Snake, Turtle, Alligator

The Atomic Archive of Bryan LaPlante, Gregg Bordowitz, Nina Katchadourian, Lucy Raven, Elaine Reichek, Turquoise, Bruno Zhu

"4/26/48

Bryan:

Here’s some GAC doodles - better censor one or two"[1]

Following Trinity, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, Harry S. Truman[2] signed the Atomic Energy Act bringing together a committee of researchers, military, and civilians to provide oversight on each aspect of the nation's atomic weaponry and energy protocol. During these meetings (headed by Robert Oppenheimer), all note-taking mechanisms were strictly prohibited, with doodling as an exception. Bryan LaPlante, a security guard specifically appointed to conduct a full sweep after meetings, saved each drawing (along with a meticulously redrawn seating chart, to attribute the drawings to their respective maker). LaPlante referred to himself as “messenger boy”.

Performing Günther Anders’[3] analysis of our atomic age, the exhibition presents all 130 of the Atomic Energy Committee’s drawings through scanned reproduction, scattered as imagining their arrangement in origin. Each their own idiosyncratic ciphers, these drawings retain information while operating under code. As the meeting minutes remain classified, we are left only to project onto their twice-removed contents. In the same way that they became metonymic to the impossible notetaking, their scans become emblematic for an archives goal of conservation (the collection, unprocessed at time of request, was unauthorized for physical loan). The exhibition was thus instructed of its own constraint.

Six contemporary artists operate in concert with the archive, echoing the complicated tenets and rules of engagement. Spatial, temporal, or bureaucratic “ systems” exert upon us regardless of conscious participation or complicity— their subversion, though quelled, is inevitable. Communication becomes an inconceivable or unpermitted dilemma. The task becomes speaking the unspeakable.

The essence of conceptual art shares the essence of the atomic age; the object itself need not be present, made, or even exist— rather, it is its potentiality which is inscrutable. Roger Fisher, an academic and veteran of World War II, sought to dispel the ease of annihilation by proposing a protocol of placing the nuclear codes into the heart of one of the president’s most trusted advisors. Upon approach, his colleagues in the Pentagon replied: "He might never push the button."[4]

1 - Bryan LaPlante Papers, Oregon State University Special Collections and Archives Research Center, Corvallis, Oregon.

2 - In addition to initiating this part group therapy, part long form bureaucratic performance, Truman encouraged the Atomic Energy Commission to authorize acquisition “by purchase or by condemnation” of any land—within and outside of the US—containing atomic energy resources. Under the guise of “ensuring the necessary research”, the nuclear arms race transformed to a renewed decree in Manifest Destiny. (Harry S. Truman, ‘Special Message to the Congress on Atomic Energy’, October 3, 1945. Held in Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, Presidential Libraries System administered by the National Archives and Records.)

3 - “Don't believe, furthermore, that once we have succeeded in stopping production of A- and H- bombs, in having all existing bombs destroyed, that we would be entitled to cease worrying... We still would 'have' them because we know how to make them. There doesn't exist, in our epoch of mechanical reproduction, the non-existence of any possible product, because it is not the actual physical objects that count.” (Günther Anders, ‘Commandments in the Atomic Age’, 1961.)

4 - Roger Fisher, ‘Preventing nuclear war’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, March 1981.