* GARDEN TO DELAY THE SUPERSONIC PROGRESSION OF A WARTIME ECOLOGY *
> dake wilson architects, carrie paterson, arshia mahmoudi >
Using a catapult device commonly known as "The Sling King", we would like to attempt breaking the sound barrier of gardening, all the while rehearsing what we believe will have to be the eventual recycling of wartime equipment and materials for the reflowering of the planet.
In this interactive, collaborative and time-based work, we will lay the 'groundwork' for this aesthetic possibility through the creation of an aerial garden by turning the gardening experience itself on its head.
Our project will consist of launching wheat-grass missives into the stratosphere of "The Wind Tunnel". Our target will be a large twelve foot diameter satellite dish suspended high above the "island" of activity of Garden Lab (or on the side of it, if safety is a concern), which we will have prepared with layers of cheesecloth and growing medium. When the seed-bombs meet the satellite, a significant amount of the fledgling wheat-grass should find purchase - what does not will fall either to the ground to grow there, or if preferred, into suspended catch-all trays which will become vestiges of the central disc, like the rings around Saturn.
This
floating 'out-off-this-world' experience will reflect upon the disappearance
of the 'natural', the compression of space and time through such technologies
as the 'supersonic', and the way that slow growth might delay these technologies
that produce - according to a host of theorists lead most notably by Paul Virilio
- a condition of war and apocalypse.
We would like to locate our catapult on a large wooden dias. Participants in
the planting activities would have to ascend to the dias (using stairs or a
ladder) 3 at a time in order to properly manipulate the device. In this sense
the planting also becomes a metaphor for the Garden Lab show/experiment itself:
unpredictable, generative, collaborative. Planting will need to take place
at a minimum every 2-3 weeks during the show, but can occur much more frequently
if desired.
It was Yves Klein who first envisioned the floating architecture of "New Babylon", a return to 'nature' in the sky, a release conceptually from "ground" and "groundedness". Like Klein, we understand the (im)practicalities of bringing people to this unlikely "space" and will also employ, as he did in his "floating" Egyptian Needle project, spotlights to lift people toward this new nature. Projections or images that we might also incorporate in the work would come from the Sling King website. This remarkable collection of leisure time photographs of US soldiers in Iraq endorses not only the product they hold but a new utopian lifestyle possible after arms have been laid to rest. The suggestion here is that any diversion from the (pre)occupation of war makes war lose its way, perhaps disorienting it to the point of no return.
> bios >
our team consists of 4 people - architects, artists and community gardeners. we are inspired by a visual aesthetic from science fiction film that presents a futurized landscape while referencing the apocalyptic possibility of the destruction of the ground and life on earth itself. because science fiction film is one of the few genres deeply committed to phenomenology and the bodily experience of its viewers through simulations, we feel that this filmic language could be made politically active within the garden lab. it is our hope that the aesthetics and wonder inspired by this speculative garden condition will lead our viewers to playfulness, pleasure, bodily awareness, and perhaps indignity at the idea of having left the earth behind.
Renee
and Brian Wilson of Dake Wilson Architects
artist / writer Carrie Paterson
entrepreneur / horticulturist Ben Swett.