MARISSA LEE BENEDICTthreewalls May 2013

M U LT I P L I C E S

1 William W. Powers State Recreation Area / Wolf Lake2 Belmont Harbor3 SAIC / SAIC4 Jean Baptiste Point DuSable Homesite / DuSable Park5 threewalls

Reading List

Walden: Or Life in the Wood. Henry David Thoreau. 1854.

Bouvard and Pècuchet. Gustave Flaubert. 1881.

The Biosphere. Vladamir Vernadsky. 1926.

Mythologies. Roland Barthes. 1957.

Cosmicomics. Italo Calvino. 1965.

Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. R. Buckminster Fuller. 1968.

Douglas Huebler. Seth Siegelaub. 1968.

Whole Earth Catalog. 1969.

The Last Whole Earth Catalog. 1971.

Nine Chains to the Moon. R. Buckminster Fuller. 1971.

How to Build Your Own Living Structures. Ken Isaacs. 1974.

Joseph Beuys. Caroline Tisdale. 1979.

R. Buckminster Fuller: A Autobiographical Monologue/ Scenario. Ed. Robert Snyder. 1980.

Critical Path. R. Buckminster Fuller. 1981.

What Is Art?: Conversations with Joseph Beuys. Joseph Beuys and Harlan Volker. 1986/2004.

A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. 1987.

Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. William Cronon. 1991.

Landscape and Memory. Simon Shama. 1995.

The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution. Frank White. 1998.

Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies. Bruno Latour. 1999.

The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings and Ethics. Jane Bennett. 2001.

3 Acres on the Lake: DuSable Park Proposal Project. Laurie Palmer, Patricia Phillips, Christopher Robert Reed. 2003.

Mycelium Running. Paul Stamets. 2005.

A Field Guide to Getting Lost. Rebecca Solnit. 2005.

The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2. Jane Poynter. 2006.

Meeting the Universe Halfway. Karen Barad. 2007.

The Age of Wonder. Richard Holmes. 2008.

On Location: Siting Robert Smithson and His Contemporaries. Simon Dell. 2008.

Felt: Fluxus, Joseph Beuys and the Dalai Lama. Chris Thompson. 2009.

Algae: Second Edition. Linda E. Graham, James M. Graham, Lee W. Wilcox, 2009.

The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art. Eileen Myles. 2009.

Under Lime: Simon Starling. 2009.

Failure. Ed. Lisa Le Feuvre (Documents of Contemporary Art). 2010.

Chance. Ed. Margaret Iversen (Documents of Contemporary Art). 2010.

A Variation on the Powers of Ten. FutureFarmers. 2010.

“Quantum Entanglements and Hauntological Realtions of Inheritance: Dis/continuities, SpaceTime Enfoldings, and Justice-to-Come”, Derrida Today 3.2. Karen Barad. 2010.

Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Jane Bennett. 2010.

New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics. Ed. Diana Coole and Samantha Frost. 2010.

Bubbles: Spheres I. Peter Sloterdijk. 2011.

“The Center of the World and Other Points of Interest”, Cabinet, Issue 41. James Trainor. 2011.

Simon Starling. Dieter Roelstraete, Francesco Manacorda and Janet Harbord. 2012.

Bunch of Amateurs: A Search for the American Character. Jack Hitt. 2012.

Notes from Underground. Claire Pentecost. 2012.

“threewalls artist talk on the occasion of her solo exhibition Still, yet, else, further, again”. A. Laurie Palmer. 2012.

