BIBLIOFILE

MH: Can you recall the specific occasion of constructing your first hand-made book, or what has come to be more widely known as an 'artist's book'?
VB: I was an undergraduate in my second year at Bower Ashton. Jonathan Ward, a visiting tutor, ran an introductory course to the ‘artists’ book’. He volunteered a ‘work in progress’; a paper cut out depicting a swiss army knife. Each tool was a different shaped penis, disguised as a vegetable. It was perverse, but the structure, the two dimensional plain as an object, stuck. In response, my first artists’ book was about glaucoma. I constructed three spherical eye balls at different stages of blindness and placed them in an oblong hinged box with a hole at either end.. If you took the eye balls out and held the box up to the light, you could view a series of oval photographic slides illustrating glaucoma. There was a phrase that I typed out in brail that ran along the lid. I’ve forgotten the exact words now; I’d have to ask someone whose blind to translate for me.
MH: Glaucoma! That's a highly unusual starting point, and interface; the sort of pedagogic work one might encounter at the Wellcome Foundation. Had you had personal experience of this pathology then?
VB: It stemmed from the remnants of studying biology at school. As a child I used to spend hours copying pictures from two annuals, one was about the human body and the other was Danger Mouse. At one point during my academic career I thought of focusing on scientific illustration and my BA thesis involved interviewing the British medical illustrators converting from traditional draftsman tools to digital media. However, it all came to an abrupt halt when I visited the John Hopkins in Baltimore USA. The campus security was wary of letting me wander beyond the confines of the campus, the neighbouring ghettos were rife with crime and staff were escorted by guards between buildings. I felt uncomfortable and left with unanswered questions. Science often feeds into my work, but since this experience I always approach it as an outsider. For example during the end of my second year, I managed to gain access to an anatomy department and the staff allowed me to study cadavers. I think I was there for over twelve months. It was a poetical experience, far removed from the sterility of scientific text books and led to the creation of another artists’ book ‘Sense’.
MH: It is noticeable that you refer to yourself as an 'outsider' here, but surely that is in relationship to the scientific establishment rather than the enormously expanded field of scientific knowledge, or what is sometimes loosely called 'junk' science?
VB: I am wary about the term ‘establishment’, it is too illusive. To be precise, what I keep returning to is the state of mind as an outsider in relationship to the ‘event’. And this alternative position, time frame and spatial awareness induces a response to which I will act upon through my art practice.
MH: The 'event'. So is there only one?
VB: No, but it is a focal point that can lead to offshoot projects/ multiple temporal dimensions, if the relevance can be justified. Photographing the industrial place of CERN has created a spatial awareness that I replicated in the urban banlieus of Marseille. The locations have little in common but the conceptual response to the Jetztzeit of social-political progress, is I would argue relevant in both arenas.
MH: So are you saying that the growth principle of 'self-similarity' identified by Goethe in flora and fauna, fractal geometry as it is called today, applies in the sphere of architectural planning too?
VB: That would be too literal. Though it could be applied to my art practice as a methodology for collecting data. Ideas emerge through a combination of research, working in situ, and technical experience in the studio. ‘Grounded Theory’ focuses on qualitative rather than quantative data and advocates sustained participation and observation in the milieu to generate a map of the object of study from the outside. This research methodology, advocated by anthropologists, enables me to focus and apply the principle of ‘self-similarity’ for further project proposals.
MH: Yes! Ultimately though doesn't an art practice boil down to trade in artefacts and/or performance ?
VB: Well no. Marcel Duchamp spoke about execution as the art coefficient; when the artist moves from intention to realisation, as a personal expression of art in its raw state. This is refined by the relationship to the spectator, as an artefact by posterity. An act of transubstantiation has taken place and the role of the spectator is to determine the weight. Trade is therefore only one part in this chain reaction and one which the artist has no control over.
