Twill #12

Edito At work in the fields of the Bomb Neuroscience Petit éloge de la colère Le plaisirs difficiles San Giuliano terme Las voces del silencio A house made of steel and flesh Entanglements Ardennes Kim Young Hee 2D Sculptures Gaze Reflections Dubai - Telaviv Dolls house Suburbia Nero Bianco Rosa Atelier Rain Goodbye Emanuelle Portraits Musique et la mode L’amour Noir Chords Futurist film uncovered Zang Tumb Tumb

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EDITO Evolutionary flaws

By an evolutionary accident, or by the whim of some God if you so prefer, man is what he is: a self-conscious mammal.

This highly self-centred and egotistic peculiarity of his brain sets him apart from everything else we know and endows this very special species with extraordinary advantages.

Such a blessing, unfortunately, is matched with the curse of a cruel and unusual punishment: the ability to perceive, but not fully understand, the act of living and dying.

This singularity is at the origin of the problem that has baffled mankind more than anything else: the value of life.

For a good reason, because it is not easy to cope with the reality that, from a biological perspective, the value of the panda, on the verge of extinction, is much higher than that of man, reproducing at the increasing rate of well over 100 million per year.

On all accounts, we are disposable animals, not much different from cattle, if it were not for this annoying consciousness that makes you aware of your existence as much as of the horror of non-existence.

But even knowing that death is a daily occurrence of this world, with a toll of 200,000 people of all ages and social classes, does not help much when you, or your beloveds, are at stake.

Then, you would easily barter all the pandas of the world to save a life, or more honestly, to postpone a death, especially your own.

Therefore, it comes as no surprise that cultures and religions have been swinging between two extremes: valuing life over anything else or endorsing the merciless design of nature. In this issue, ‘Twill’s explorations touch the elusive value of life by looking at two opposite endeavours: the industrial production of weapons of mass destruction and the solitary voyage of a very special man.

These days, after many quiet years, the nuclear threat is coming back in a novel incarnation.

In the 80s, Bob Del Tredici, a pacifist scared by the impending doom threatened by the cold war, decided to document the source of this insanity: the production of the bomb.

His mesmerising book, uncovered from the shelves of the Strand bookstore in NY, owes its existence to that idea.

And yet, defying the purpose of its author, the exposure of the stark banality of bomb making, in fact an industry like many others, brings up afresh the existential dilemma of the value of life.

The uncomfortable fact is that nature itself is exploding, every single day, at random, the like of a Hiroshima bomb.

Then, Bob’s pictures force us to face the shocking reality that an industry devoted to large scale annihilation of humans appears more in harmony with nature, or the will of Gods, than, for instance, that health industry which defiantly challenges mortality.

Consciousness was neither designed to master, nor to ignore, this disturbing paradox and we can only say that the bomb expresses, in its own majestic language, that hidden side of consciousness that denies the value of individual life.

We found the other side of the coin in the Steel House, the individualistic feat of a rare type of man who has dedicated most of his life to chasing a dream that had no other purpose that satisfying his own artistic pleasure.

An artist unlike any other, whose creation was never meant to be displayed in museums, traded by merchants or to belong to anybody else than its creator. In this triumph of the value of self we have perceived the materialization of consciousness itself; of his soul, in essence, if we were brave enough to pronounce this word.

The irony of this solitary endeavour is that, in the end, we cannot escape the sensation that it is the extreme individuality of such a masterpiece that makes it universal, crying for the unique value of life. Just another disquieting paradox that challenges our limited minds!

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Par un accident de l’évolution, ou, si l’on préfère, par un caprice divin, l’homme est devenu ce qu’il est : un mammifère conscient de lui-même. Cette caractéristique égoïste, auto-centrée, de son cerveau l’a placé en marge de toutes les autres espèces et lui confère d’extraordinaires privilèges. Une telle chance, cependant, s’accompagne d’une cruelle punition : la capacité de percevoir, sans en saisir les tenants et les aboutissants, le fait de vivre et de mourir. Cette singularité est à l’origine de la question qui n’a cessé de dérouter l’humanité au cours de toute son histoire : quelle est la valeur réelle de la vie ? Et cela se comprend : il n’est pas facile d’admettre, d’un point de vue biologique, que le panda, dont l’espèce est proche de l’extinction, a plus de valeur que l’homme, dont la population augmente d’à peu près 100 millions d’individus par an. Quoi qu’il en soit, nous serions des animaux jetables, à peine différents des vaches, si nous n’étions affublés de cette pénible conscience qui nous rend attentifs à l’existence autant qu’à la nonexistence. Mais le fait de savoir que la mort est une péripétie ordinaire, qui concerne chaque jour 200 000 personnes de toutes classes et origines, ne change pas grand-chose à l’affaire quand l’un de nos proches est en danger. On troquerait volontiers tous les pandas de la terre pour sauver une vie ou, plutôt, pour retarder une mort. Il n’est pas surprenant que cultures et religions hésitent entre deux extrêmes : mettre la vie au-dessus de tout, ou accepter la terrible sort que nous réserve la nature.

Dans ce numéro, Twill s’interroge sur la valeur de la vie en considérant deux phénomènes opposés : la production industrielle d’armes de destruction massive et le parcours solitaire d’un homme très original.

De nos jours, après des années de relative discrétion, la menace nucléaire revient nous hanter. Dans les années 80, Bob Del Tredici, un pacifiste inquiet des menaces que faisait planer la guerre froide, décida d’explorer cette folie : la production de la bombe. Il a écrit sur ce sujet un livre fascinant, découvert dans la librairie Strand de New-York. Toutefois, dépassant les intentions de son auteur, la description de la banalité de la fabrication, une industrie comme une autre, nous rappelle la question existentielle de la valeur de la vie. Le fait embarrassant est que la nature elle-même est en train d’exploser chaque jour, de manière aléatoire, avec la force d’une bombe d’Hiroshima. Il faut accepter cette réalité choquante : une industrie dévouée à la destruction de l’espèce humaine est, dans une certaine mesure, plus en harmonie avec la nature, ou la volonté des Dieux, que, par exemple, l’industrie pharmaceutique qui défie la mort. L’esprit humain n’est pas programmé pour maîtriser, ni pour ignorer, ce troublant paradoxe. Tout ce qu’il nous est permis de dire, c’est que la bombe exprime, à sa manière, cette face obscure de la conscience qui nie la valeur de l’individualité.

