stated in a press release for her Fourths series (2001), Fourth
means that you are almost good. Not the worst (which has
its own perverted glamour) but almost a star. Her project
refers us back to the ancient Olympic desire for fama, that
sure route to everlasting glory. Moffatt enacts a futile rescue
operation in order to grant the non-medalists a brief reprieve
from their historical obscurity. The effect, however, is to forcefully call attention to their misery, plainly visible on their
highlighted faces.
1 Sarah B. Pomeroy, ed., Plutarchs Advice to the Bride and Groom and A Consolation to His
Wife (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 60.

previous page, top to bottom: Tracy Moffat, Fourth No. 18, Fourth No. 2, and Fourth
No. 17, 2001. Courtesy Paul Morris Gallery
opposite: Mns Wrange, Second Best (13 Seconds from Immortality), 1991

97

The Disappointed and the Offended

Magnus Brts

My ongoing work, The Disappointed and Offended, is based

on reading Swedens evening newspapers on a daily basis and
finding low-level stories of failure where someone has been
offended, hurt, snubbed, disappointed, or otherwise given
cause to complain. I reproduce the newspapers photograph
of the person using the simple technique, often used by
children, of dripping molten wax on the image. When dry, the
wax is carefully removed with an imprint of the face on it. The
wax medallions are hung on long walls from pieces of thread
embedded in the wax. A list of printed one-sentence texts
nearby tell the stories behind the disappointed and offended
faces, thus making the work vascillate between empathy and
malicious pleasure. Begun in 1994, the series now has more
than 650 portraits.
The work is evocative of a wailing wall the fact that complaining and wailing, even when it concerns trivial ordinary
problems, needs a public space. Maybe the most important
part of the work is its story-telling that each face contains
a complete story that is condensed into the one sentence
exhibited alongside the portraits. The texts are never directly
correlated to the faces, and it is up to the viewer to imagine
which face connects with which text. These stories from the
newspapers are normally consumed in an ephemeral way.
By using the candle wax technique, it is possible to freeze
this stream of complaints. In that sense the work has a documentary aspect (an alternative title could be Disappointment
in Sweden from 1994 until Today). Christian Boltanski once
made an artwork consisting of portraits of dead Swiss citizens.
Boltanski claimed that these people, living in one of the safest
countries in the world, had had no reason to die. The Swedes,
living in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, have
no reason to complain, and yet they do.

98

99

100

the reserve officer who does not get to keep his official gun
the man who is considered too fat for his job as a bus driver
the man whose dog got an electric shock when it sniffed a lamp post
the smoker who had his pay cut for the six minutes it took him to smoke a cigarette
the fireman who went to a call on his bicycle, arrived late, and got dismissed
the man with a whiplash injury who thinks that the doctors are not taking him seriously
the girl whose five rabbits were killed by dogs
the ice hockey coach who thought he would be getting a Christmas present when he was called to the clubhouse but instead got
the sack
the former nazi who is not believed when he says he has left the nazi movement
the singer who had 1300 calls to his mobile telephone from the same woman
the woman who is threatened with eviction because for many years she has been feeding birds on her balcony
the woman who worked for a sect-like company in which those who succeeded were praised ecstatically and those who failed were
humiliated
the boy who was not allowed to be in the class photo because he was wearing a T-shirt that said Made of Swedish Steel
the woman who lost 50 kilos but who thinks she lost her identity because of the new body
the artist who thinks that the graphic arts have lost their legitimate status
the two parents whose child was forced to change schools due to magnetic fields
the woman who is called a psycho by an insurance company and is refused further compensation
the lottery saleswoman who wonders why the disabled have to move to make room for the election stands
the boy who got stuck against the gratings of the water circulation system in an adventure swimming pool
the woman who was cheated by her friends after winning a prize in the lottery
the headmaster who was beaten up by the father of one of the students
the man who was robbed by a person from the domestic help service
the man whose dead mothers diaries have been destroyed by mistake
the wrestler who was excluded from his club when he supported a wrestler in a rival team
the tuberculosis sufferer who was sent home from the hospital with aspirin and cough medicine
the woman who was advised to drink a lot of water during a yoga course whereupon she drank seven liters and lost consciousness
the man who has been fooled by an impostor who called himself a special messenger of the Vatican
the woman who was in the elevator going to her boyfriends apartment when the elevator fell three meters and she became so
scared that she forgot to take her pill and became pregnant
the boy who found live caterpillars in a mint chocolate
the girl who was knocked down by a car and is now stalked by the car driver who says that their lives have been joined
the man who for the past nine years has had the hiccups when awake and has tried everything imaginable to get rid of his hiccups
the politician who claims that he has been frozen out by his colleagues
the two young socialists who discovered that the international conference was overflowing with drugs
the woman who waited eleven months for her gallstone operation
the woman who discovered that Maryland Cookies can be fatal for people with nut allergy
the couple who are afraid of their neighbor
the woman who was supposed to fly to a bridal shower and whose airplane crashed in the water
the rock musician who was swindled by his manager
the two female taxi drivers who cant stand the customers constant pesterings any longer
the tenant who lives in a house damaged by underground construction blasts
the chairman of a golf club who discovered that 3,000 golf balls had been stolen from the clubhouse
the man who has received double invoices after buying shirts with his credit card
the soccer fan who got a bottle in his head while sitting in the stands
the man who accidentally shot himself in the leg and had to wait one and a half hours because there was only one ambulance in the
district
the family who has been evicted because the neighbors are tired of their children playing soccer in the yard
the dismissed director accused of sexual harassment and tax fraud who claims he is the victim of a conspiracy
the woman who was sacked by her own husband
the man who was forced to move because the rent was too much
the detective superintendent who was accused of ignoring information from a fortuneteller
the woman who discovered bits of glass in her minced meat
the man who feels swindled by the national lotterys new rules
the owner of a florist shop who wasnt given enough time to come up with a quote for a churchs Interflora Flower Relay
the tenant who has to pay twice as much rent as his neighbor with an identical apartment
the car mechanic who is three centimeters too short to get a job with SAAB
101 the book publisher who says he has wasted millions on meaningless books for people who cant understand them

