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ON1

By Lloyd Gibson and Mark Little
Locus+, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, 2000.
72pp, illus. + CD-ROM (Win/Mac)
Paper: £14.95
ISBN 1 899 377 10 7 (edition of 1900)
> ISBN 1 899 377 14 X (special edition of 100)
Reviewed by Mike Leggett, 17 Ivy Street, Darlington, NSW 2008, Australia.
E-mail: legart@ozemail.com.au


Z differs from N only in positionÍ
Aristotle MetaphysicsÍ

In July 1942 something happened on a small previously anonymous island off the north-west coast of Scotland?.. Gruinard Island became the site of the first deployment of a deliberately constructed biological weapon?? The first organism to be identified as a practical weapon was Bacillus anthracis (anthrax) Ü codenamed N.î Lloyd Gibson, Mark Little.

As deployments of various kinds, by the military of the ?developed worldÍ and the irregular fighters ranged against them continue to impact more and more upon the everyday world of non-combatants, Gibson and LittleÍs book documents much more than a detail of the War of sixty years ago.

Both teach at the University of Northumbria in Newcastle upon Tyne in the north-east of England Ü Gibson is head of sculpture, Little is in the School of Humanities Ü and their specific skills are brought to bear under the inspired aegis of Locus+, an arts organisation that commissions ?occurrencesÍ at specific sites in Britain.

The publication project ?NÍ brings history and place together with current thoughts and developments in material technology and biotechnology. Elegantly presented and illustrated in landscape format, the first part of the book provides Little and GibsonÍs context for the gathering of plans and reports from until recently, secret British archive sources; the production of a site-specific sculpture; and the shooting of film and its inclusion as a CD-ROM. The second part is a collection of five commissioned essays.

Mark Little traces the events in Scotland and Porton Down, (the now notorious British biological warfare centre), where in 1942 anthrax was produced in various ways to be delivered to the animal and human populations of enemy countries. The trials with live sheep on the island just a mile off the Scottish coast condemned the island to permanent exclusion from further use until successful demonstrations by environmentalists at the 1981 Conservative Party Conference which lead to the government completing the expensive clean-up operation. The island was declared clear in 1988.

LittleÍs contemplation around these events begins with the Greeks and the air that animates us as we breathe, the wind that surrounds, maintains and energises the whole cosmos - pneuma. ?The intimacy of infectionÍ follows and leads from Freud to Bachelard, Bruno, Bataille, Virilio, Kroker, Baudrillard, and invokes Jackson Pollack, Yves Klein and Beuys as performance artists: ?The body of N performs art.Í

Technology and corporeality, both then and now, with the unknown consequences of the Human Genome Project and the extent of other forms of binary reductionism is of uppermost concern here. HeideggerÍs ?being is timeÍ concludes LittleÍs contextualisation of the project and, as it passes the time-lapse camera set-up opposite Gruinard Island, introduces the sculpture piece made by Lloyd Gibson, now occupying the foreground of the film frame.

Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) made of precise ratios of nickel and titanium is the technology Gibson employs to articulate the figurative, life-size sculpture of a child ?crouched in an androgynous animalistic poseÍ. The time lapse shows the figure pulse as the metal framework, covered with silicone rubber responds to the changes in temperature effected by the action of the sun on the planet, wind rain and shine.

ñThe sculptural aspect of N is not a work for explicit public display. It is geographically inaccessible and largely hidden from public view.î However, using other technologies, the site (specific), the artwork, are made visible and accessible via contemporary dissemination that eschews the museum and the gallery. Through this publication the project exists as a total artwork in the minds of those who encounter the exhibit through the 2000 copies of this ?extended catalogueÍ and the movies on the CD-ROM, vividly illustrating the sculpture and its setting.

The accompanying essays are likewise absorbing: by Chris Hables Gray, who writes from the remoteness of the fields of ICBM silos in Montana. Topher Dawson on the adjective with an agenda, remote. Eugene Thacker, analyses five levels of biological warfare which, post the WTC attack, take on even more chilling significance Ü he reminds us of ?VirilioÍs ñpure warî, or the situation of infinite preparedness for an always deferred war.Í Jody Berland discusses post-modern Nature, catastrophe, politicians and agri-business. Patricia C. Phillips completes the quintet and considers the place of N as a work of art and revises notions of the public space.

As Desert Storm morphed into the New World Order, so we morph to Operation Infinite Justice?.. The important issues raised here - of sovereignty, the corporeal, technological fanaticism, war discourse, terminal survival - should not be subject to dissemination methods that have been around for a thousand years but should embrace the means of dissemination that enable 24-hour access to project material including for instance, the surveillance of the site via webcam. An internet specific URL might contain a range of movies, an ever-growing body of evidence and opinion but most of all, be accessible to those outside or suspicious of the motives of the art mob. In particular, the younger generations who use cyberspace channels and might then be able to receive the warning that must be delivered. There is a certain smugness in leaving it to a limited edition to penetrate the layers of ignorance and prejudice that insulate this projectÍs ability to articulate an otherwise intractable set of conditions.

Jon Bewley and Simon Herbert have since the 80s researched and curated site-specific practice based, but not confined to this vigorous northern city, the location for centuries where the northern European races warred over their borders and spheres of influence. Locus+ was established in 1993 as a company limited by guarantee with a Board of practitioners, writers and curators committed to ñ?acknowledgment that the brittle definitions between visual art culture and other disciplines continue to break down further into states of hybridity Ü whether this be in relation to fashion, design, architecture, film, music or further challenged by the steady growth of electronic imaging and information systems.î

?Locus Solus Ü Site, Identity, Technology and Contemporary ArtÍ deploys polemical essays around these general issues together with essays specific to a handful of the projects that Locus+ have initiated. In parts reading like an extended annual report it valuably summarises the considerable amount of outcomes achieved in the short seven year history. At the time of publication this included 36 artists projects, (including ?NÍ by Gibson and Little), eighteen publications (including audio CDs) and nine artistsÍ multiples.

The networks implied are real and world-wide with links and collaborations to related organisations, particularly in Ireland and Canada, and the artists they support and encourage. Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, Paul Wong, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, Ian Breakwell and Stefan Gec are among thse featured. GecÍs widely appreciated projects related in an essay by Anrew Patrizio, describe his Ukrainian ethnic background, the associations he created between the Chernobyl disaster, the demise of the Soviet Bloc navy and the recycling of the steel from Russian submarines in a NE England port, to bells and buoys later seen and heard in a dozen European ports. The project, like Locus+, evolves to this day and ñ..rather than generating ideas directly through the visual, activate the space between things?.î

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Updated 6 November 2001.




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