Nous avons trouvé un versant positif au problème en visitant la Steel House, tour de force individuel d’une homme original qui a consacré la majeure partie de sa vie à poursuivre un rêve qui a pour seul but de satisfaire son plaisir artistique. C’est un artiste à nul autre semblable, et dont la création n’a jamais eu pour objectif d’être exhibée dans les musées, vendue par des galeristes, ou même d’appartenir à quelqu’un d’autre qu’à son créateur. Dans ce triomphe du moi nous avons perçu la matérialisation de la conscience elle-même ; de son âme, en essence, s’il nous est permis de prononcer ce mot. L’ironie de cet effort solitaire est qu’on ne peut repousser l’impression que c’est l’individualité extrême d’un tel chef d’œuvre qui le rend universel, en fait une expression vibrante de la valeur unique de la vie. Un autre paradoxe, donc, à servir en pâture à nos esprits limités !

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Per un curioso incidente evolutivo, o per il capriccio di qualche divinità se così preferite, l’uomo è quello che è: un mammifero dotato della coscienza di sé. Tale egotistica peculiarità della suo cervello lo rende diverso da ogni altro essere conosciuto e gli concede straordinari vantaggi. Ma è un privilegio che, sfortunatamente, si accompagna da una efferata e crudele punizione: la capacità di percepire, ma non pienamente comprendere, la vita e la morte. Proprio questa incongruenza è all’origine del problema che ha tormentato l’umanità più di ogni altra cosa: il valore della vita.

Non è infatti facile accettare che, da una prospettiva puramente biologica, il valore del panda, vicino all’estinzione, è ben superiore a quello della specie umana che si riproduce con inarrestabile crescendo, aggiungendo ogni anno 100 milioni di persone alla popolazione del nostro povero pianeta. Se non fosse per l’autocoscienza che ci rende consapevoli della nostra esistenza, come dell’orrore della non-esistenza, non saremmo altro che una specie infestante. Ma questa considerazione, ed anche la consapevolezza che nel mondo la morte reclama ogni singolo giorno 200,000 vittime di ogni età e classe sociale, non è di molto conforto quando siamo noi, o i nostri cari, ad essere in gioco. Allora, sacrificheremmo senza esitazioni tutti i panda del mondo per salvare una vita, o più correttamente, per posporre una morte, specialmente la nostra. Per questo, non può sorprendere che le culture e le religioni abbiano sempre oscillato fra due estremi: porre la vita umana come sommo valore o sposare lo spietato disegno della natura. In questo numero, ‘Twill esplora l’elusivo valore della vita guardando a due opposte fatiche: la produzione industriale dell’arma di distruzione di massa per eccellenza ed il solitario percorso di un uomo molto speciale. Oggi, dopo gli anni della guerra fredda, la minaccia della bomba atomica si ripresenta nella nuova fattispecie del terrorismo e della proliferazione incontrollata. Negli anni 80, Bob del Tredici, un pacifista spaventato dalla incombente catastrofe nucleare, ha deciso di documentare la genesi di questa pazzia: la struttura industriale coinvolta nella produzione della bomba. Da quell’idea è emerso l’affascinante libro che abbiamo scoperto per caso sugli scaffali dello Strand Bookstore a New York, mitico tempio del bibliofilo povero. E tuttavia, l’assoluta banalità della produzione della bomba, in realtà un’industria come molte altre, tradisce la missione dell’autore non facendo altro che riproporci il dilemma esistenziale del valore della vita. Perchè il fatto è che la natura stessa, ogni giorno, in modo del tutto casuale, distribuisce nel mondo tanta morte e sofferenza quanto ha fatto, una sola volta, la bomba di Hiroshima. Ed allora, le di foto di Bob ci obbligano ad affrontare l’assurda realtà che un’industria dedicata alla distruzione su larga scala dell’uomo appare più in armonia con la natura, o la volontà di Dio, che non, per esempio, l’industria della salute che sfida con arroganza il nostro destino mortale. La mente dell’uomo, però, non si è evoluta al punto da dominare questo paradosso o, almeno, da ignorarlo. Noi possiamo solo dire che la bomba esprime, nel suo proprio linguaggio infernale, quel lato nascosto della coscienza che non riconosce nella vita del singolo individuo un valore. E abbiamo trovato l’altro lato della medaglia nella Steel House, l’impresa molto personale di un uomo che ha dedicato buona parte della sua vita ad inseguire un sogno senz’altro scopo che il suo piacere di esteta. Un artista singolare, la cui massima opera non e’ stata concepita per essere esposta in un museo, profanata dal commercio o appartenere a nessun altro che al suo creatore. In quest’inno al valore della propria individualità ci sembra di percepire la materializzazione dell’autocoscienza stessa, dell’anima, se avessimo l’ardire di pronunciare questa parola. E, alla fine, rimaniamo con la sensazione che e’ proprio l’estrema individualità di questo solitario capolavoro che lo rende universale, come un urlo al valore supremo della vita di ogni singolo uomo. Un altro destabilizzante paradosso che si fa gioco della limitatezza del nostro cervello.

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Photographs and Text by Robert Del Tredici

AT WORK IN THE FIELDS OF THE BOMB

Foreground: glove box for handling plutonium Background: Hiroshima and Nagasaki duplicate bomb casings Bradbury Science Museum, Los Alamos, New Mexico

T

he Cold War began on Day One of the nuclear age, for the atomic weapons that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also intended to intimidate Stalin. But the secret of the Bomb would out.

Within four years America and the USSR were locked in apocalyptic hostilities with no end in sight. Then, suddenly, that end came with the Soviet collapse.