The Invention of Failure: An Interview

with Scott A. Sandage
Sina Najafi & David Serlin

Failure, to paraphrase Wordsworth, is too much with us; every

day seems to add yet another tale of bankruptcy, romantic loss,
or personal tragedy, suggesting that failure, as a concept, is a
fundamental part of what used to be called the human experience. But in his forthcoming book Forgotten Men: Failure in
American Culture, Scott A. Sandage, a professor of history at
Carnegie Mellon University, argues that the notion of failure
as something that defines ones identity is a relatively recent
invention with its roots in the entrepreneurial capitalism of 19thcentury America.
Can you start by telling us the scope of your book?
The book is a cultural history of the idea of failure in American
life from roughly Benjamin Franklin to Bob Dylan. They establish the dates of the book, but it is not really about famous
people or the early setbacks of people who eventually succeeded. It is not about Thomas Edison or Ulysses S. Grant failing and later becoming successful. It is a book about ordinary
people who throughout American history fell short of whatever
the prevailing mark was in the period in which they lived.
One of the problems I had was answering the question,
Why had nobody written a book about failure before?, at least
not a book about real people who failed, rather than what sermons or short stories or novels or advice manuals say about
failure. There had been an assumption that there is no source
material, that, by definition, someone who failed miserably
throughout his life would not have left a paper trail. This turned
out to be a false assumption. One of the reasons is that failure
has been such a ubiquitous part of the American experience
that archives are full of people who have failed. For example,
one of the best sources I have found was a cache of about 5,000
letters that ordinary people wrote to John D. Rockefeller, Sr.,
starting in the 1870s, saying Dear rich and famous man, here
is my long, sad story. Please help me by (a) giving me a job (b)
sending me some money (c) giving me advice on how to succeed, etc.
Does the quantity of material remain consistent throughout
the period that you analyze?
Yes and no. Yes, because I have been able to find enough information throughout the period. No, because part of the analysis
in the book is the role that has been played by evolving narrative
genres in describing the identity of failure. For example, prior to
1820 you didnt have things like credit reports, police reports,
school grades, personnel files, constituent mail, letters to millionaires, and so on. All of these are narrative genres that are
invented at particular points in our history and each of them
contributes something new to the ability of a person to describe
his or her own identity.
A phrase that occurs repeatedly throughout the essays
and novels of an author like Mark Twain is the average man.
There is a scene in Huckleberry Finn where Twain says the
average man is a coward. The idea of the average man cant
exist until the science of statistics becomes sufficiently wellknown to a cross-section of the general public. The science of

statistics dates back to the 1830s and 1840s, but it is the advent
of sociology in the late 19th century as well as ideas like credit
reporting and movements like Social Darwinism-that represent
the beginning of systems being invented to meet perceived
needs to rank and classify people.
Credit reporting, for instance, is something that figures
largely in the book. You know how you get offers in the mail
to show you your credit report? Consumers get rated by TRW ,
and businesses by Dun & Bradstreet and other companies. This
all starts in 1841, with a New York City business called the
Mercantile Agency, which later turns into Dun & Bradstreet.
The country is at that time still reeling from one of the first
national economic crises the Panic of 1837 and the Mercantile Agency offers a service to meet a need that did not previously exist. It helps you decide who is trustworthy in a situation
in which you are now doing business with people you will never
meet. The telegraph, the railroad, the steamboat all these
developments make it possible to transact business across
great distances, and so the handshake and looking a man
directly in the eyes and sizing him up is no longer possible.
The Agency comes into existence to meet the need to
systemize trust. But for the first 40 or 50 years, credit ratings
are largely verbal. They are little stories. Only gradually do
they begin to develop numerical, encrypted, or coded rating
systems. So, if I am a silk wholesaler in New York City and I
receive an order for five bolts of silk from a general storekeeper
in Ohio, I want to know if hes good for the money. I would go to
the Mercantile Agency and they would have on file a little story
about this person that had been provided by a covert operative
in that persons town.
The service had recruited what the founders called local
correspondents in just about any location in the country where
people were doing business across distances. The local correspondent would send in updated reports every six months
about businessmen in that town. These reports would be things
like, Hes a thriving businessman but the rumor in town is that
his wife is about to divorce him and thats going to cost him a
lot of money, bring shame to his name, and it is inevitable that
he will fail.
That is one of the major new forms of narrative that comes
up in the 19th century because it is a way of keeping track of
your career over a long term. The idea of moving from town
to town when you fail and leaving your past behind becomes
much more difficult when you have anonymous spies keeping
track of you.
Much of the language that people use today to describe
themselves or others as a failure derives from the language
of business in general, and the language of credit reporting in
particular. I think that is part of the puzzle of failure in America.
Why have we as a culture embraced modes of identity where
we measure our souls using business models? For example, the
term A Number 1 used to describe a person comes from credit
rating. It means that this persons financial assets, A, and moral
character, 1, qualify him for the best rate of interest when he
borrows money. Or if you call somebody second-rate or thirdrate, thats another way of describing what type of credit rating
he has. If hes first-rate, that is because he gets the first rate of
credit, etc. If youve ever heard someone called of no
103 account, or good for nothing, these are from the lan-

guage of credit rating. Is he good for a thousand dollars to borrow or good for nothing? But in our culture, the phrase good for
nothing has moved from a very specific, purportedly objective
financial and numerical assessment to something that is much
more encompassing in terms of what it says about a persons
identity.
How do ordinary people evaluate failure before the creation of
these standards of failure?
In debate with public ways of measuring failure. My goal in a
lot of the cases is to get as many competing narratives about
the same person as I can find. I will have the credit report which
is narrative, a diary if I can find one, a letter from that persons
wife or relative describing the person. There are various ways
in which these historically specific narratives I mention start to
multiply in the 19th century so that your identity is a competition amongst the various people who claim the right to describe
you. Your identity is in some way a distillation of these narratives, and at various times one may win out. These narratives
that we use to construct our identity come increasingly with
rewards and punishments. If you are the sort of person who can
tell this type of story about your life, you get this reward. If you
are the sort of person who can tell another story, you get that
punishment. Your life story can help or hurt you.
So in terms of how ordinary people respond, they become
aware of the fact they are not the only person telling their story.
A lot of times they contest them. The major part of what I do
when I deal with the credit reporting is to look at libel cases
filed by people who felt that they had been maligned by various
credit agencies, which had reported that they were failures or
were going to become failures.
Credit rating was invented by a man named Lewis Tappan,
who was also an abolitionist centrally involved in the Amistad
case. Tappan was a silk wholesaler with his brother in New York
City. They went bankrupt spectacularly in the Panic of 1837, and
Lewis decided to get out of that business and do something
else. It is ironic that an abolitionist created a new way of putting
a price on a human head.
The two major drivers of changing American attitudes
toward failure in the long term have been, obviously, the growth
of capitalism and, much less obviously, the emancipation of
slaves. Prior to the Civil War, there were two categories of identity in American life: slaves and free people. After the Civil War,
there are two categories of identity in American life: successes
and failures. Obviously success and failure is much more of a
continuum than slave or free. On the other hand, because it is
a continuum and explained within the idea of meritocracy, it is
much easier to blame or to make moral judgments about the
deficiencies of someone who fails than it was to blame someone for being a slave.
What did failure mean before these changes?
Basically nothing, because the concept of failure as something that defines your whole identity is a new thing. In terms
of language, it doesnt exist at all before the Civil War: you will
not find a sentence like I feel like a failure in American writing before 1860. And it is, strangely enough, the usual literary
suspects who recognize the metaphoric value of business failure and begin to use it in ways that describe what the culture is

