George Bernard Shaw once wrote: "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas." Open Field is the Walker Art Center's ongoing experiment in participation and public space. Taking place outdoors in the summer months, the project invites artists and visitors to imagine and inhabit the museum's campus as a cultural commons--a shared space for idea exchange, creative gatherings and unexpected interactions. In 2010, the Walker's backyard was home to numerous activities from conversations to performances and temporary sculptures. This volume discusses Open Field's genesis, exploring the meaning and impact of public practice for institutions.

Open Field: Conversations on the Commons (WALKER POSTSCRI)

Arts & Photography

Duncombe, Stephen

Futurefarmers

Ippolito, Jon

Dietz, Steve

Prelinger, Rick

Stulen, Scott

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Walker Postscript/Walker Art Center

Three nails for J. Robert Oppenheimer, more than half a century after the Manhattan Project.
For Want of a Nail takes as its starting point a series of curious memoranda sent from J. Robert Oppenheimer's office in October 1943 and archived in the Los Alamos Historical Museum, in which the eminent scientist repeatedly requests a nail in the wall upon which he could hang his hat. The persistence and specificity of the request for this nail inspired the international art collective Futurefarmers to create, by hand (and after more than a half-century delay), three nails for the theoretical physicist: one forged from a meteorite, one cast using 1943 steel pennies, and a third made by re-fusing Trinitite, a material formed by residue from the Trinity nuclear bomb test.
Growing out of a site-specific contribution to an exhibition in Santa Fe, New Mexico, this book engages the region's complex nuclear history as it relates to land use, resource extraction, and the far-reaching decisions that were made within the Manhattan Project. Throughout this multidisciplinary project, Futurefarmers constructs a narrative that runs parallel, and in some cases counter to, the conventional accounts of the Manhattan Project and Oppenheimer, its chief architect. Through video stills, production shots, essays, and interviews―presented in a book with uncut, unopened pages that the reader may cut to access more images―For Want of a Nail not only opens new ways to think about the region's particular atomic history, but also prompts more general reflections on how knowledge and narrative are embedded and communicated in material objects, both ephemeral and ancient.
Contributors Peter Galison, Patrick Kiley, Lucy Lippard, Megan Prelinger and Rick Prelinger, Anne Walsh

For Want of a Nail (No Place Press)

Swaine, Michael

Franceschini, Amy

History & Criticism

no place press

The interstellar rollercoaster ride of Charles and Ray Eames experimental 1968 film, The Powers of Ten, changed the way that the average American thought about science. In this project, the art and design collective Futurefarmers used the Eames IBM commissioned film s opening picnic scene as its inspiration and score. Researchers whose work relates to each one of the magnitudes of ten compare today s practices with those of 1968 and discuss the changing land scapes of their respective fields. The collaboration came about through a residency at the University of California, Berkeley. Included in the publication are essays by Futurefarmers members, interviews with researchers, and documentation of ten delightfully re staged picnics, representing fields of inquiry from philosophy to ecology. Contributors include Peter Galison, Jake Kosek, Rick and Megan Shaw Prelinger, Sara Seager, and Ignacio Valero.

A Variation on Powers of Ten

Michael Swaine

Amy Franceschini

Peter Galison

Owen Gingerich

Walton Green

Jake Kosek

Sara Seager

Elizabeth Thomas

Ignacio Valero

Humor & Entertainment

Sternberg Press

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Books by Futurefarmers