MH: But let's turn our attention to CERN and your time there. Can you describe the steps that were necessary to gain access to this site, and how your preconceptions were affected by a close encounter with the Large Hadron Collider?
VB: This tends to come down to nerves, rather than official permission. The first contact came about by a random skype connection to a department somewhere in the area of CERN. An experimental physicist answered my call, offered his support and we were eventually able to meet for an interview. The second contact came about via the press office. A small department overwhelmed by international enquiries, though fortunately well mannered not to turn me away. So by the time I had been moved to the third office, the secretary ran her finger down a long list, made a call and I was sent to meet a theoretical physicist. CERN is divided into a number of sites spread out around the route of the large hadron collider. The scientific language, interactive friendly displays, and vivid CAD imagery at the visitors museum, alongside an official tourist visit was my first experience. I still have the CERN mouse mat to remind me.. Over the next few days I used an ordinance survey map to locate other sites in the area. The area is farmland on the edge of the Jura mountains, straddling the border between France and Switzerland and appears to be a tranquil region. So how to conceive a large hadron collider buried deep underground, firing protons close to the speed of light? The Large Hadron collide became as elusive as the Higgs’ boson. The only give away was the distinct architecture of each site often discretely hidden behind trees, often set against incessant buzzing from overhead electric pylons. It consumes 200 mega watts of electricity, equivalent to half of the consumption rate of Geneva City. Saving the planet appears far from the minds of particle physicists.
MH: Elsewhere you have alluded to this exotic realm of 'Superstrings' or 'M-theory' being investigated at CERN as "a new art of barbarism" which is an intriguing remark in itself. Now, to fall back on that rather hackneyed category 'the sublime', would you say that breakthroughs in the understanding and description of the physical universe, well below the threshold of the naked eye, signal a re-inscription of 'the sublime' in contemporary art practice?
VB: The sublime is an immeasurable quality that has long been associated with visual experiences. Physicists use a similar language to explain an elegant equation, yet their theories are rarely relevant to our own experiences. Superstrings describe fundamental matter that is so minute in scale that there is no experiment that can measure and therefore empirically prove that M-theory is correct. The science and mathematics are esoteric, but the theory and its claims are visually exoteric. It is the pop subject for physic students, particle physicists have been known to gain celebrity status and a large proportion of international government funding has been funnelled into this arena. Yet after forty years, theorists can still only speculate on String Theory’s relevance. And this act of speculation is not only visible in science, it is reflected in the social-political progress in society. Walter Benjamin defines positive barbarism, including Cubism and Surrealism, as space ‘without experience’ which disrupts previous history and implores us to recognise a new space of cultural experience. Rather than perceiving Barbarism as a society breakdown, this Jetztzeit of the moment is a way of breaking out of cultural trends. ‘The sublime’ as a trend is dictated by the social-political climate and is one of many tools that supports subjective belief systems. Scientists desire the spectator to adopt their theoretical ideas; for the status, for the funding, for the belief in scientific progress. My project is not a rejection of the truth science does seek to discover. It does not seek to devalue or undermine the scientific merit of what is accepted as scientific knowledge. Instead it acts on the supposition of String Theory being real and ‘the sublime’ will therefore often gravitate into my work.
MH: As in your laser cut book Dark Matter for instance?
VB: On that note, I would agree with you. The artist’s book, takes on an ‘other’ quality and there is certainly an untouchable sublime element to the piece. As a project, it took two months research and one week of prototyping. So the result is an object that appears simple in shape and form, but its complexity is proven by the visual and tactile attraction. I recently exhibited the piece at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol and people were constantly drawn by this hypnotic ‘other’ state. As a concept the book is a response to Edwin Abbott’s Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions and evolved from a two dimensional sheet of paper, cut, scored and folded into a three dimensional extended Axonometric Square.