doing with that metaphor, meaning that they begin to use it as a

metaphor for personal failure not because they agree with the
metaphor but because they have recognized that the culture is
moving toward taking business success or failure as being the
thing that defines your soul. Im thinking of people like Thoreau
and Whitman, who writes the poem To Those Whove Faild in
Leaves of Grass.
So American literature reflects these changes?
Absolutely. It isnt something that I deal with directly but there
are millions of short stories and novels in the pre-Civil War period
that are beginning to deal with the fact of economic instability
and how that effects individuals and families in their identities.
And after the Civil War, you get much more of the stereotypical
Horatio Alger rags-to-riches stories.
The first major American financial crisis was the Panic
of 1819 and that was the first event that showed ordinary
people in diverse geographic areas that some incomprehensible thing that happened on Wall Street could make a major
change in their life. Now, of course, there had been hard times
before that, but generally in relation to wars, crop failures,
droughts, and other phenomena that were visible and could
be understood. But in 1819 when the economy went belly up,
it was invisible and incomprehensible. It was a sea change for
Americans to begin to construct their identities in a society that
was secularizing, on the one hand, and experiencing cyclical
booms and busts that were of uncertain origin, on the other.
So about 1820, you begin to get that kind of literature about
bankruptcy and failure. But theres a 180-degree shift in the way
the word failure is used: from 1820 through the Civil War, or
thereabouts, failure was used to describe people who met economic catastrophe, but the construction was, I made a failure,
rather than, I am a failure, It was an event that could be discreet, without touching upon ones moral and existential being.
So the first meaning of failure before the Civil War is bankruptcy. If you say, He made a failure, it means hes a bankrupt
businessman and, more specifically, it means somebody was
too ambitious. He ran his credit up too far, he tried to expand
their business too quickly, or he moved into a sideline business
that was not the thing he knew the most about. If you ask an
ordinary American today to describe a person who is a failure,
they would say, An underachiever who sort of ambles through
life without a real plan and is stagnant. And thats a 180-degree
shift from failure as a person who is an over-reacher and too
ambitious to someone who is an underachiever, not ambitious
enough.
And is the average person safe from this new rhetoric of failure?
No. People think of averageness as a form of failure. By the
definition of failure as being an under-achiever, you can live
a relatively secure and happy life and still be a failure. The
poster child for this is Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman. If
you took out a piece of paper and did a balance sheet of what
Willy Loman has achieved in our meritocractic society, it tabulates as follows: He owns a home; he owns an automobile; he
has modern appliances in his house; he has kept the same job
for 35 years, including during the Depression; he has a wife;
104 he has two handsome, strapping sons, one of whom

is a football star and got a scholarship to college. You tell me.

How is that failure? That is the American Dream. He has done
everything hes supposed to do and acquired everything that
hes supposed to acquire. And yet everybody his wife, his children, his neighbor, his employer knows that hes a failure, not
because he went bankrupt in business or because he was too
ambitious, but because hes stagnant and because there is a
deficiency in his complete identity.
One of the questions Ive brought to this book and that I
think I have been least able to answer is, Why do Americans
still believe this notion of success and failure? The American
equation is that if you work hard, you will succeed. Well, we all
know of people who succeed who didnt work hard and we all
know of people who worked very hard and dont succeed. So,
the equation is honored in the breach and it works rarely if at
all, and yet we conduct our entire lives based on an unshakable
faith that it really works. In the 1930s, there was a sociologist
named William Miller who studied captains of industry and
the statistic he produced was that of major American corporate CEO s, something like 3% came from what might loosely
be called humble origins. The idea that people grow up in
Spokane and make computers in their garages and become
the richest man on earth is statistically invalid. It doesnt happen often, but it is a really difficult myth for Americans to
let go of and that continues to puzzle me. Letting go of it would
mean letting go of the idea that you structure your soul based
on entrepreneurial models and that regardless of what life
calling you pursue, whether youre a journalist or college professor or a businessman or a musician, you should always be
investing in yourself, trying to reap profits, maximize potential all of these business metaphors that we use to describe
our personalities.
Is the rise of self-help literature in the mid- to late-19th century
tied to this? Or is that different, because much of that material
is not about getting ahead financially but about being a better
person, being more morally upright.
The rags-to-riches novels are not about rags to riches. Theyre
usually about luck and pluck and perseverance and striving. So
yes, there is a relationship to that and there also is a religious
element to it. The 19th century is the century of secularization
in America. It opens as a century in which the church and the
local religious community are the primary community that people identify with, and it ends after urbanization and geographic
mobility in a very different kind of country. There is an element
of economic theory that uses Freud and Norman O. Brown, that
looks at economics as a different form of coming to terms with
death, of cheating death, if you will. Religion is one way of coming to terms with death and reassuring yourself that something
good will happen when it finally does occur, and economics is
another way. There is a real element in which when Americans
talk about success and failure, theyre not only talking about
freedom and slavery but also talking about life and death. Failure
is a form of death. If you think about your life as a story, most
of us assemble and carry our lives around with us by constantly
revising the story that we understand ourselves through. Failure
is when the story stops. Failure is not merely a cataclysm that
adds to the plot of your life story but is something that stops your
life cold because you lose a sense of your future.

It reminds me of Fitzgeralds claim that there are no second

acts in American lives.
One of the myths I wanted to debunk was that failure is a bump
on the road to success, that there is going to be a second act.
And I looked in the historical record for people who did not
rebound. That is one of the reasons why Im interested in the
way in which failure means the story has stopped. What surprised me most in writing this book is how often the theme of
death cropped up. Ultimately I decided to begin and end the
book with two notable funerals: the book opens at the funeral of
Henry David Thoreau in May 1862 where his best friend Ralph
Waldo Emerson shocked some people in the church by giving a eulogy that pronounced Henry a failure, insofar as he did
not live up to his potential. Emerson, who had been Thoreaus
professor at Harvard, said that Thoreau could have been one
of the great men of his time a scientist, a general, or a politician but instead, in Emersons disappointed words, he was
the captain of a huckleberry party. That meant he was a failure
because he had these abilities that he did not use in the most
traditional, profit-driven, entrepreneurial sense. Thoreau was
happier picking berries.
The end of the book is the funeral of Willy Loman, where
the play ends with the requiem where people stand around and
ask Did Willy have the right dream or the wrong dream? So
Thoreau is the failure of wasted potential in Emersons eyes, and
Loman is the failure of mediocrity who fails by virtue of being
average. Thats why my students are scandalized if I give them
a C: it means they are merely average. I think there is a line in
the film American Beauty about how horrible it would be to be
merely ordinary. And Thoreau represented for many Americans
a different way that you can choose not to organize your soul
entrepreneurially and still achieve great things.
Are there other arenas that play a part in defining our notions
of failure?
Yes, one of the obvious ones is athletics and sports. There are
winners and losers not just on Wall Street but also in every elementary school gym class. There is also sexuality, and so on.
Do women play a role in 19th-century business and in your
book?
By and large, there were women in the credit reports. Women
were much more entrepreneurial than we think they were, but
from the first part of the 19th-century maybe up until the 1870s,
failure is very clearly a discourse that describes things that happen to men, specifically to white middle-class men because
those are people on whom expectations are placed. You cant
fail unless someone expects you to succeed. Women, AfricanAmericans, and working class men are not expected to improve
or succeed. But by the end of the 19th century, you begin to see
newspaper articles and discussions in other ways of women as
failures, blacks as failures. To a great degree, those discussions
import the business analogy.
Does your book address current events?
The last chapter of my book, which is a breezy sweep through
the 20th century, raises a couple of issues. One is the Columbine phenomenon. I was asked to speak at several
105 conventions of high-school principals after Columbine.

