Fieldnotes, or An Environmental Disaster

1 In the Great derangement, Amitav Ghosh discusses knowledge that results from recognition. Recognition is a “passage from ignorance to knowledge” that relies in an “already existing awareness that makes possible the passage from ignorance to knowledge.” See Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2017), 4-5. This book contains a recipe for soy-wax brick making. It has been the product of diligent, yet erratic work-cycles. It is the product of many surprises. And, as such, all that we know is that it is in a continuous entanglement with its milieu. We had hoped for an infallible instruction set, one that, in the spirit of Sol Lewitt, contained within it the steps towards a dependable authorship. Instead, we recognized that a rock in the winter is not the same as a rock in the summer;1 that unforeseen environmental factors were far more authoritative than we could have predicted.

I still remember the sizzle, an acoustic deluge, intense yet fleeting. Tiny frozen stones sizzled and steamed as they plunged into a bowl of boiling, liquid fat. As the sounds desist, the liquid becomes more and more solid. The cool stones draw the heat from the fat and freeze their interaction in place, almost instantly. Delaying an immediate solidification was a concern in allowing the wax to evenly suspend the stones, our mix required time. Think here of a concrete truck, churning and churning, fending solidification

between cement and aggregate until the mix arrives to its designated formwork. In the frigid February of a late Michigan winter, our research team painstakingly finalized and perfected our brick recipe. Our recipe was filled with notes and strategies on hot to keep things warm. Heat guns and blankets scattered our impromptu kitchen.

Plans for this exhibition as for many other, events, discussions, and gatherings were thwarted and we eventually discovered that an elongated timeline was both blessing and curse. Months later, in the increasingly pleasant early summer weather, we re-started our fabrication efforts. We set-up an outdoor gravel wash station. We enjoyed plentiful rays of sun through a south facing window in the fabrication lab. The heat-guns and blankets stood nearby. The brick recipe was followed, precisely. The results that followed were disastrous.

In the temperate summer air, the gravel no longer maintained its icy disposition. Instead of immediately solidifying neighboring fat particles, the warmer gravel did not remove heat, but rather introduced heat into the mixture, in excess. When mixed, the gravel warmed by the summer air increased the temperature of the soy-wax. The wax increased the temperature of the gravel. The gravel re-heated the wax, entangling the mixture into a boil that refuted solidification.

What had once sizzled, frozen now oozed, bubbled. Upon closer inspection it became evident, (and perhaps should have always been evident), that these matters were entangled not only with their own qualities but also with those of their environment. We slowly learned that subtle changes in the surrounding air affected our recipe, a recipe which hopelessly searched for a discrete set of instructions towards the making of the perfect wax and aggregate brick. In the end, perhaps ironically, every remedy to our recipe involved cooling the mixture. The gravel aggregate was kept indoors, conditioned in the mechanically produced 72ºF air. Hours passed as we allowed the ambient air to remove heat from the wax. We waited for cooling to occur as the wax rested between its hotter flash point (185ºF) and cooler pour temperature (160ºF). During these moments we often became impatient. We considered a refrigerator. We forged an ice bath. And, always the results were mostly unsuccessful (for our ends). Our accelerated, mechanized cooling didn’t perform in the non-oriented way that the mixture required of its surroundings.

In the end, we let our patience grow. We relented to the air. This cookbook is, in a way, an artifact through which we might record learned entanglements and reciprocities between matter and its surroundings.

Above, a series of bricks that were cast in cooler air following the original recipe. These bricks solidified within the first hour of casting.

Below, the resultant brick when the original recipe was followed precisely in warmer air conditions. This brick solidified within four hours of casting.