“Joy”, The New York Review of Books. Zadie Smith. 2013

MULTIPLEX

adj. 1. consisting of many elements in a complex relationship 2. manifold; multiple 3. of, pertaining to, or using equipment permitting the simultaneous transmission of two or more trains of signals or messages over a single channeln. 1. a system or signal involving simultaneous transmission of several messages along a single channel of communication 2. (in map making) a stereoscopic device that makes it possible to view pairs of aerial photographs in three dimensions 3. a building containing a number of motion-picture theaters or, some times, a cluster of adjoining theaters on the same sitev.i. 1. to send several messages or signals simultaneously, as by multiple telegraphy

[fromLatin:havingmanyfolds,fromMULTI-+plicāretofold] pl. multiplices

“In a book, as in all things, there are lines of articulation or segmentarity, strata and territories;butalsolinesofflight,movementsofdeterritorializationanddestratification.Comparativeratesofflowontheselinesproducephenomenaofrelativeslownessandviscosity, or, on the contrary, of acceleration and rupture. All this, lines and measurable speeds, constitutes an assemblage. A book is an assemblage of this kind, and as such is unattributable. It is a multiplicity…”

Deleuze and Guttari,A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

“This method is the same as that discovered by Goethe in natural science. It involves not only placing two things next to each other, but several, and trying, in the sequential placing of these things, to make the connection from one to the other. In this way observation proceeds from one thing to the next and then actually becomes creative itself. The decisive thing, then, is not just what is in front of you, but whether or not you can make the connection that exists between one thing and the other. To the extent that this is possible, observation becomes insight… And this process of making connections between one thing and another, which also means passing through a space or gap, is in fact always both sensory and supersensory; a creative engagement with substance.”

Harlan Volker in an interview with Joseph Bueys,What is Art?

“Howmuchofphilosophical,scientific,andpoliticalthoughtiscaughtupwiththeideaof continuity? What if it were otherwise? This paper experiments with the disruption of continuity. The reader is invited to participate in a performance of spacetime (re)configuringsthataremoreakintohowelectronsexperiencetheworldthananyjourneynarrated through rhetorical forms that presume actors move along trajectories across a stage of spacetime (often called history). The electron is here invoked as our host, an interestingbodytoinhabit(notinordertoinspirecontemplationofflat-footedanalogiesbetween‘macro’and‘micro’worlds,conceptsthatalreadypresumeagivenspatialscale),but a way of thinking with and through dis/continuity - a dis/orienting experience of the dis/jointedness of time and space, entanglements of here and there, now and then, that is, a ghostly sense of dis/continuity, a quantum dis/continuity... The hope is that what comes across in this dis/jointed movement is a felt sense of difference, of intra-activity, of agential separability - differentiations that cut together/apart - that is the hauntological nature of quantum entanglements... This paper is about joins and disjoins - cutting together/apart - not separate consecutive activities, but a single event that is not one. Intra-action, not interaction.

Center stage: the relationship of continuity and discontinuity, not one of negative opposition, but of im/possibilities.”

Karen Barad,“Quantum Entanglements and Hauntological Realtions of Inheritance:

Dis/continuities, SpaceTime Enfoldings, and Justice-to-Come”, Derrida Today 3.2

1 William W. Powers State Recreation Area / Wolf Lake

2 Belmont Harbor

3 SAIC / SAIC

4 Jean Baptiste Point DuSable Homesite / DuSable Park

5 threewalls

CUTTING TOGETHER/APART: COORDINATES OF DIS/CONNECTION

42ºN 87ºW (Hegewish (Chicago), IL / Hammond, IN)

42º56’N87º38’W(429NBelmontAve,Chicago,IL)

41º53’N87º25’W(200NLaSalleAve,Chicago,IL)/41º52’N87º37’W(36SWabashAve,Chicago,IL)

41º53’N87º37’W(401NMichiganAve,Chicago,IL)/41º53’N87º47’W(401NLakeShoreDrive,Chicago,IL)

41º53’N87º38’W(119NPeoriaSt.,Chicago,IL)

I want to talk about pairs and multiplices; simultaneities and separations;

iteration and reiteration; sampling and searching and researching; cutting apart

and together; certainty and curiosity and uncertainty; chance and intention and

proposition; moments of hope and failure; loss and transformation; everything and

nothing.

At its origin, this was an exploration about algae, and its transformation into

biodiesel.