I didnt think my research would be operationally useful to people in those difficult situations, but they were very grateful for
any larger framework that could give them an understanding
of where the grammars of stigma come from. The most chilling
thing Ive read in maybe the last ten years was a quotation in
the New York Times in the first days after the shootings where a
young woman who was a survivor said Everybody knew those
guys were losers. In this school, people wear Abercrombie &
Fitch, American Eagle, or The Gap. The second most sickening
thing Ive read was in the wake of September 11 and prompted
me to go back and add something to the conclusion of my book,
and that was the discussion of how to divide payments to the
families. The purportedly objective mathematical formula that
uses age and future earnings potential and comes up with one
person on the 93rd floor being eligible for $600,000 and another
dead person on the 93rd floor being eligible for much less is an
example of a society that not only has its priorities out of whack
but a society that is really in thrall to a black-and-white notion of
success and failure. There will be no situation that Americans
will confront that they wont hammer into that box of success
and failure.
Emersons eulogy for Thoreau is posted on Cabinets website at www.immaterial.net/cabinet under the link for this issue.

Travelfest Is Closed

Michael Smith & Nathan Heiges

I had mixed feelings when I read the Austin American-Statesmans headline in late August 2001 announcing Motorolas
layoff of 3,000 employees. I was flying to Austin, Texas, to live
in what was supposed to be one of the fastest growing and
hippest towns in America. Housing was scarce and expensive.
Maybe the recession would help me find a place to live.
Friends helped me locate a sublet for the first semester.
Their description of a loft in a quiet housing complex overlooking a swimming pool filled with young lovelies sounded
good, but in reality it was a bit off the mark. The place looked
more like a Red Roof Inn with dirty socks on the railings. On
the first night I learned that the pool was not used until 2 am,
when I awoke to the squeals of co-ed merriment and a chorus of
screeching tires.
Shortly after sunrise, while on a reconnaissance for
strong coffee, I discovered Travelfest. When I looked through
the large store windows, it seemed more like an abandoned
theme park than a travel agency. I noticed a kiosk, travel
posters, and a lot of colorful Formica surfaces, perfect for
endorsing travelers checks and filling out luggage tags. I
was not quite sure if this space was used for photo shoots,
trade shows, or training sessions for future travel agents.
There was a blankness about it that told me absolutely nothing.
The only thing that was certain was what was written on the
sign: Travelfest is closed. Over the next couple of weeks,
every time I passed Travelfest Id imagine people costumed
as travel agents, tourists, and baggage handlers going about
their business as if they were extras in some Technicolor
movie. I fantasized about renting this space to preserve it
for others to experience Travelfest like I did, forgetting about
their worries and projecting themselves into some dream
landscape.
After a few weeks in Austin my attitudes toward my
surroundings started to shift. I was fatigued by the late-night
pool parties, and by the realization that having a new job at the
university meant that I actually had to work. Then the events of
September 11 changed my perceptions. Travelfests mute and
frozen quality took on a look of tragedy. All of a sudden I felt
lucky to have my job.
Now I fantasize about raising public funds to preserve Travelfest as a monument, a reminder of the persistence of failed
dreams and the hope that fuels them, a three-dimensional version of an Internet site where they dispense hard-copy tickets
to nowhere.
Text written by Michael Smith

106

Syntax error: Special CD Insert

your shoulders with your hips in the air, legs over your head and knees resting on
the floor on either side of your ears, eyes gazing at your crotch.

1 William Safire, In Case of Moon Disaster (1:38)

An excerpt from the soundtrack of Present Absence, a piece by Claude Wampler,

William Safire penned this speech in 1969 for Richard Nixon in the event that the

with sound by Christof Migone. Recorded in 2001.

two astronauts landing on the moon had to be abandoned there.

Nixon impersonator: Jon Dryden

7 Andrew Deutsch, Zerbrochen Bewegung Kling Klang (4:22)

See liner notes for track no. 3.

2 Yasunao Tone, Wounded Manyo at Lovebytes (5:23)

In the fall of 1984, after reading a chapter on digital recording in a Japanese

8 Peter Lew, No! (1:48)

book, I wondered if it was possible to override the error-correcting system of a

Homer Simpsons endless wonder at the world failing to meet his expectations,

CD player. If so, I could make totally new music out of a ready-made CD. I began

put to song. Produced in 2002.

by simply making pinholes on a bit of Scotch tape, which I stuck to the bottom of
a CD. The Scotch tape not only changed the pitch and timbre, but also the speed

9 Pauline Oliveros, Untitled (Failure 1) (5:18)

and the direction of the spinning disc. To my surprise, the prepared CD seldom

My procedure in making electronic music in the 1960s was my own invention,

repeated the same sound when I played it again, and it was very hard to control.

predating synthesizers and mixers. I used oscillators set above 30kHz to gener-

The machines behavior was very unstable and totally unpredictable; I therefore

ate combination tones and tape delay. This had a delightful instability caused

thought it would be perfect for performance. Solo for Wounded CD uses my

by the bias of the tape recording machine and the non-linearity of the system. I

album Musica Iconologos (1993) made with the same technique. It produced

improvised all my pieces, using this system and reacting instantaneously to the

sound waves that were so mercilessly distorted that the original could not be

sounds that occurred. There was always the possibility of failure (and success).

recognized. The related piece for Cabinet is part of a CD-ROM project called

The risk gave the music an exciting edge. Recorded in 1966 at Mills Tape Music

Musica Simulacra, based on the 8th-century Japanese poetry anthology Manyo-

Center, Mills College, California. Produced with support from the Pauline Oliveros

shu, and will ultimately consist of 4,516 pieces.Live performance recorded on

Foundation (www.pofinc.org).

16 March 2002 at Lovebytes Digital Art Festival, Sheffield, UK.

10 Andrew Deutsch, Zerbrochen Bewegung Bugs (1:32)
3 Andrew Deutsch, Zerbrochen Bewegung Tomato (5:47)

See liner notes for track no. 3.

