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Manuscript Proposal for the special project "The Role of Artists and Scientists in Times of War"


Sheila Pinkel, Associate Professor of Art, Pomona College, Leonardo Editorial Board member

In 1980 I became increasingly aware that the United States was not only the leading manufacturer of arms in the world but that it was the main exporter of arms. I also became aware that California, my state, was the major recipient of Department of Defense military research and development funds, meaning that a great deal of military activity was occurring in my back yard. But, there was little information about this in the media. During the next ten years, in response to the data I found on U.S. military production, foreign military sales and the growth of the nuclear industry, I made eleven "Thermonuclear Gardens" which were information artworks about these issues in museums, galleries and alternatives spaces throughout the United States.

I decided to start researching military production because I was feeling quite uneasy about the idea that the United States was so deeply involved in military activity. I believed that I would assuage my fears if I was simply better informed. In the process of trying to learn more, I discovered that it was quite difficult to find information, that the United States government was not particularly generous about informing citizens about U.S. military production and that if I wanted to get information I had to go to alternative sources. I also found that the media when discussing military topics, obfuscated rather than clarified military production. From this research and seeing how difficult it was to learn about the military/industrial complex, I decided that the best thing I could do was to make information art works about the growth of the military and sale of arms to foreign countries.

The following is a brief list of some of the installations I made in this series. In each installation I tried to make at least one work which addressed the military/industrial complex in the city of the installation to concretize and make palpable this subject for local peoples as a means of empowerment:

  • #1: B.C. Space, Laguna Beach, California. This was the site of the first garden. It consisted of information sheets, maps, artworks and take-out food containers on which were listed the major weapons producers selling weapons to foreign countries. I called it a "Thermonuclear Garden" because we had so many military plants or research facilities in Southern California, especially Orange County.

  • #3: Federal Building, Downtown Los Angeles. The artist group "Mother Earth" was invited to have an exhibition in the foyer of the Federal Building. They decided to do one on the theme of militarism and invited me to install one of my gardens. It happened that the Department of Defense office was in that building. After I installed one of my information art works which concretized military research and manufacturing activity in Southern California, the building manager contacted the head of Mother Earth to inform her that all of our installations needed to be removed within 24 hours because of numerous complaints by building occupants.

  • #5: USC Atalier, Santa Monica, California. While addressing the growth of global arms sales, in this work I also named major recipients of DOD contracts in the Santa Monica area. The head of the city committee which awards permits to expand their facilities, saw this list which she remembered when one of these manufacturers applied for a permit for facilities expansion. She responded by saying that she would withdraw voting because she personally did not endorse military expansion in her own city. Much to her surprise the other committee members did the same thing and the company did not get its permit. The next day the leading military contractor in the city was in the office of the mayor at 8:00 a.m. demanding that head of this committee be released of her responsibilities and that the permit be granted. Neither happened and this was a good example of the potential for empowerment which work like this can have on a local level.

  • #8: Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, N.Y. This was the largest installation I made, filling the entire gallery for this solo exhibition. In this instance I had discovered that Kodak, which is based in Rochester, NY had a company in Kingsport, Tennessee, which was a go-co, a government owned, company operated facility making the highest yield explosive outside of nuclear produced in the United States. When I thought about it that made perfect sense because Kodak uses silver nitrate in the production of film and nitrates are an explosive as well. At this site I included a work about Kodak's military involvement in an piece entitled "In War And In Peace You Can Shoot With Kodak".

  • #10: Allied Arts Council Gallery, Las Vegas, Nevada: This worked focused on the history and current status of the nuclear industry because Jackass Flats, the major nuclear test site, is 100 miles outside of Las Vegas. Nuclear issues are of enormous concern to people in the region, especially because the federal government was considering making it the major location for high level nuclear waste disposal in the United States. The director of the gallery invited me to take a special tour of a demonstration nuclear waste disposal site at Nevada Test Site prior to my installation. The story of going to this site is quite compelling.

As an aside, it was during this exhibition that I asked my father to explain to me the difference between a breader reactor and a boiling water reactor. I was surprised that he was able to do it with such clarity and ease. It was only then that I learned that he had been intimately involved with the nuclear industry most of his professional life and that he had designed the first nuclear research reactor for NACA (later known as NASA) at the Lewis Laboratory in Cleveland, Ohio. He had never talked to his children about his professional life because he had top secret clearance. I was struck by the irony that I had become an anti-nuke without knowing my father's relationship to this industry.

  • #12: Harbor College, "Dream Dreams, Scheme Schemes, Soil Soil, Waste Waste: A Brief History of the nuclear industry" exhibition included advertisements from the nuclear industry itself. In this installation I wanted to deconstruct advertisements from the nuclear industry. However, when I went to libraries to find magazines from the nuclear industry itself I could find none. I almost gave up the project until I went home to mom and pop's for dinner. There on the dining room table was an issue of Nuclear News with the kind of advertisements I was looking for. Again, I discovered that the average person can not access this industry.

[In my full text] I would like to describe these installations in detail, including images from some of them and then discuss my ideas for how artists can make use of the net as well as exhibition venues and public space to inform and in the process activate people to protest the continued export of violence and government support of the military/industrial complex in this country.

The full text was published as "Thermonuclear Gardens: Information Artworks About the U.S. Military-Industrial Complex" in Leonardo 34:4 (2001).


Posted 2000
Updated 31 October 2007

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