Bunker Archaeology Revisited

Bunker Archaeology Revisited
http://newsgrist.typepad.com/

via NEWSgrist, Sept 8, 2004

*pics + links*

[left: book cover, Richard Ross: Waiting for the End of the World; right:
Dominic McGill, model for a deathwish generation]

The Bomb is back (did it ever really leave?) so goes the first sentence of
an A-Bomb-centric exhibition curated by Christian Steyner, Building the
Unthinkable, which opens at New York's Apex Art tonight:

"The bomb is back. In the past twelve months, the worlds stockpile of
22,000 nuclear warheads has re-emerged on the network news, in political
rhetoric, and in debates worldwide. In the spirit of Paul Virilios 1975
exhibit Bunker ArchaeologyBuilding the Unthinkable investigates the impact
of the nuclear age on contemporary spatial practices. The exhibition
examines the subtle ways in which ultimate power has, over time, changed
the spaces we inhabit. Collectively, the works included provide a
reflection on historys bearing on the present and a reinterpretation of
historya consideration of both the construction and the destruction
brought by the nuclear age."

Participating artists are:
The Center for Land Use Interpretation, Gregory Green, Michael Light,
Andreas Magdanz, Peter Marlow, Dominic McGill, Beryl Korot and Steve
Reich, World Power Systems and Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries.

Check out the nifty brochure (PDF)

Also new on bookstalls is photographer Richard Ross's Waiting for the End
of the World, published by the Princeton Architectural Press. Here are a
few blurbs:

The New Yorker:
"Ross's photographs of shelters around the world are colorful and
melancholy, suffused with a creepy Egglestonian light. . . Most amazing is
the scale of such hidden places as Beijing's Underground City, built to
hold three hundred and fifty thousand people, of the bunker beneath the
Greenbriar hotel, in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, designed to
serve as the emergency shelter for the entire U.S. Congress." (7/5/2004)

Wired:
"It seems small comfort to know that when the world ends, our PIN numbers
will survive. That's just one of many disconcerting takeaways from from
photographer Richard Ross' latest book, WAITING FOR THE END OF THE WORLD,
a survey of postapocalyptic havens. . . The 31 serenely beautiful, if
chilling, spaces presented here are equally contradictory; they combine
stripped-down survivalist aesthetics (reinforced concrete, fluorescent
lighting, and Navy-surplus hatches) with a troglodytic domesticity (blue
shag pile, board games, and ruffled bed skirts)." (July 2004)

Ross's work will also be exhibited as part of a 2-person show at LA's Otis
Art Institute, opening September 11.

Of course, both projects are currently featured on The Bomb Project, a
cumulative comprehensive resource for all things nuclear conceived of and
designed for artists (and hosted at our parent site, First Pulse
Projects).

Wednesday, September 08, 2004 at 12:09 PM in Art Exhibitions | Permalink:
http://newsgrist.typepad.com/underbelly/2004/09/bunker_archaeol.html