Zerbrochen Bewegung (electro-mechanical loops) is a series of sound works

constructed using broken music boxes. My interest in these works first developed

11 M. Behrens and Tobias Schmitt, Chair (2:27)

out of experiments with analog tape loops that later extended to music boxes.

In this piece, made in 2002, the sound of a creaking studio chair is used,

Music boxes are mechanical loops set into motion via spring compression and

accompanied by voice and the rustling of some piezoceramic transducers in M.

consequently have the character of winding down as they play. This composi-

Behrenss trouser pockets. Tobias Schmitt modulates the sounds with digital

tional unfolding is most delightful as it destroys the often gebrauchsmusik quality

delay and modular synthesizer. The focus falls less on the inherent automatism of

of music box melodies. To further destroy this music of the home, I explored the

digital machines than on generating glitches and failure by themselves. Schmitt/

possibilities of working exclusively with broken music boxes as their melodic

Behrens concentrate on instant compositions derived from different media for

structures would be readymade destroyed. Additional deconstructions were

each piece. Tobias Schmitt: www.acrylnimbus.de

performed with electronics such as vocoders and ring modulators. Produced in

M. Behrens: www.mbehrens.com

2002 at the Institute for Electronic Arts, Alfred, New York.

12 Doug Henderson, lbs/sq. in. (3:07)
4 Christof Migone, Fado (5:49)

The title refers to sonic distortion caused by submarine pressure upon the

My Portuguese neighbors in Montreal often fought. It seemed that their relation-

recording equipment (of a strictly non-oceanographic grade) with which this

ship was in a permanent state of breakdown, with episodic flares announcing

mini-submersible was mounted. Trolling in the feeding grounds of the Minke

and confirming it to the neighborhood. As this fight got louder, I got my video

whale off Cape Cod, the small vessel was repeatedly butted, nosed (and, it

camera out in the kitchen where they could be heard the loudest, the video

appears, unsuccessfully courted) by a young male Minke, whose increasingly

focused on an aloe plant on the table and the microphone eavesdropping on the

confused signals were imperfectly picked up by the device. Note the motif of a

downstairs commotion. The visuals are peaceful and oblivious to the sound. The

boinging antenna, and approximately five seconds of dead airtime, both caused

sound witnesses the failure in progress. This incident ended with the police tak-

by the overzealous attentions of our frustrated pelagic friend.

ing the man away. Recording in the summer of 2001. All sounds based on the

Produced in 2002.

original recording. Arranged in Brooklyn, March 2002.

13 Andrew Deutsch, Zerbrochen Bewegung Garden (5:48)
5 Doug Henderson, Sodapop (5:59)

See liner notes for track no. 3.

A protest piece of sorts produced in 2002, Sodapop is a vehicle in which a voice

of Americathe Coke machineis inveigled to sing against itself, its rhythms

14 George M. Cohan, Youre a Grand Old Rag (2:18)

of ka-ching and consumerist fantasy forced to fail. The vrit dripping sounds,

A rare Edison cylinder recorded before Cohan changed the lyric Rag

clashes of metal on glass, and burbling of carbonated release are juxtaposed

to Flag (see Scott Sandages article on patriotism in this issue of

with sound effects (receding footsteps, guttural vocalizations, muffled fisticuffs)

Cabinet for details). Sung by Billy Murray, this topped the charts

lifted from the little-known Cold War-era radio program Reality Versus the Thing,

for 11 weeks to become the best-selling record of 1906. Thanks to Scott

a science-fiction/whodunit that aired for only three episodes in 1953.

Sandage.

108

6 Claude Wampler, Life Is Long Xavier LeRoi (2:39)

CD engineered by Stephen Gaboury.

To be listened to while lying on your back, weight distributed onto

CD image: Mike Ballou, Yum Yum

Romantic Landscapes with Missing

Parts
Nedko Solakov

Romantic Landscapes with Missing Parts were executed

in the murky winter of 2001-2002 up north in Stockholm in a
nice studio at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.
That was a very hard, horrible time for me, the conceptual
artist who pretends that being classically educated in mural
painting 20 years ago gives him some kind of advantage. Most
of the time during these three months I was really pissed off
by my inability to achieve in paint what I wanted (not to mention the bitter feeling that I was not quite sure what I actually
did want). In such moments I had an enormous desire to close
my eyes and have all the canvases, oil paints, brushes, easels,
and palettes disappear so that I could again start dealing with
ideas (mainly) a relatively easy (at least for me) way of working. But I kept doing the paintings, day by day, night after night,
fiercely trying to accomplish them in an acceptable way for an
audience like you.
Why am I doing this?! I had been asking myself this
constantly, when one day I realized that perhaps the reason for
me to keep going was that I had the little hope that all the parts
missing from these romantic landscapes
the moon itself;
the mountains reflection on the tranquil surface of
the lake;
the light in general;
the sailors boat;
all the profound thoughts in the philosophers head;
the flock of anxious birds;
the exhausted pilgrims tracks over the deep snow;
Europa;
the castle on the top of the mountain;
the rainbows violet band;
the purse of the wanderer (not the obviously unfinished
painting);
the artists concentration (a substantial part of the
horizon goes unexpectedly down)

would have a better and more interesting life when left

outside the paintings.

the exhausted pilgrims tracks over the deep snow

the artists concentration (a substantial part of the horizon goes

unexpectedly down)