During the last decade of the Cold War, for six years in the 1980s, I photographed in and around America’s twelve principal H-bomb factories. Times were tense because the U.S. had been targeting the Soviet Union with Cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe, and the USSR had counter-targeted European launch sites. At this time writer Jonathan Schell published The Fate of the Earth in which he described humanity on the brink of nuclear self-extinction. I read the book and was convinced: we’re doomed. What, I wondered, might I do while waiting for the end? I decided to document the source of

Terminal Guidance A Goodyear sales representative displays Goodyear’s contribution to the Pershing II missile system: the terminal-guidance all-weather gyroscopic radar/video synchronization unit. Pershing II is a medium-range missile; it can strike Soviet targets from bases in West Germany within 10 minutes.

Terminal guidance enables the Pershing II to correct its flight path up to the moment of final impact.

U.S. Army Weapons Bazaar, Sheraton Hotel, Washington, D. C. October 15, 1986.

AT WORK IN THE FIELDS OF THE BOMBS

The Amount of Plutonium in the Nagasaki Bomb This glass ball, 3.2 inches across, is the size of the plutonium core in the bomb that exploded over Nagasaki with a force equivalent to 22,000 tons of TNT. Kansas City, Missouri. September 22, 1983.

the problem: the American complex whose 90,000 workers in factories and labs -- large and small, from New York to California -- collaborated to turn out three to six nuclear warheads a day. I crisscrossed the nation three times by car and felt more than once in my travels that I was coming from a future time down into that legendary era when nuclear weapons ruled the earth.

Some of the plants I visited had already exceeded their design life, and not long after I photographed them they got shut down. These closures developed a momentum that in time turned into a slow-motion system-wide collapse. Remarkably, the shuttering and demolition of America’s Cold War infrastructure coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In the lengthy aftermath of this double breakdown an eerie quiet settled over U.S. nuclear weapons policy. Some observers dared to imagine that the United States might be coming close to seeing its way clear to ridding itself, and the world, of the Bomb.

After all, the rationale for the Bomb, nearly as old as the Bomb itself, had just selfdestructed. Was it not reasonable to expect the instrument identified with the rationale to follow suit? But what appeared to be an opportunity for transition to abolition ended up instead an incubation period from which the Bomb would be born anew as a symbol of sovereignty.

For half a century America’s nuclear long sword had been plunged up to the hilt into its own body politic and that of its allies. But even though the Cold War was over and the U.S. Bomb complex was hobbled, the nuclear sword stayed put, its atoms quietly dissolving into America’s bloodstream and migrating to the nation’s brain where they reconfigured themselves into a Holy Grail of self-reliance that no longer needed any foe but rose, as it were, above politics, declaring, like Yahweh, “I Am That I Am.”

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This Bomb showed serene indifference to earlier rationales that gave it once a place in the world; it no longer needed threats or targets to justify its existence. This new Bomb has made it possible for new generations of nuclear weapons from India, Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea to flourish.

Nuclear weapons have never been subject to the democratic process. After the Cold War, and during the stumbling of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, America’s addiction to the Bomb was unwavering. Without public debate, the Department of Energy set to work on a plan to consolidate and modernize its Bomb-making operations. It is currently putting finishing touches on a plan to convert its far-flung arc of facilities into a system “smaller, more responsive, efficient, and secure,” according to The National Nuclear Security Administration, a branch of the U.S. Department of Energy. The agenda is called “Complex Transformation” and includes a crucial subset of facilities to research, develop, and test Bomb technologies, materials, and parts related to uranium, plutonium, tritium, and chemical high explosives in “centers of excellence” proposed for four industrial sites, three national laboratories, one test site, and one flight test range. Work with plutonium will go on in New Mexico at the birthplace of the first atomic bomb in Los Alamos – the national laboratory there will maintain the capacity to manufacture plutonium “pits”, the trigger for a thermonuclear warhead, at a rate of several dozen per year, down from the hundreds per year that the defunct Rocky Flats plant in Colorado once made; small high-explosives charges will be tested at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, which will also work with tritium, the radioactive booster for nuclear explosives; more tritium work will get done in South Carolina’s Savannah River Site, which will also make neutron generators that start the chain reaction in plutonium pits; the Nevada Test Site will test large explosive charges; the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, will produce highly enriched uranium and canned subassemblies for the Bomb; and the Pantex Nuclear Weapons Final Assembly Plant outside Amarillo, Texas, will do what it has always done: test and manufacture high explosives and assemble and disassemble nuclear warheads. This Complex Transformation is a mere foot in the door, a vote of confidence in the day when the whole big complex will rear its head again, just like in the bad old days.

It is as true today as it was on the morning the first a- bomb exploded in the Alamogordo desert: that we who have created this Bomb have had to scramble like mad to keep up with it, for it has a life and logic all its own. Its status as a timeless icon in the mind contrasts with its rising costs on the ground and the burgeoning drums, tanks, and trenches of its everlasting wastes. The mirages it generates distract us from the de facto invisibility it enjoys. Mesmerizing hypocrisies cloak inflexible agendas. The Bomb backs up its pledge of security with the collateral of annihilation; but its security needs multiple hair-trigger upgrades, and the annihilation it offers comes wrapped in an abyss of imponderables. It seems the closer you get to the Bomb, the harder it is to see it. That may be why, in the end, we tend to let it have its way with us.

My aim has long been to give the collective imagination something accurate and graphic to hang onto as it tries to come to grips with the Bomb’s reality. Its infrastructure may be in transition, but its own inner logic and the mindset of its acolytes, have been constant – and unrepentantly expansionist. I want the images I made in the 80s and 90s to alert viewers to the true nature of this thing -- that it is more than a brilliant instrument for annihilating enemies or enforcing fearful peace; it is more than a tool that favors those with the biggest, or the dirtiest or cleanest, or the most, or the street vendor with the little one inside a garbage can on wheels. The Bomb is not a weapon that favors the cunning or the strong; it is an affliction that threatens us all, and it will take the sustained effort of an awakened and aroused humanity to rid ourselves of it.

Robert Del Tredici, Montreal February 3th, 2009 9

Uranium Green Salt Ten-gallon drums of uranium green salt line the floor of the Fernald Green Salt Plant. Uranium green salt, the product of a long chain of chemical transformations, is the base element for the transformation of uranium into metal.