MH: Such sophistication, and yet I believe you also have a penchant for more 'traditional' labour intensive practices, such as lithography and wood cut. Francis Alys in a recent interview with Anna Dezeuze pointed out how painting and drawing 'involve stepping back from this rat race'. In the light of that remark do you think that the more hermetic aspects of your artwork provide a kind of refuge?
VB: This could well be the case in relation to my current studio space, a vast pigeon infested warehouse in East London. Rather than filling the space with impromptu installations, perhaps I subconsciously retreated. Hector Saunier, Master Printer at the Atelier Contre Point in Paris visited my print studio last year. His speciality is engraving and I was fortunate to spend two or three days with him and his partner Shu-Lin. Their enthusiasm and generosity with for shared knowledge motivated me to reassess the artisan skills, in light of today’s time constraints which favour the quick fix ‘mouse and print’ solution. Stringskips describes a new series of landscape prints that I have since been working on. Inspired by the 18th century Durfourkarten (a military topographical survey of Switzerland completed in 1862), as part of my ongoing research associated to the location of CERN's 21st century Large Hadron Collider, I visited the British Library and obtained copies of the maps to reference back in the studio. The hachuring marks particularly appealed as a metaphor to Walter Benjamin’s ‘splinters of reality’. I could also read the marks as a two dimensional plane of a multidimensional String Theory.. After four weeks in front of the same plate, an overload of BBC 24 and Radio France Culture, aching joints, hachuring hallucinations, eye strain and eventually an ebay purchase for magnification goggles, I was ready print my first copper plate engraving.
MH: But you chose to present the results in the group show KALEID both over a light-box, and also on some old micro-fiche machines. What was the thinking behind that?
VB: This is difficult to explain succinctly, because it is still re-defining my practice. The use of ready-mades, in particular low-fi instruments, remove my prints from the protocols of framing or the restrictions of editioning. Stringskips are experienced as buzzing, flashing, moving, focusing dimensions. Once I took the first proof from the engraving, I could begin to conceive how to exhibit in the public arena. I used paper with the intention of working on a series of folded pieces, but with this experimental approach, I began oiling the paper to allow light to penetrate through. I finally exhibited the piece illuminated on a light box, one that was heavy and cumbersome and with old starter plugs, so the lights tended to flash, similar to old pc monitors. The piece exudes an incessant buzzing, a simile to the electricity pylons at CERN; though the valley location is picturesque, the noise is a constant reminder to the LHC underfoot. I then proceeded to engrave Stringskips onto a series of perspex plates, front and back as layers of microfiche. The microfiche machines are associated to archives, investigative research and outmoded collections of data. The mechanism consists of a series of lenses and mirrors to project and magnify an area of a slide; navigating with one hand, focusing with another. This became a gestural act and reference to CERN’s search for the elusive Higg’s boson in the physicists’ exoteric, multidimensional landscape.
MH: Do you experience yourself physiologically as an experimental site too, an industrial complex, an athanor?
VB: The male undertones to these analogies I would argue are outmoded. Perhaps a blackhole would be better suited, intermittently spitting out Hawking radiation. Existence is no longer geocentric or even heliocentric, and if perception of space remains infinite, we can only move in one direction, towards the unknown unknowns.
MH: Is that why you are planning a return trip to CERN this autumn?
VB: Quoted online as a ‘Catastrophic quench’, the helium leakage in the Large Hadron Collider led to a delay, and the restart is now scheduled for November 2009. I will revisit the location before the end of the year and will also be working on a series of stone lithography prints during a residency at Frans Masereel. CERN’s recent penchant for main stream media coverage has given greater kudos to Dan Brown’s Angel and Demons fictional hollywood blockbuster. And I also plan to visit the Geneva archives to research Voltaire’s landscaping of Ferney, a village located within LHC’s 27km circumference. A multilayered viscera of data, known unknowns, that continue to alter my experience of the event, contributing to the art coefficient or more simply, an exhibition in 2010.

Victoria Browne lives and works in East London and is Artist in Residence at Middlesex University, London, UK.