the light in general

all the profound thoughts in the philosophers head

The Life of Ernst Moir

Lytle Shaw

118

Mystery has always surrounded the life of the Swiss photographer Ernst Moir (1857-1929). Not least because, though
frequently photographed throughout his life, it is almost
impossible to see him. Indeed, the blurry photographs of
Moir possibly point to the origin of (and certainly exemplify)
the technical problem of two dot matrices mis-aligning during printing and resulting in a flawed reproduction, now commonly know as the moir effect. Or, perhaps, these photographs do not index the first human to produce the moir
effect at all, since we cannot be sure who they depict. What
we do know, first, is the Swiss governments account: that a
photographer named Moir was regarded, in the Switzerland
of the 1920s, as impervious to photography; second, that this
bizarre disappearance became a source of nationalist pride
(Moir was applauded for his technological Ludditism by
anti-modernist elements within Swiss folk culture, just as his
supposed visual neutrality was seen, more generally, as
socially exemplary); and third, that a collection of photographs ostensibly of Moir, and always with one illegible
figure is housed in Zurichs municipal archives. Opposing
this position stands a counter-testimony from Moirs relatives
(embarrassed, perhaps, to have their name still associated
with this famous photographic failure), which may implicate
the Swiss government itself in Moirs photographic illegibility. It was to investigate this case of meta-failure that the
editors at Cabinet sent me to Zurich. There I would document
a documentary abyss.
Living inside the Zurich archive for two months, I gradually pieced together the following biographical outline. An
Ernst Moir was indeed born, in 1857, in the capital of the
Swiss Confederations smallest Canton of Zug, within view
of the Bernese Oberland. Moirs primarily French ancestors made their way from Geneva to Lucerne, where we find
his father, Pierre Wolfli Moir (a postal clerk and scientific
tinkerer) playing a small role in the attacks on Jesuit Priests
that precipitated Switzerlands democratic revolutions of 18471848. The subsequent inquiry into these attacks, however, was
hampered by the lack of postmarks on the conspirators letters,
for which Pierre was held accountable. Exiled to Zug, Pierre
seemed to drop from sight: records of his later activities are
scanty, possibly because he instructed Ernst to vaporize his correspondence.
Aside from carefully recorded chemical experiments in his
fathers improvised lab, the main records of Moirs early education are decayed prints from his early Alpine photographic
expeditions to the Jungfrau with his Uncle Rudolf, in which
the two would document both geological and architectural
curiosities, accompanied (we learn from verses inscribed onto
the prints themselves) by readings of Albrecht Von Hallers
classic of Swiss proto-nationalism, Die Alpen. Moir seems
to have excelled at Zurichs Technical Institute, winning both
the Uli Fleiss Laboratory Award, and the Gottfried Taur Field
Photographic Award while, however, being chastised for
his habitual bureaucratic errors, especially his failure to sign
test and registration forms, a problem that would plague
Moir throughout his career. Strangely, nothing in Moirs

childhood or college records suggests his imperviousness to

photography. But Moirs complex relation to authorship and
representation does begin to emerge at this time, especially
in his copy of the influential color theories of the poet
Charles Cros, each of whose 272 pages bears no less than 7 of
Moirs own signatures, in widely varying styles. This pattern
would continue in his highly secretive post-university experiments in Zug.
Considered in the history of photography, Moirs string of
near patent misses is stunning: in March of 1879 he invented
a photogravure process parallel in all essentials to Klcs
(published that year), but failed to address his patent form.
More tragically, Moirs pioneering use, in outdoor photography, of gelatin-silver bromide instead of wet collodion (a process he had discovered as a 14- year-old, on a trip with Uncle
Rudolf) did not become known until after Charles Bennett had
popularized the process in 1879. The most crushing patent
failure, however, was autochrome, whose development Moir
had followed closely since his reading of Cros. From the beginning, the three color filters used in the process had relied on
fine grains of potato starch, dyed orange, green and mauve.
The dying process, especially the use of zinc phosphate to
produce the yellows, was both toxic and slow. Moirs introduction of mature sweet potatoes was as elegant as it was
simple. Though Moir was in fact able to patent the sweet
potato process, the untreated status of the potato itself
rendered the process, under Zug Canton law, a craft and not
a science, thereby allowing the Frenchman Louis Ducos du
Hauron, and after him the Lumire Brothers, to popularize
their own three-color systems in photographic technical
journals.
Moir was crushed. Worse, after this protracted string of
failures, he found himself in desperate financial straits, which
accounts for his new partnership with his college friend, Willi
Ostler, in a more conventional photographic studio. Because
Ostlers uncle, Jrg, was the Canton Commissioner of Architecture, they landed a long-term, lucrative project documenting
Alpine architecture. Still, Moir seems not to have been able to
give up his hopes of discovering a new photographic process.
As early as 1882, Moir had experimented with high-amperage
flash bulbs in night photography. By 1896, the craze for portraiture had reached such a peak that Moir believed, were he able
to invent an outside flash mechanism that could merge figures
with those romantic nighttime mountainscapes most admired
in portrait painting, that he could make a definitive entrance
into the technological history of photography, and a mountain
of Swiss francs.
But on 3 August 1896, tragedy struck. Moir wrote to
his father: Lili [Moirs bride] and I had left Zurich for a weekend in Zermatt, where the Matterhorn backdrop would insure
the dramatic night portraits I wished to produce. After two
Photographs of Ernst Moir from the Mind over Matterhorn exhibition.
previous page: Moir as a child (beside his mother), 1861
above: Moir in 1884 examining his sweet potato patent. Lili is to his left.
below: Moir, Willi Ostler, and unidentified man during the Alpine architecture
project, 1894

120

opposite: Moir and Willi Ostler during their final year at university, 1879
All photographs courtesy Swiss Alpine Museum

unsuccessful low-level flashes I increased the amperage. Lacking my spectacles, I misread 100 for 10. The effect was instantaneous and devastating. Lili grasped for her eyes and spun arcs
on her back on the chalets terrace while I, after smashing the
offending bulbs into innumerable shards, helplessly pawed the
tiles around her blind twirls. After two months in Zermatt monitoring Lilis condition, Moir was infinitely relieved to see signs
of progress (though Lili would always wear thick bifocals after
the event, and could never drive a car).
Meanwhile, in Zurich, Willi was forced to move forward
with the definitive prints of the government architecture project, without Moirs invaluable technical assistance. A novice at
printing, Willi mis-aligned the plates and produced a sequence
of blurry images, which were immediately rejected by the government agent. In a moment of panic, Willi suggested to the
stern client who had descended on his shop that the business
was dually owned (a fact he was successful in proving by
Ernsts faulty records), and that the responsibility for the quality
of the prints was in Moirs hands. By the time Ernst returned
to Zurich two months later, the moir effect was all over the
papers.
After 1896, Moir rarely appeared in public. In fact, it was
not until 1927 (two years before his death) that Moir became
known as a recalcitrant photographic object. This because
a handful of prints (ostensibly) of the photographer had been
included in an exhibition at the Alpine Museum in Bern called
Mind over Matterhorn, which documented para-scientific
phenomena among the Mountaineering Swiss. Here, Moirs
whole biography gets told through a consistent photographic
absence. We see Pierre, Uncle Rudolf, Willi, Jrg, Lili and many
other of Moirs friends and family, flanked by an eerie near
absence a figure almost legible, but subject to a kind of technical poltergeist. Interpreting this absence as deliberate, the
exhibition likened Moir to Emma Kunz and (later in his life)
Rudolf Steiner who embodied strains of holistic and anti-scientific feeling within Swiss popular medicine.
Because he refused to write (and even sign his name) after
1896, Moirs own response to the exhibition is not known.
Nor did Lili comment on her husbands infamy until 1941, two
years before her own death, when she wrote an open letter to
the new Swiss Canton Commissioner of Architecture. Inexplicably unpublished, this letter emerged only in 1998, accompanied by documents that justified the suppression as a measure
to insure faith in the Swiss central government during the war
that surrounded them, during which both French and German
elements of the population suspected the government of aiding
the opposing side.
Lili describes an afternoon in November of 1896, three
months after the explosion of the moir effect, in the Zurich
newspapers: Ernst had taken the train to Zug to gain distance
from the maelstrom that had hold of his name. I remained in Zurich to oversee our household. Returning from the Limmat vegetable quay, I noticed two men emerging from our attic dormers
with stacks of framed photographs. Till then, rude government
officials had visited only our studio, not our flat on Mnstergasse. I cursed the intruders from two blocks away. Whether
my suddenly frigid neighbors eyeing the spectacle from their
windows were in support of the theft, or had merely
121 chosen to ignore me, I do not know. Their daily glares

told me only that they, too, felt cheated, as Swiss, by the failure
of Herrs Ostler government subsidized project, now attributed
to my dear Ernst, of whom every photograph was gone when I
arrived. Now the scoundrels have shown why. How Lili, with
her weakened eyesight, was able to notice two small figures 60
yards away adds one final mystery.