Building 4, Feed Materials Production Center, Fernald, Ohio. December 16,1985.

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Ingots of Fernald at Ashtabula These ingots, made at Fernald by remelting uranium metal derbies, have been trucked 300 miles northeast to Ashtabula, Ohio, for further processing. Here they will be submerged in molten salt until they reach a red-hot 1100°F Then they will be inserted into the Ashtabula uranium metal extrusion press.

The sign in the background reads “Caution: Radioactive Materials.”

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The Back End of the Ashtabula Press A worker waits for an extrusion of uranium metal to exit from the press.

Back to Fernald Ashtabula returns uranium metal, in the form of long tubes, to Fernald. A worker stands by while a blanking machine cuts the metal into 14-inch segments, each weighing 28 pounds.

These are Fernald’s top product: Mark 31 Target Element Cores. They are called target element cores because at Department of Energy reactors elsewhere they will be bombarded with neutrons and transformed into weapons-grade plutonium.

Feed Materials Production Center, Fernald, Ohio. December 17, 1985.

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Gaseous diffusion converter K-25

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Reactor, Savannah River Plant It is into this reactor that the Mark 31 Target Element Cores from Fernald are inserted.

Here they are bombarded with neutrons and transformed into plutonium. The three dark pools in front of the reactor hold water for cooling. Like the Chernobyl reactor, the L-Reactor has no containment vessel. A total of five such reactors were built on the Savannah River Plant site.

Aiken County, South Carolina. August 6, 1983.

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Pantex Nuclear Weapons Final Assembly Plant Pantex, America’s only nuclear weapons final-assembly plant, receives parts from facilities throughout the U.S., in some 120 subassemblies made up of about 2,000 separate pieces. Pantex provides 2,700 jobs. It is Amarillo’s largest employer. Carson County, Texas. August 19, 1982.

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Tapered Line-of-Sight Pipe, “N” Tunnel This 875-foot steel pipe is dug into the side of Rainier Mesa in Area 12 of the Nevada Test Site. The tunnel tests the impact of radiation from a nuclear warhead on other nuclear warheads and on military communications equipment. At the far end of the tunnel is the “Zero Room,” which contains the warhead that will be detonated. When it explodes, radiation comes down the pipe at the speed of light, followed by its expanding shock wave. But within 16 milliseconds, huge blast doors explode shut, trapping the shock wave in the Zero Room so that only radiation hits test equipment in the pipe. The pipe is being readied for the test code-named “Misty Rain.

Area 12, Nevada Test Site, Nye County, Nevada. October 29, 1984.

17

All the Warheads in the U.S. Nuclear Arsenal This field of ceramic nose-cones represents, in miniature, all the warheads in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Estimates set the U.S. warhead total at about 25,000.

Amber Waves of Grain installation, Boston Science Museum, Boston, Massachusetts. February 13, 1985.

Interviews and Field Notes Model of the Uranium Atom

The Amount of Plutonium in the Nagasaki Bomb

Howard Morland Washington, D.C., January 12, 1984

Uranium is one of the heaviest naturally occur­ ring elements on earth. It can be used in nuclear weapons or it can become the base from which plutonium, a more powerful nuclear explosive, is made. Uranium is unstable; when a single ura­ nium atom breaks apart it releases, on average, two neutrons, one of which can smash into other uranium atoms and split them apart, releasing large amounts of energy - and two more neu­ trons. It is this geometric progression that makes a runaway chain reaction explosion possible.

Uranium has a half-life of 4,468,000,000 years, which means that after that much time has elapsed, half of a given amount of uranium will have spontaneously decayed into other elements.

Each one of these subsequent elements has its own half-life.

The sphere of plutonium-239 in the Nagasaki bomb weighed 6,100 grams. One gram of plu­ tonium, or one-third the weight of a penny, trans­ formed its mass into pure energy to produce the explosion that destroyed Nagasaki’s Urakami val­ley. The glass ball in the photograph is held by Richard Rhodes, author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb.

~ Howard, before most people were in­volved in thinking about weapons, you pieced together how a thermonuclear bomb works and you made a model of its insides for all to see. How long did it take you to do that and what is it that you discovered along the way?

- Well, it took six months to discover the H-bomb secret. One of the first places I looked when I began my research into thermonuclear devices was the Encyclope­dia Americana, which is on public library shelves all over the country. In it was a very strange diagram - it showed a ther­monuclear device with an atomic bomb inside one end of it, and a blob of something, lithium-6 deuteride, inside the other end. Other encyclopedias that I looked at had diagrams of H-bombs too, but this was the only one that had the stages separated, and it turns out that this “separation of stages” was the correct design concept. So in that one picture in one encyclopedia I found the essence of the H-bomb secret.

The Uranium-238 Decay Chain Product in Kind of decay chain radiation Half-life Uranium-238 alpha 4,468,000,000 years Thorium-234 beta 24.1 days Protactinium-234m beta, gamma 1.17 minutes Uranium-234 alpha 245,000 years Thorium-230 alpha 80,000 years Radium-226 alpha 1,602 years Radon-222 alpha 3.823 days Polonium-218 alpha 3.05 minutes Lead-214 beta 26.8 minutes Bismuth-214 beta 19.7 minutes Polonium-214 alpha .000164 seconds Lead-210 beta 22.3 years Bismuth-210 beta 5.01 days Polonium-210 alpha 138.4 days Lead-206 (stable) non-radioactive

20

Howard Morland’s Model of a Modern H-bomb Warhead The modern thermonuclear warhead is termed a “physics package”. This is the explosive fissionand-fusion core of a hy­drogen bomb. A warhead this size would weigh about 270 pounds. Howard Morland was the first to make visible to the public the inner workings of the H-bomb. He pieced together its physics and internal design from unclassified literature and conversations with industry and govern­ment officials. In 1979 the U.S. govern­ment sued to prevent the publication of his article “The H-bomb Secret (To Know How Is to Ask Why)” in The Progressive. Morland welcomed the lawsuit, maintain­ing that there are no longer any scientific secrets about H-bomb design. In court he demonstrated the public nature of his data, won the case, and published his article.

