The Laboratory For What's Possible

The project con­sists of a book and an instal­la­tion from Amelia Marzec. The book, What Hap­pened Here, expos­es the loca­tions of 28 sites that were occu­pied by both Bell Labs and the U.S Army in the ear­ly 20^th cen­tu­ry. Archi­tec­tur­al evi­dence from the exper­i­men­ta­tion that occurred remains on the land today. These places laid the ground­work for our com­mu­ni­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy today, and remind us that our com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems were orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed for warfare.

The instal­la­tion, The Lab­o­ra­to­ry For What’s Pos­si­ble, expands upon two of the sites. One is a nuclear mis­sile site just south of NYC. The oth­er is the loca­tion where radar was invent­ed that was used to bomb Prague dur­ing WWII. The instal­la­tion sit­u­ates the ear­ly telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions indus­try next to Slav­ic migra­tion his­to­ry, inter­gen­er­a­tional trau­ma, and queer fam­i­ly. It includes inter­ac­tive soft­ware that will allow view­ers to expe­ri­ence the decom­mis­sioned indus­tri­al sites; tools and items that were built for test­ing the land­scape; and med­i­c­i­nal plants col­lect­ed from the nuclear mis­sile site and test­ed by the Urban Soils Insti­tute, as nature has begun to take back the land.

This project is sup­port­ed by the Research Foun­da­tion of CUNY, and artist res­i­den­cies with Swale House and the Urban Soils Insti­tute. Click here to read the press release.