122

123

A/C

Cheater.com
Every December and May, tens of thousands of students in
the United States face the possible humiliation of failing their
courses. Only one thing can save them: the Great American
Paper, one just beyond their reach. Little did the scientists who
devised ARPANET the early prototype for the Internetknow
that their tool for the dissemination of knowledge would one
day forever alter the political economy of college education.
Thousands of websites now hustle millions of college papers
waiting to be downloaded and handed in as ones own. Or, for
only $24.95 a page, you can make someone else in America pull
an all-nighter and write a brand-new paper for you on the topic
you know nothing about but should.
Having run into a deadline problem with this issue, it
occurred to us that we too might benefit from some help. We
commissioned cheater.com (we liked their forthrightness)
to write two papers for us in response to the following topic:
One can only understand ones true inner self by experiencing
failure. Discuss. We asked that one paper be written to get a C,
and one be devised to score the elusive A. To both our shame
and delight, the rates charged per page made these essays cost
roughly the same as the honoraria we pay to our illustrious writers. We offer these two essays here as they arrived to us.

Projected grade c

It is a widely held belief that many people succeed in life due to

luck, in-born abilities or some other factors such as social connections and support from parents, relatives and friends. It is
difficult to disagree with that assertion simply because such
factors as luck, innate talents and abilities do play a very important role. I do not think that Mozart would have become nearly
as brilliant had he not have that talent for music he acquired at
birth. Nevertheless, people who accept such a view tend to disregard the other component which in my view happens to be
even more important than luck or outside support. That component is labor or hard work or personal effort that you put in. I
am determined that a person no matter how talented he or she
is and how much support he or she is given from the outside
can hardly ever achieve anything in life without hard work. Hard
work is what drives us to the goal. It is the fuel that we need to
keep the engine running. Any talent is like a precious jewel but
regardless of the case that jewel is rough uncut and unpolished.
Hard labor lets a talented person polish that jewel and thus master certain abilities and skills. Most people who have achieved
something in life agree that hard work is the necessary component. Another point that I want to get across is that the thorny
path to success is accompanied by failures. Moreover, it is only
by experiencing failure that you can begin to understand your
true, inner self.
The path to success through hard work is usually accompanied by failures. It is needless to say that failures are always
out there to entrap us and bring us back to the ground. No matter what you do and how you do it you are very likely to fail. In
my experiences failure is a rather common occurrence. I used to
play guitar and as I learned I experienced many difficul124 ties and failed many times to deliver performance which

I thought was necessary. In the beginning failures devastated

me and detracted from my motivation and inspiration. Many
times I thought that the reason I failed was my inadequacy or
lack of proficiency and talent. However, as I progressed in my
learning I realized that time and effort can heal. Furthermore,
I realized that failure was a true indicator of the fact that something was done the wrong way. To be honest I began to appreciate failures because they showed me the area of my weakness.
It was important because I knew what I needed to work a little
more on and where I had to put an extra effort. Now I understand that as a person matures one begins to understand the
whole idea behind failure and even appreciate it because it is a
way to know your inner self.
At present I am convinced that no matter how talented
and determined a person is failure will always be there. It is
important not to attempt to avoid failures but rather to learn to
react to failures in a certain manner. It is no secret that most
people perceive failure as something negative, something bad
that can happen to a person. Generally, people are afraid of failures. I talked to many college students and many told me that
they were afraid of taking scholastic tests because they knew
they could fail. Most students are nervous when they go take
a test. It may sound surprising but I am rarely nervous when I
take a test in school. The reason I am not afraid of failing a test is
not because I do not care about my academic performance but
rather because I have mastered the skill of controlling failure
and actually using it to my advantage. I do not allow failure to
overwhelm me. If I fail a test I know that next time I will have to
study harder to improve my grade.
I have learned to appreciate failure because it helped
me learn more about myself and have a more accurate, more
objective opinion of myself as a person. Failure enables me to
assess my abilities objectively and never overestimate myself.
Whenever I begin to think that I am extremely good at something an occasional failure is like a shock therapy which brings
my feet back to the ground and tells me that I have yet to walk
a long way. Many talented people I have read about report very
similar observations. Failure helped them improve themselves.
I believe that a person must know that mistakes and failures
are a valuable source of learning. They show where the weakness is. Everything else is hard work and labor. Once you fail it
is important to stay focused on the goal and keep going never
allowing failure to depress or devastate your mind.

previous page: Nancy Davenport, Concert, 2002

projected grade a

To understand your true inner self is a rather complicated task,

especially taking into consideration the fact that every person
is capable of having different emotional modes, which significantly influences the way one is able to assess himself/herself.
If a person is successful for a substantial part of his or her life, it
is impossible to realistically evaluate and even try to understand
your true inner self, since the winner attitude that results from
past successes and high self-confidence level prevents such a
person from evaluating various aspects of self due to the fact
that those aspects are something that has never been revealed
before. Thus, in order to understand him/herself truly, one
needs to experience failure at some point, since it is an inherent
part of peoples perception of themselves and something that
enables any person to get rid of the biases that result because
of the winner attitude.
The thing is, once a person experiences failure in anything,
(certainly, the degree of that failure does matter, however not
that much as the fact of failure itself), his/her perception of his/
her inner self undergoes some drastic changes, and that very
person now assesses the situation from a completely different
point of view. During my own life, I have seen some people that
truly understood themselves and their inner desires and wants
when they experienced failure in something, since when they
were successful and prosperous, a lot of things were simply
impossible for them to understand.
One of my close friends, whom I knew since we were
going together to the elementary school, was always preoccupied in performing at his best, trying to overachieve, trying to
be the best. Although it took him a lot of efforts, he succeeded
in almost everything he was doing, which formed his perception of himself, his understanding of his true inner self and the
way he saw his future. He was assured that his self-confidence
and willingness to reach his objectives and goals whatever
the costs were made him immutable to all the bad thighs that
could possibly happen in his life. He perceived himself as a
person that could never possibly fail, and his past successes
were the solid base for such an assumption. He thought that
failure was something that could never happen to him, and his
inner self for him was limited to his goals and objectives that he
was trying to achieve all his life.
However, he became a completely different person when
he did actually experience failure. During the last three years
of high school he dreamed of entering the university of Michigan. This became his preliminary goal, he thought that his past
successes were enough to take any challenge, therefore when
his application was rejected it became really a turning point in
his life. He had to reassess completely his values and attitudes,
since now his perception of himself changed due to the fact
that he realized that he, like most of the other people, could possibly fail, and that failure actually occurred in his life. After that
incident, he never claimed to be always successful, he was able
to understand his inner self truly, and he realized that he was a
vulnerable person after all, that success was not his only goal
in life, and that there were a lot of other important things that
he neglected while they could have actually changed his life for
better.
Definitely, only through experiencing failure one can
125 truly understand his/her true inner self, the chain of