~ And what is that secret?

- Well, the federal government, when it tried to stop the publication of my article in The Progressive and succeeded in doing so for six months - said that there were three elements to the H-bomb secret that I had revealed in my manuscript. The first element was the separation of stages - the fact that within the overall casing, the atomic bomb is physically separate from the hydrogen bomb.

The second element was compression of the hydrogen fuel, which basically means that if you pack any kind of material together closely, reactions will take place within it more quickly. The third element, and this was the real secret, was called “radiation coupling” - the use of electromagnetic radiation produced by the exploding atomic bomb to ignite, or trigger, the nearby hydrogen component.

These three design concepts were implicit in that Encyclopedia Americana diagram. But I had to do a lot of digging to realize what the diagram meant.

Excerpts from Howard Morland’s article “The H-bomb Secret (To Know How Is to Ask Why)”, published in the November 1979 issue of The Progressive: “Paying attention to the details is also a way of reminding ourselves that these weapons are real.

The most difficult intel­lectual hurdle most people encounter in understanding nuclear weapons is to see them as physical devices rather than ab­stract expressions of good or evil. The human mind boggles at gadgets the size of surfboards that can knock down every building for miles around. But these are devices made by ordinary people in ordi­nary towns. The weapons are harder to believe than to understand.

“The secret of how a hydrogen bomb is made protects a more fundamental `secret’: the mechanism by which the resources of the most powerful nation on Earth have been marshalled for global catastrophe. Knowing how may be the key to asking why.

“The risks of proliferation of hydrogen weapons such as they are must be weighed against the public gain that may come from greater awareness of how and why they are already being produced.

“Whether it be the details of a multi­million-dollar plutonium production expan­sion program or the principles and procedures by which nature’s most ex­plosive force is being packaged in our midst, we have less to fear from knowing than from not knowing.”

The following text and diagrams are Howard Morland’s explanation of the inner workings of a thermonuclear bomb. Morland also traces the bomb’s component parts to their corporate sources within the government-con­tractor system of the United States De­partment of Energy’s nuclear weapons complex. This information updates Morland’s original article published by The Progressive.

THE BOMB AND ITS MAKERS

HOW AN H-BOMB WORKS

Western Electric, a subsidiary of American Telephone & Telegraph, does general engineering for the H-bomb at its laboratory at Albuquerque, New Mexico, in cooperation with two laboratories that conduct research at Livermore, California, and Los Alamos, New Mexico, under the auspices of the University of California. DuPont supplies small containers of tritium gas from its Savannah River, South Carolina, tritium loading facility. Martin Marietta contributes uranium, deuterium, and lithium parts made in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Rockwell International fabricates plutonium and beryllium components at the Rocky Flats plant near Denver, Colorado. Monsanto manufactures explosive detonators at its Mound laboratory near Miamisburg, Ohio. The paper honeycomb shield and polystyrene foam which help focus pressure generated by radiation onto the H-bomb’s fusion tamper are made by Bendix in Kansas City, Missouri. General Electric builds neutron generators at its Pinellas plant near St. Petersburg, Florida. Mason & Hanger-Silas Mason shapes the chemical explosive charges and supervises final assembly of the warhead at a plant near Amarillo, Texas.

There are two discrete steps in the detonation of a modern hydrogen weapon: the explosion of the primary stage and, microseconds later, the explosion of the secondary stage. Each stage releases nuclear energy in a sequence of fission, fusion, and more fission. Although one event must follow another for the weapon to work, they happen so rapidly that a human observer would experience only a single event: an explosion of unearthly magnitude. The “primary” is a scaleddown version of the Nagasaki plutonium implosion bomb. It has roughly the same explosive power as the World War II weapon but measures less than twelve inches across. It is called the H-bomb’s “fission trigger” because energy from its initial fission explosion triggers thermonuclear fusion between tritium and deuterium, the two forms of heavy hydrogen.

This fission trigger resembles a soccer ball, with a soccer ball’s pattern of twelve pentagons and twenty hexagons in a sphere. Each pentagon or hexagon is a high-explosive charge attached to a detonator; the spherical shell they form is one inch thick. A ball of plutonium and/or uranium235 occupies the center, along with a small amount of tritium and deuterium in gaseous form. The primary stage could level a small city by itself, but in an H-bomb its explosion merely provides the preliminary energy needed to ignite the weapon’s much more powerful secondary stage.

After the primary has detonated, the secondary instantly manufactures its own tritium from solid lithium-6. This tritium then fuses with the deuterium already present, and the resulting fusion energy causes, finally, large amounts of uranium-238 to undergo fission.

21

Text and diagrams copyright ©1980 by Howard Morland, reproduced with permission.

1. Detonators surrounding the primary system are electrically fired. These set off the chemical high-explosive charges that surround a hollow sphere, or “tamper,” made of beryllium and ura­ nium-238. This tamper is liquefied by the im­plosive shock wave and driven inward toward the plutonium core of the primary, imparting the high-explosive shock wave evenly to the sphere of plutonium. This inward-moving, symmetrical shock wave is the energy of implosion that creates the conditions for a runaway chain reaction in fissionable materials. This technology was used to explode the core of the Nagasaki bomb.

2. The symmetrical shock wave created by the high explosives compresses the plutonium to about twice its normal density (from softball-size to about the size of a hardball) for approximately one-millionth of a second, at which point it is hit with a beam of neutrons produced by a high-voltage vacuum tube called a neutron generator. The stream of neutrons from this generator initi­ates a fission chain reaction in the sphere of plutonium-239. Because the fission chain reac­t ion has been initiated in the mass of plutonium while it is in its densest state, it will develop with the greatest speed.

3. The chain reaction spreads outward to a layer of uranium-235 covering the surface of the plutonium sphere, and the heat and pressure of fission ignite a hydrogen fusion chain reaction in the “booster” charge of tritium and deuterium gas. Fusion adds neutrons to the fission reaction, speeding it up and raising its temperature. The primary system of a hydrogen weapon is in effect a tiny nuclear power plant that generates 20 million kilowatt-hours’ worth of thermal en­ergy in a few millionths of a second, all inside a lump of metal compressed to the size of a hard­ball.