About the forced metamorphosis of a living organism -- algae -- into a material with

another “life,” as fuel for our vehicles, our industries, our politics, our economies,

our systems. Invested in both practically and theoretically researching the potential

uses of algae, I want/ed to translate an abstract understanding of a process into

practical knowledge and vice versa; information becoming embodied knowledge

becoming information. I want/ed to get my hands on something, to know something

withmywholebodyandmind.Iwant/edtorearticulatethefirst1968Whole Earth

Catalog statement of PURPOSE, which challenges the reader to “...conduct his[/

her]owneducation,findhis[/her]owninspiration,shapehis[/her]ownenvironment,

andsharehis[/her]adventurewithwhoeverisinterested.”

So, in the past four years I have propositioned a number of installations which

literally engage in this process of converting algae into biodiesel. A series of

stations which begin to articulate these ideas of knowledge production, amateurism,

experimentation, failure, uncertainty, potentiality, abstraction, mobility, scale (macro

and micro), alchemical transformations, etcetera.

But as my research has carried me away from my point of origin -- a proposition

about algae and its transformation into biodiesel -- I have become dis/oriented.

I have gotten lost.

I have been found.

Recently I was recommendedRebeccaSolnit’s,A Field Guide to Getting Lost,

and although I am admittedly still only a few chapters into the book, I feel a

deep resonance with her description of being confronted by the unknown -- the

overwhelming feeling of going somewhere but having no idea how to get to the

other side. Only on page 5 of the text, I was struck by the following passage:

Thethingswewantaretransformative,andwedon’tknoworonlythinkwe know what is on the other side of that transformation… how do you goaboutfindingthesethingsthatareinsomewaysaboutextendingtheboundaries of the self into unknown territory, about becoming someone [and here I would also interject, “something”] else?

As I have read about algae, cultured algae, gathered it from the lake and the

riverandfounditgrowinginmystudioBritafilter,dippedmyhandsinvatsofit,

haditsplashonmyfaceandinmymouth,spillintidalwavesacrossmyfloors

andseepthroughthefloorboardcracks,Ihavebeenstruckbytheincredibly

flexible,invasive,pervasivenatureofthisorganismwhichseemstoknowno

bounds and have no boundaries. Algae can be found in literally every climate and

environment, from beneath the ice in the Arctic Circle to the super-saline pools

ofUtah’sGreatSaltLake.Itcanbefoundlivingsymbioticallyonlichencovered

rockorasenormousfloatingpatches,algalblooms,whichareoftenindicativeof

an ecological imbalance, both beautiful and frightening in their immensity. Algal

bodies can be small enough to be invisible to the naked eye (microalgae), or large

enoughtosprawlintwistingtendrilsacrosstheoceanfloor(macroalgae).Algae

anditsbyproductshaveinfiltratedourlives,invisiblebutpresentacrossfood,

pharmaceutical, science, and fuel industries. Even when processed industrially,

algae is persistent in maintaining its mutable, gelatinous nature: alginate (an

impressionable paste used for mold-making of all kinds); agar (a gelling agent

derived from the brown algae agar agar, used equally in laboratories and

kitchens); carrageen (derived from a red algae and utilized to increase viscosity

in food products); alginic acid (a viscous, gum-like substance, important in the

manufacturing of paper and textiles -- a substance perhaps used to manufacture

the very paper this is printed on).

Tosuddenlyfindwhatyouarelookingforineverynookandcrannyisadis/

orienting experience -- a philosophical premise not unlike that of intra-actions

propositioned by Karen Barad: “a dis/orienting experience of the dis/jointedness of

time and space, entanglements of here and there, now and then...a ghostly sense

of dis/continuity, a quantum dis/continuity...”

