N (review)

Z differs from N only in position

—Aristotle, Metaphysics

In July 1942, something happened on a small, previously anonymous island off the north-west coast of Scotland . . . Gruinard Island became the site of the first deployment of a deliberately constructed biological weapon . . . The first organism to be identified as a practical weapon was Bacillus anthracis (anthrax)—code-named "N."

—Lloyd Gibson, Mark Little, N

As various kinds of deployments, both by the military of the "developed world" and by the irregular fighters ranged against them, continue to impact more and more upon the everyday world of non-combatants, Lloyd Gibson and Mark Little's book, N, documents much more than a minor detail of the war of 60 years ago. Both authors teach at the University of Northumbria in Newcastle upon Tyne in the northeast of England—Gibson is head of sculpture, Little is in the School of Humanities— and their specific skills are brought to bear under the inspired aegis of Locus+, an arts organization that commissions "occurrences" at specific sites in Britain.

N brings history and place together with current thoughts and developments in material technology and biotechnology. Elegantly presented and illustrated in landscape format, the first part of the book provides Little and Gibson's context for the gathering of plans and reports from British archive sources that were, until recently, secret; the production of a site-specific sculpture; and documentation of the shooting of a film, which is included in the CD-ROM.

The second part of the book is a collection of five commissioned essays. In one of these, Little traces the events in Scotland and Porton Down, the now notorious British biological warfare center where, in 1942, anthrax was produced in various ways to be delivered to the animal and human populations of enemy countries. The trials with live sheep on the island just a mile off the Scottish coast condemned the island to permanent exclusion from further use until successful demonstrations by environmentalists at the 1981 Conservative Party Conference led to the government completing the expensive clean-up operation. The island was declared clear in 1988.

Little's contemplation around these events begins with the Greeks and the air that animates us as we breathe, the wind that surrounds, maintains and energizes the whole cosmos—pneuma. "The Intimacy of Infection" follows, leading from Freud to Bachelard, Bruno, Bataille, Virilio, Kroker and Baudrillard, and invoking Jackson Pollock, Yves Klein and Joseph Beuys as performance artists: "The body of N performs art." A primary focus of this essay is the issue of technology and corporeality, both then and now, and consideration of the unknown consequences of the Human Genome Project and the extent of other forms of binary reductionism. Heidegger's "Being and Time" concludes Little's contextualization of the project.

On the CD, we see footage shot by a time-lapse camera set up opposite Gruinard Island, which introduces one of Lloyd Gibson's sculpture pieces, now occupying the foreground of the film frame. Gibson employs the technology of Shape Memory Alloy, made of precise ratios of nickel and titanium, to articulate the figurative, life-sized sculpture of a child "crouched in an androgynous, animalistic pose." The time lapse shows the figure pulse as the metal framework, covered with silicone rubber, responds to the changes in temperature brought about by the actions of the sun, wind and rain on the planet.

Gibson writes that "the sculptural aspect of N is not a work for explicit public display. It is geographically inaccessible and largely hidden from public view." However, using other technologies, the site and artwork are made visible and accessible via contemporary dissemination that eschews both museum and gallery. Through this publication, the project exists as a total artwork in the minds of those who encounter the exhibit through the 2000 copies of this "extended catalog" and the movies on the CD-ROM...