4. The energy of the fission reaction races away from the primary system in the form of X rays traveling at the speed of light, or 100 times faster than the expanding debris of the bomb. The X rays are focused through a paper honeycomb shield and absorbed by a special polystyrene foam jacket surrounding the cylinder which makes up the “secondary.” The polystyrene foam flashes into plasma that acts as a thermal explosive encasing the secondary system.

5. The exploding polystyrene foam com­ presses the secondary system, which is filled with lithium-6 deuteride. Running down the sec­ ondary’s center is a “spark plug” of uranium-235 or plutonium-239. The exploding polystyrene foam compresses this spark plug to supercriticality, and it fissions. This fissioning, the second fission event in a thermonuclear bomb, supplies neutrons that convert the lithium fuel into tritium.

6. The fissioning spark plug and the exploding polystyrene foam form a double front of pressure which creates the conditions needed to make tritium fuse with deuterium. This tritium-deu­ terium fusion then showers the depleted uranium casing of the secondary system with high-energy neutrons that cause it to undergo fission and explode. This final fission produces most of the total energy-release of the bomb, as well as most of its deadly fallout.

22

Paul Wagner, public relations manager for the Department of Energy at Pantex­ Amarillo, Texas, August 10, 1982 ~ Mr. Wagner, how would you describe the function of the Pantex plant?

- Assembling nuclear weapons. ~ Do you make or shape or mill any parts for weapons here?

- We do not manufacture any components except the chemical high explosive. ~ What is the chemical high explosive?

- I won’t say any more than that it’s a necessary component in a nuclear weapons assembly.

Pantex Nuclear Weapons Final Assembly Plant Annual Budget: $198,100,000 (1986)

The mission of the Pantex plant is to assemble new nuclear warheads (approximately three to five a day); disassemble retired nuclear war­ heads; and fabricate the plastic high explosive that surrounds the plutonium in the fission “trig­ ger” of a nuclear weapon. Assemblers of nuclear warheads work in pairs in thick-walled rooms called cells or bays. They wear blue coveralls, hard hats, safety shoes with rubber slip-over covers, and gloves of cotton or soft leather.

One worker does the assembly; the other checks the proper procedure step by step in the Pantex Final Assembly Safety Manual. As­s embly work goes on in thirteen bays. As­semblers constitute 15% of the Pantex work force and are among the highest-paid employees, earn­i ng in the range of $30,000 a year, compared to the average Pantex salary of $23,000.

The Nagasaki bomb was nicknamed “Fat Man” in reference, it is said, to Winston Churchill.

The American government works with private contractors to build nuclear weapons. This is referred to as a “GO-CO” arrangement, a gov­ ernment-contractor agreement. The contractor working with the U.S. Department of Energy at Pantex is Mason & Hanger-Silas Mason, the Kentucky engineering firm that built New York’s Holland Tunnel.

~ They say you turn out three warheads a day here.

Is that a fair average, or is that something you can neither confirm nor deny?

- I won’t even answer that. ~ When you assemble the warhead, does that include the missile?

- That’s the Defense Department’s respon­sibility.

The delivery vehicles belong to the Defense Department. They design ‘em and build ‘em and pay for ‘em and operate ‘em and shoot ‘em. ~ Can you talk about how long it takes to assemble a warhead or how many parts are involved?

- No. ~ Here you also disassemble outdated warheads. Can you say anything about what the average shelflife of a nuclear weapon is?

- I can. But I won’t. ~ Then let me ask you this: When they give the number of warheads in the U.S. arsenal as around 25,000, does that include the ones assembled but removed from service, or does it mean only those ready to go?

- I won’t answer that. ~ Has there ever been more than one nuclear weapons final assembly plant?

- There was another one in Burlington, Iowa. It was closed in 1975. ~ How do you feel about this being the only one, then, with no backup?

- I have no comment. That’s above and beyond any of us here. ~ Were there ever more than two plants like this?

- The Atomic Energy Commission from 1955 until 1965 had two smaller nuclear weapons assembly facilities, but there were only two just like this. ~ When you say “just like this,” what makes this plant unique?

- The high-explosive manufacturing ca­pability. ~ What goes on in that boomerang-shaped building with the circles on the roof

- Just assembly work. ~ Is that the building they call the “Gravel Gertie”?

- Right. A Gravel Gertie is a circular structure which has a gravel roof on it. If we have an explosion in the assembly area, that roof will vent the explosion and also act as a filter for any materials that are in the structure. It lets the gases of an explosion go out into the atmosphere, but it filters and traps any particulate radioac­tive material that’s still in there. ~ Is there something about the gravel coming down on everything and burying it if there’s an explosion? Is that part of the filtering process?

- Not really, no. ~ Does that happen?

- That happens, but it doesn’t buy any­body anything. ~ I heard about the chemical explosives accident here that killed three workers. Have the procedures changed since then?

- Oh yeah, sure. The procedures change every time we get smart. ~ At Rocky Flats there’s a lot of contro­versy about the quantities of plutonium that have escaped into the environment. Are there any problems like that here?

- No. All the plutonium we have is received in a finished form with a case of some benign material around it, like stainless steel or titanium. So there’s no plutonium exposure. It’s always contained. ~ You never handle plutonium as such?

- We handle it in a package. Now we take care to make sure we don’t want the package to break.

And there is radiation that comes through most material to some degree. But we don’t have the open handling of radioactive material—none of it is cut, sawed, welded, or lathed. All of that is done at Rocky Flats. ~ How radioactive are the warheads?

- Very low, because people handle ‘em all the time. I used to sleep on top of one. ~ You did? Does your wife know about this?

- Sure. ~ What were you doing, sleeping on top of one?

- I was tired. ~ Did your senior officer know about this?

- It didn’t make any difference if he knew or not.

I was on a ship that had nuclear weapons on it, and we had a bunk right over the top of these things.

Big deal. I just say that to give you an idea of how much radiation is coming out of them. ~ How much is coming out of them? Did they monitor them to find out?