My initial investigation into the transformation of algae into biodesel was a point

-- a material process -- to start a conversation, and the conversation has grown

exponentially in dis/continuity and dis/jointedness. It has become a conversation

about complexity / non-linear inter-connectivity / radical intimacy / felting / felt

/ carbon / carbon-felt / soil samples / terracotta / digging / Douglas Huebler /

1968-1972 / the 1972 Oil Crisis / Cinder Lake / holes / Mir Mine / Mir Space

Station / the Deep Tunnel Project / Nature’s Metropolis / Lake Michigan /

microbial fuel cells / anaerobic environments / closed-systems / fossil fuel /

carbon cycles / The Biosphere / Biosphere 2 / Paragon Space / the Google

Lunar X prize / lunar greenhouses / the moon / Cosmicomics / simulated lunar regolith / meteorites / Apollo 17 / Voyager / The Cosmos / Carl Sagan / the Overview Effect / Bubbles / the Arctic Circle / Iceland / isolation / stations / trains / railroads / bricks / steel / tracks / dikes / rivers / boats / mobility / nomadism / nomadic science / Capitalism and Schizophrenia / rhizomes / mycelium / hylozoism / living structures / Ken Issacs / Buckminster Fuller / my father’sWhole Earth Catalogs / ephemerality / Eva Hesse / loss / survival / mess / maintenance / Miereles Laderman Ukeles / care / love / amateurism / the Public Amateur / “Access to Tools” / toolboxes /information / knowledge / bibliophilia / Bouvard and Pècuchet / DIY culture / blackboards / whiteboards / hope / potentiality / failure / fulcrums / absurdity / propositions / Simon Starling / curiosity / The Age of Wonder / exploration / navigation / latitude / longitude / getting lost / contradictions / collaboration / experimentation / transformation / Mythologies / Le chante du styrène / plastic / the plastic arts / Joseph Beuys / fat / felt / honey / mead / energy / electricity / Vibrant Matter / foam / graphitic foam / sulfuric acid / sulfur crystals / bismuth / enantiomorph forms / endothermic reactions / exothermic reactions / equilibium / balance / counter-balance / certainty / uncertainty / subjectivity / longing / blueness / cyanotypes / photosensitivity / photoshynthesis / biology / cutting / grafting / hybrizing / mixing / action / reaction / chemistry / alchemy / gold / algal biodiesel / oil / water / tar / carbonization / extremophiles / super-saline lakes / Dunaliella salina / brine shrimp / spirals / helixes / Robert Smithson / site / non-site / mobile site / compost / bacteria / microsoms / macrocosms / iteration / reiteration / repetition /

At its origin, this was an exploration about algae and its transformation into

biodiesel. After a year of thinking, making, researching, growing, transforming, I

feel as if I have been inexorably, irresistibly, drawn into a hole of possibilities and

potentialities. So the question repeats itself: how to pick a point from which to begin

whenconfrontedwithamultiplyingweb,arhizomaticnetwork,aninfinitelyrevolving

spiral?

I think I have to begin again, this time within the im/possibility of a hole.

felt (microscopic view)

A year ago -- a year prior to the opening of this threewallsolo exhibition -- I had the

pleasure of assisting A. Laurie Palmer de-construct and re-construct Hole as we

moved it from the site of her studio to the site of her threewallsolo, “Still, yet, further,

else, again.” A massive structure of old-growth wood salvaged from demolished

Chicago buildings, Holeroseverticallyinthreewalls’mainspace,stackedlayer

upon layer, without any armature; a feat of constructed balance growing and rising

andexpandingcentrifugallytotouchthewalls,fillingthespaceandmergingintothe

architecture of the gallery.

Uponfirstenteringthreewalls,thesculpturewasunrecognizableasahole,reading

instead as a tornado or a cyclone: a positive occupation of space rather than a

cutintotheEarth.Itwasn’tuntilyoure/positionedyourself--bysteppinguponto

the built platforms, or were hoisted to the gallery ceiling by a fellow viewer via a

counterweight system -- that the hole became visible. From the elevated vantage

point of the ceiling, a seemingly bottomless vortex extended into the depths below,

towards the center of the Earth, a vortex that gestured further outward, moving

beyondthephysicallimitsofthespace.Asyoudescendedfromthisbird’s-eye

view, you were struck anew by the groundedness of the hole, rising from a singular

pointonthefloor.Thissubtleyetradicalshiftingofperspective--ofamultiplicesof

viewpoints -- allowed for an experience of dis/connection, for an understanding of

the hole as an im/possibility.

