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"After I had left the zone, I realized, that the zone was everywhere!"
Update August 2010:
Only 2 years after completion of Falling Forest, it's vision prooves to be of prophetic nature, as the Russian forest fires have reached the nuclear soil.
(PREFACE)
Paradise was an exclusion zone guarded by the archangels of the Russian military, an alienated void inhabited by animals, angels and power plants. Inside the rotten apple rested the core. The core that fell on Earth as a star. The Fall out of Paradise had sealed the zone forever. Still remaining in the garden: the forgotten tree of life: the tree of half-life.
FALLING FOREST
"Falling Forest" redefines a sidewalk in Montreal's Quartier International commercial district. The installation explores the implications of nuclear power and its relationship to natural ecosystems. Our understanding of this relationship is in constant evolution. "Falling Forest" provides the setting for a deconstructed tree that is partially exhumed from the so-called "Red Forest" adjacent to the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. This tree is suspended within the space and lit with red LED light. A Geiger counter mounted within the installation's floor measures radiation. These readings are played back through an audio speaker. The primary building material is wood, a product of the forest. An abstraction of a tree-lined boulevard is created using a combination of 2 times 8 plus 2 times 4 wooden studs, OSB panels and LED lighting. The installation sits on the sidewalk and does not require drilling into the granite pavers. Power for the LED lighting is drawn from the existing street lights.
CREATION OF THE NUCLEAR ORACLE
PROCESS DIARY
INFOSSIL ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE NUCLEAR PLEXUS
Growing up in the Killertal, living very close to the botanical monoculture of the Black Forest in Germany, I had been irritated and fascinated by the myth of the Red Forest near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. I heard that in 1986, after the reactor blew up, the forest around the reactor would be glowing red at night for 3 months.
This story being true or not, as a matter of fact, the trees turned red after they died following the absorption of high levels of radiation from the disaster. The Red Forest was cut and buried, the first time, that infossilation of carbon culture was induced. Today, 22 years later, all of us are saving the planet. The nuclear nightmare has completely disappeared. Really? As a matter of fact I sense something different: the real manifestation of the nuclear age, the birth of the nuclear plexus introducing hindu-blue Big-Bang-Recycling, Star-Ignition-Factories and infossil supersymmetry creating local irregularities in the cosmic grid.
Finding a tree of the Red Forest and bringing it to Montreal to be exhibited in public territory gives us the opportunity to ask shy questions to this forgotten interface between future and past: the nuclear oracle of the Red Forest.
(DESCRIPTION OF THE INSTALLATION)
Light is very new, from the future, magic LED indirectly radiating. Transcending space. A nuclear Zen Garden. Positive Shadow. The tree of life. The tree of half-life. Between carbon and contamination. Between fossil and infossil. Interface between future and past. Carrier of light. Only 2 things will survive and leave our system: radiowaves and depleted uranium-238. Remaining for another 4.5 billion years as human creation, as cultural artifact.
With the promise of radiant soil, I entered No-mans-land, to crop the forbidden tree of half-life in the cosmic rain of radiance. The nuclear seed of fertility and fate. Atom of divine knowledge. Forbidden bit. Radiant fruit.
O Omnipresent, root of the Treenity, we salute you!
CREDITS