- Not back in those days.

23

~ Do they monitor them now?

- I don’t know what they’re doing now. ~ Last week I opened up Life magazine and found a two page spread on Bishop Leroy Matthiesen, who became famous for asking Pantex workers to examine their consciences; and on the next page was a picture of Eloy Ramos, the worker who quit Pantex for reasons of conscience after sixteen years on the job. How does this publicity affect workers here?

- It doesn’t. The only people it affects are Mr. Poole and me.

~ How does the Department of Energy figure in what you do here?

- Our primary purpose here is to extrude uranium under contract to the Department of Energy.

Under that contract, when we’ve satisfied their requirements, then we’re permitted to use the press for what we call commercial work.

~ How does it affect Mr. Poole and you?

- We get people like you asking questions like that.

It’s a non-problem as far as we’re concerned. As somebody said on television last week, it’s the biggest non-issue of the twentieth century. ~ But when it brings a million people out to Central Park, isn’t that a pretty big non-issue?

- It’s still a non-issue. People go to Central Park for no reason at all. ~ I think they had a reason for going on June 12 .

- Charles Poole: Well, anyway, it doesn’t bother us.

We’re speaking in terms of us, you know. There might be reactions in New York or West Germany, I don’t know. . . . , but it doesn’t really affect Amarillo. ~ I’d like to conclude by asking you a personal question. Do you ever get used to seeing the warheads? Do you have any particular feelings when you see them coming down the assembly line one after another?

- Wagner: Just like pickin’ up a box of Silly Putty in a dime store. Hell, there’s nothing to it. I don’t react, and I’ve been in the business for years and years. ~ You don’t think of the awesome forces?

- I’ve seen nuclear explosions in Nevada, and I’ve seen ‘em in the Pacific. . . . ~ And what was your reaction?

- Big deal. ~ You mean, not such a big deal?

- Yeah. Sure, it’s an awesome sight, but it didn’t change my life. I’m very blasé about the whole thing. There’s no hazard to it that particularly affects me. But you’ve got to realize, you know, where people are coming from. If they’ve been living a protected and uneventful and nonadventurous life, it might be a big deal. But I’ve done a helluva lot more dangerous things in my life than screwing around with nuclear weapons. ~ Name two.

- I was a deep-sea diver, for one thing. And I was an explosives demolition man in World War II. I had to defuse sea mines, and when that thing is right in front of you with 300 pounds of explosives, if you make one mistake you’re gone. After that, this work at Pantex doesn’t bother me a bit. And I’m fairly characteristic of people who have been in the business as long as the people around here have been around it.

24

Ashtabula Quench Bud Schaeffer,

extrusion plant manager, Reactive Metals, Incorporated—Ashtabula, Ohio, June 19, 1984 Okay. I’m plant manager at the extrusion plant.

I have been with this operation since 1954, and associated with the Department of Energy contract since that time. ~ What goes on in this facility?

- Well, this plant operates as a conversion facility.

That means we take customer-supplied billet and form it by the extrusion process to whatever shape the customer requires. ~ What is billet?

- Billet is a cylinder of solid metal, in varying diameters and lengths, which is put into the extrusion press and formed to a particular size and configuration. ~ What is an extrusion press?

- (Laughs) An extrusion press, as we have it, is a horizontal piece of equipment that operates under very high pressures, that takes billets or cylinders of metal and with this pressure and temperature forces the metal through a die to form it to the shape required. ~ How much pressure can the extrusion press at this plant exert on a billet?

- 3,850 tons. ~ How old is this press, and how old is the kind of design that this press represents?

- This particular press is a World War II–vintage Loewy hydropress. It was built in 1943. I guess extrusion presses must have come on board sometime in the twenties, and the design of extrusion presses is basically unchanged. This particular press belongs to the Department of Energy and was moved here from Adrian, Michigan, in 1961.

~ How is it that you can do private work on the side?

- The press belongs to the government; the land and the buildings are my com­pany; so, as part of the contract when it came down here, we were allowed to use their equipment for so-called commercial work. ~ Isn’t this arrangement unique within the government’s materials production side of the weapons industry?

- We pay them a fee for the use of this equipment, and while we’re doing that, we’re soaking up overheads that otherwise they would bear. So it’s a benefit to them, and it’s an advantage to us. ~ Let’s talk a little bit about the primary purpose of the press, which is the extrusion of uranium.

What kind of uranium are we talking about, and what happens to it?

- Well, we’re involved in two streams here for the Department of Energy. The first stream is the Savannah River stream, which involves depleted uranium. Basi­cally the Savannah River flow is the ingot, or billet material, which is cast at Fer­nald, and the billets are shipped here, where they are extruded to a tubular product. We then ship the tubes back to Fernald, where they’re machined into fuel cores and shipped from Fernald to Savan­nah River for further processing. ~ What is the other stream?

- We’re also involved in the N-Reactor stream at Hanford, Washington. It involves slightly enriched uranium. ~ When it comes out of the press here, which we’ ll see today, are they kind of like logs?

- Yes, they’re a log sixty-seven inches in length and they’re hollow. All of the billets going to Hanford are hollow. ~ When you said the N-Reactor stream used slightly enriched uranium, what is the level of enrichment we’re talking about?

- It’s 1.25 percent U-235. Normal is .711 U-235. ~ When we talk about depleted uranium, say, for the Savannah River stream, is that less than natural, then?

- That’s less than .711. It’s .2. ~ Is there a concern about health hazards when you’re working with this material?

- The closest analogy I can draw is that you handle them more as a toxic material than as a radiation hazard per se. All of our employees have protective

clothing, they wear film badges, and we monitor radia­tion. But there is no radiation hazard to our employees from this material. ~ You talked to me earlier this morning about something called uranium oxide. Is that a gas or vapor?

- No, it’s a powdery substance. When uranium is heated to the forming temper­atures that we use, which is somewhere up around 1100 or 1200 degrees Fahrenheit, as it cools, uranium has a tendency to flake off in the form of this oxide. ~ Is this oxide a potential hazard?