As I have begun to re/orient my own proposition for this threewallsolo exhibition,

I have been struck by this relationship between a point -- or a site or a material or

a thing -- and the multiplices of perspectives from which it can be understood and

experienced. By the resulting sense of dis/connection this brings. A dis/connection

which makes me feel I know more and less with each passing day. A feeling of dis/

connection which hovers in the back of my studio, in the back of my mind, as I

collect seemingly disparate materials, searching for the threads of connection that

will weave -- or I should say to felt -- them together into a cohesive structure.

MANACORDA: Do these last works have a sort of editorial moment as literary stories, jumping from one bit of narrative to another, as opposed to your earlier works that you refer to as ‘recipes’?

STARLING: The recipes were simply a form of framing device that mapped a set of coordinates. In some instances the early works had very clear narrative structures but in a more reduced form – simple, often circular poetic trajectories as opposed to the more complex, rhizomatic structures of late. Circular narratives as models or structures for storytelling, known in literature as ring compositions, appear in all sorts of far-flung cultures throughout history and seem to have evolved almost as by-products of the functioning of the brain, and I suppose that’s been a very useful tool for me over the years. Lately, as you suggest, I’ve become more and more interested in the complex, polyphonic or layered narratives, while perhaps sometimes retaining an element of that circularity.

About a year prior to assisting Laurie with the installation of Hole, I happened upon

ChrisThompson’stextFelt: Fluxus, Joseph Beuys and the Dalai Lama, and ever

since, this idea of “felt” -- the material and the metaphor it embodies -- has become

essential to my understanding of the chaotic, serendipitous yet directed process of

generating connections that is so fundamental to the way I operate as an artist in

the world. Essential, perhaps, to describing this experience of dis/connection. As

Thompson writes:

The words text and textile share the same etymological root, the Latin verb texere, meaning “to weave” [having a warp and a weft, an x and a y axis, a linear construction]. Felt has a different composition altogether. It is a nonwoven fabric, a body without axes, created through the multiple, random interlockings of spiral strands. The material owes its structural integrity to the chancebindingsamongitsirregularspiralfibers.Feltisarrivedatthroughthe leaving-to-chance – even if it is a methodical and meticulous leaving-to-chance–ofthecombinationofthespiralfibers, textures, and interstices of wool.

I have been thinking of felt -- this nonwoven fabric -- as a model for articulating

a mode of making dis/connections, of assembling materials, ideas, experiences,

etcetera, and forming them together into a structure, a cohesive assemblage,

through pressure, heat, labor and a “methodical and meticulous leaving-to-chance.”

A process of “leaving to chance” that Simon Starling describes in an interview with

Fancesco Manacorda in his most recent monograph: “But in a way, like many of my

works, there are these chance collisions, these rather serendipitous meetings that,

at a certain point, start to drive the form of things…”

A “leaving to chance” that requires room for failure, necessitates a certain resilience

and provides a space for hope. A “leaving to chance” that demands that the artist,

and consequently the viewer, stand at the edge of the un/known, on the brink of

un/certainty. A “leaving to chance” that Solnit describes as “...the art of recognizing

the role of the unforeseen, of keeping your balance amid surprises, of collaborating

with chance, of recognizing that there are some essential mysteries in the world

and thereby a limit to calculation, to plan, to control. To calculate on the unforeseen

is perhaps exactly the paradoxical operation that life most requires of us.”

At its origin, this was an exploration about algae and its transformation into

biodiesel. As my research has carried me away from this point of origin, growing in

density -- felted density -- and complexity, I have become dis/oriented. As Laurie

expressed during the talk she hosted that spring in the threewalls gallery space, as

she stood under the arching mass of Hole rising overhead1:

The deeper I got into this research the more complex the interconnections became between labor, toxics, land use, biotechnology, homeland security, histories of genocide and racism, space exploration, energy use, globalized trade, and, well, etcetera. I began to draw large spirals for each chapter I was writinginwhichvaryingquantitiesandflavorsoftheabovetopicsarrangedthemselves,withMarkLombardi‐typelinkscuttingthroughthecurvesofthe spirals to make supporting networks... everything linking back to the oil industries…”