successes and victories is inevitably going to end at some point

in life, which is bad if one looks at it from a rational prospective,
but quite good if he/she looks at it from the prospective of inner
harmony. The harmony, both inner harmony and harmony and
complete understanding with other people, is one of the most
important things in life, thus getting to know ones true inner
self is really important. To understand ones true inner self is to
be able to assess completely all the aspects of self that are not
correlated with success or failure, thus failure at some point
in life is really helpful for realizing that fact, and thus realizing
ones true inner self.

Orphan

Nina Katchadourian
The first time I noticed the sculpture, it was not very easy to see it.
Three dense bushes had bullied their way in front of it, and they
grew bigger and more brazen with each passing month. I wondered when the grounds maintenance people would notice and
give them a trim. They finally did, but took the radical approach of
removing the bushes altogether. The sculpture was now shockingly exposed, standing on a plain stretch of dirt, and completely
vulnerable to the public eye. It looked like a furry animal that had
been completely and inappropriately shaved.
The orange sculpture was a tripod of sorts, made of Ibeams with a Bert-like tuft of metal hair on top. It was positioned in an awkward, in-between buffer zone designated for
landscaping, sandwiched between the New York City Technical
College building and a street in downtown Brooklyn. A bit too
small to be monumental, and a bit too large to relate to the people walking by, it stood slightly above them, uncomfortable with
its height, like a tall pre-teen. It looked like the kind of sculpture
that had started its life with aspirations of a long tenure in front
of the Seagrams Building, later to be put to pasture at Storm
King. Given this, it was even more painful to see it stuck in purgatory at the corner of Jay Street and Tech Place.
It became a landmark for me, and I always looked for it
when passing by. For better or worse, the bushes never grew
back, and so it was easy to notice that graffiti and doodles
occasionally appeared on its skin. The vandalism was done
somewhat half-heartedly (Your mother is a ?) and never had
anything to do with the sculpture itself. Somehow, it did not
seem to elicit a reaction from anyone: it was simply a marker
thatthere is art in front of our building, rather than expressing
a concept or reacting to a physical space.
In January 2002, New York City Technical College underwent an external renovation, and a blue scaffolding skirt was
built around the perimeter of the building. Now, it looked like
the sculpture was forced to slump in order to fit under this new
structure. The scaffolding had been chopped up in awkward
ways to accommodate the top of the sculpture. Large construction vehicles and dumpsters were brought onto the side street
to cart away debris, and for several weeks a garbage truck was
parked with its rude, gaping rear-end provocatively facing the
sculpture. A few days later, a long streamer of yellow caution
tape was anchored to a lamppost on one end and the sculpture
on the other. The I-beams, which before had perhaps reflected
the artists interest in the sculptural qualities of industrial materials, now seemed merely part of the language of demolition.
A conversation with an official at New York City Technical College turned up the name of the artist, Allen Mooney, and
the title, Iroquois Walk. This Native American reference was
intriguing (was the Bert hair in fact some kind of headdress?)
but then on the artists website the sculpture is entitled Iroquis Walk. In this photograph, the picture is taken from behind
the sculpture, in effect showing us its point of view. It strides
out toward the street and into the world. The grass is rich and
green beneath its feet, and its orange paint glows in the sun.
I wondered if the artist had helped pick the site and what the
real title was, but the phone call went unreturned.
126 I wondered if he knew how it was doing these days.

Photos: Nina Katchadourian

127

Cabinet Unlimited Editions number 4

At the 1976 Summer Olympic Games in Montreal, the Canadian Olympic Committee voted to award a special Participation Medal to all competing athletes who failed to win a gold,
silver, or bronze medal. The committee took pains to stress the
unofficial nature of their medal. The Participation Medal is a
gift of thanks from the people of Canada to all the athletes of
the world, the committees statement read. The true Olympic spirit is embodied as much in those who strive and fail as in
those who glide to victory.
The award was cast in aluminum and was the approximate
size and shape of the conventional medals. One side depicted
five cherubs holding hands, symbolizing the five continents,
beneath the words Tout de Mme (all the same). The other side
showed the face of the moon in partial eclipse. According the
committees statement, this symbolized both Mans inexhaustible ambition and the cyclic nature of all things.
The official award ceremonies were to be followed by the
presentation of the Participation Medals to all the non-winning
athletes. The first event to be completed during the games was
the platform dive. Avery Brundage, the President of the International Olympic Committee, attended the awards ceremony.
When the losing athletes lined up in front of the award podiums
and received their Participation Medals, Brundage, who had not
been informed in advance of the Canadians new ritual, was so
enraged he rushed out and confiscated the medals by pulling
them off the necks of the athletes. He refused to even consider
the Canadian Committees appeal of his decision and ordered
the medals destroyed. He personally monitored their destruction in an Ontario foundry.
Brundage did not manage to confiscate all the Participation Medals. Kris Lee, an 18-year-old Chilean diver who had finished 23rd in the event, slipped off the stage and returned to
the athletes village. Lee refused to give up the medal despite
repeated entreaties from Brundages office. In return, Brundage vindictively canceled the 50-kilometer race, Lees brothers
specialty, the only time the event had not been held since its introduction at the 1932 Olympic games. On hearing that Brundage
had ordered that the medal be physically seized and destroyed,
Lee abruptly left Canada and returned to Santiago.
Lee retired from competitive diving and worked for a
few years as a schoolteacher in Montevideo, Uruguay. In 1981
Lee enrolled in art classes at the Federal University of Rio
de Janeiro and has exhibited widely throughout South
America and Europe since 1985. Best known for conceptual
projects that blend tough-minded critiques of institutional
hegemony with a romantic pan-nationalism, the artist has
often cited the events in Montreal as the crucible for my
artistic thought.
As a special project for Cabinet, Lee has produced an
unlimited series of aluminum reproductions of the original
Participation Medal. The reproductions are available for $50.
Twenty dollars of this amount is tax-deductible in accordance
with section 501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Please
email: editions @immaterial.net fororders.
Cabinet wishes to thank Matt Freedman for his invaluable assistance on this project.
Replicas cast at the New Foundry in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Photos: Bill Orcutt