Everything is simultaneously, overwhelmingly, inaccessibly complex and elegantly

simple. Everything links back to / stems from oil. Oil deposits that are composed of

fossilized algae, the product of thousands of years of light, energy, pressure and

anaerobic activity. Fossilized algae that is dug up, processed, burned, released into

the atmosphere, absorbed back into algal bodies and re/deposited into the earth

to be fossilized again in another million years. As Claire Pentecost reminds me in

her Notes on the Underground, “the earth is more vastly complex than a human

analogy can contain. The life cycles of ten million living species all consuming

energy and releasing by-products are coordinated in a system that collects

energy from a star and recycles its own waste. The activity of life is what created

the atmosphere of earth and now regulates it. We and our atmosphere evolved

together.”

So the question repeats itself: how to pick a point from which to begin when

confrontedwithamultiplyingweb,arhizomaticnetwork,aninfinitelyrevolving

spiral?

1Laurie’stalkinitsentiretyisavailablefordownloadfromthethreewallswebsiteasof4/20/13

Perhaps the root of the problem is in the phrasing of the question itself, in the

assumption that there is a singular point of origin, rather than a set of coordinates

from which to begin.

Recently,whilesittingatakitchentable,DouglasHuebler’s1968“SiteSculpture

Project, Windham College, Putney, Vermont” was pointed out to me in the text

On Location: Siting Robert Smithson and His Contemporaries. For these “site

sculptures,” Huebler would draw a series of arbitray points on a map in the form

of a geometric shape and set out to collect samples located by those geometries.

In the 1968 version, “Site Sculpture Project, Windham College, Putney, Vermont,”

Huebler spent only a day at Windham College in Putney, Vermont; he drew a

pentagon with the college campus at its center, and proceeded to collect earth from

eachofthefivesitesthatfellattheverticesofthepentagon.Hueblercastthefive

samples he collected in resin and, after exhibiting them in the university gallery, re-

buried them on the Windham campus.

At its origin, this was an exploration about algae and its transformation into

biodiesel. After a year of thinking, making, researching, growing, transforming, the

points of origin have multiplied, the coordinates have become dis/connected.

I have, like Huebler, selected 5 sets of coordinates from which to collect algal

samples. Although these sites are in many ways dictated by the whims of chance

-- by making dis/jointed leaps, following unexpected connections, giving way to

the haphazard nature of my research process and swimming out into the deep

waters of the un/known -- I am positioning these 5 sets of coordinates as anchors,

as stationary moorings in a sea of shifting relationality. My intention with this text

is to provide a road map connecting these 5 sets of coordinates. It is a way for me

to felt together a narrative structure while hopefully still allowing space for you,

the reader, to make your own connections within these pages, to follow your own

dis/jointed leaps between my collected words and images. Although language is

undeniably linear in nature, I want to put forward this idea of the experience of

a book as a multiplices; as a way in which messages and transmissions can be

packaged together and sent simultaneously along a single telephone line. The way

inwhichDeluzeandGuttari’spropositionthebookasaspacewhere“thereare

linesofarticulationorsegmentarity,strataandterritories;butalsolinesofflight,

movementsofdeterritorializationanddestratification.Abookisanassemblage...It

isamultiplicity…[amultiplices].”

William W. Powers State Recreation Area/ Wolf Lake

Belmont Harbor

SAIC/SAIC

Jean Baptiste Point DuSable Homesite/DuSable Park

threewalls

42ºN 87ºW (Hegewish (Chicago), IL / Hammond, IN)

42º56’N87º38’W(429NBelmontAve,Chicago,IL)

41º53’N87º25’W(200NLaSalleAve,Chicago,IL)/41º52’N87º37’W(36SWabashAve,Chicago,IL)

41º53’N87º37’W(401NMichiganAve,Chicago,IL)/41º53’N87º47’W(401NLakeShoreDrive,Chicago,IL)

41º53’N87º38’W(119NPeoriaSt.,Chicago,IL)