- It can be a problem if employees inhale enough of it. That’s why housekeeping is very important here, to keep the oxides down and not let them get airborne. ~ How do you do that?

- Vacuuming, sweeping. And we quench a lot of the materials in water to inhibit oxidation. ~ And the workers all wear film badges because, I guess, there’s some slight possibility of exposure to the uranium?

- The badges are to monitor radiation exposure. It’s just good Health Physics practice to do this, and we’ve done it ever since I’ve been here. Everyone wears a film badge that works in the plant. ~ When we walked briefly through the plant this morning, the first things we saw were these red-hot billets in trenches of liquid salt. Why do you put the uranium into molten salt?

- It heats the metal to the right tempera­ture for extrusion, and it prevents the uranium from oxidizing while it’s being heated. As long as it’s in a salt bath it won’t oxidize because it’s not in contact with air. If you were to heat uranium metal in a furnace, eventually it would com­pletely become oxide. ~ The whole thing would just .. .

- You’d have a big pile of oxide. ~ Or a cloud of it?

- (Laughs) It’s very heavy, you don’t get clouds of it. ~ I mentioned that only because I thought that one of the hazards was breathing it.

- Yeah, that’s true. ~ So it can become airborne?

- Well, it can become airborne. ~ Okay, so it’s heated up to around 1200 degrees before it goes in the press. When it comes out of the press a few moments later, is it still 1200 degrees?

- It may even be a little higher than 1200 degrees at that point because of the force exerted on it.

~ How do you deal with these hot logs?

- These particular ones are taken from the press exit, or die-head area, and pulled over onto a cooling table where the pieces revolve for four or five minutes to make sure they cool down uniformly.

Then we pick the extrusion up and quench it in water to get it down to where it stops oxidizing and our inspectors can handle it.

people are thinking of gamma radiation, that’s the stuff you get behind lead shields to protect yourself from. Alpha radiation, which I think mostly — again, I’m not a radiologist — but you’re talking about a different type of radiation than gamma radiation, and it is such that simple cotton clothing is suffi­cient to block it, given the low levels that are involved.

~ So when it’s rotating, would that be the chief oxidation point, because that’s where it’s the hottest and it’s in air?

- That’s right.

~ I remember hearing that with alpha radiation a sheet of paper can stop it.

- Yes. Cotton acts the same way.

~ Do you have fans over it?

- The whole operation is ventilated, yes. ~ I’m just curious, is that a billet sitting on the floor?

- That we would consider an ingot. ~ What’s an ingot like that worth? What does uranium go for per pound?

- There’s a standard transfer value be­tween here and Fernald, I think it’s about thirty dollars a kilogram, something like that. Don’t quote me on that. It’s, say, fifteen dollars a pound. ~ So the N-Reactor stream goes to Han­ford. Where do you ship the Savannah River stream?

- The Savannah River product goes back to Fernald in truckload lots, by commer­cial, common carrier. ~ Does it have to have special safeguards when you truck it?

- Not really. The only thing we’re doing is shipping it in sealed truckload lots. It’s not at the strategic level of enrichment. I think it has to be above twenty percent U-235, then you get into all these escorted armed-guard shipments and this kind of thing. ~ How big a load of uranium metal can a truck take?

- It’s whatever the highway limits are, and that’s normally around 40,000 to 42,000 pounds a gross. ~ There is no radiological hazard with this material?

- It is radioactive, and there are very low levels of radiation involved, but not to the extent that you’re talking about lead shield­ing and all this kind of thing. Generally the protective clothing that the workers wear is sufficient to virtually eliminate their ex­posures.

~ So that’s non-penetrating radiation com­ing off the metal?

- Yes. ~ But the hazard with it is if you breath it in, right?

- Mm-hm. And the DOE [Department of Energy] furnishes to us annually a special machine that’s in a semi-trailer and goes around to all these DOE sites. It measures the total body burden of radiation a worker might have, and we generally try to count everybody. ~ What’s the average count that comes out of a person working around this material?

- I’d better not give you numbers, but there are established limits. There is a DOE requirement that you have to report anybody who’s exposed at a rate of fifty percent of that limit, and we’ve never had to report anybody. I’d say the maximum body burden we’ve ever seen here is somewhere about ten percent of the accept­able limit. ~ And if you have ten percent you’re still considered to be within the safety margin?

- Well within it, yes. ~ Okay, I think that covers it. I guess we should go on the tour now. l haven’t been into a lot of factories myself, I’ve been dealing mostly with public-relations people and talking to people outside the factories, so this is an opportunity for me to really see something. But when I came out from this morning’s short trip out onto the floor I had a little bit of a sore throat, and I figured there’s all kinds of vapors there from all sorts of things going on, and I was wondering.... I bought a face mask in this welder’s store. Would it be all right to wear that on the site? I’d feel a little bit better about having it.

- If you’d feel more comfortable, you’re more than welcome to wear it.

~ What is the special clothing that they wear?

- Just cotton coveralls is all it is. It’s very, very low level, very little radiation. Nothing there, really. ~ In what way is cotton a protection? I know that lead is, l wasn’t sure about cotton.

- It’s the type of radiation that’s emitted from this material. Usually when you’re speaking of radiation 25

Sam Cohen, Father of the Neutron Bomb Sam Cohen Beverly Hills, California, December 6, 1984 ~ I’m in the living room of Sam Cohen. . . .

- The day before Pearl Harbor. ~ Oh, that’s right!

- A vicious time - that’s what led to the Bomb.

Which is why we’re here. ~ I want to begin, Sam, by asking you to introduce yourself and say what it is you’ve been up to, what you’ve accomplished, and who you are.

- Nobody’s ever asked me that before, so this is right off the top of my head: I’m a person, and I’ve led a somewhat normal life, as least as surface appearances go. Purely by accident I wound up at Los Alamos during the war. I became fasci­nated with it, and I’ve been at it ever since, which is now some forty-plus years. ~ What is the “it”?

- Nuclear weapons. That’s been my pro­fession over all these years. And it’s always been my bent to move a step or two out into the future, which is why I got interested in advanced nuclear weapons concepts right after the war. And that’s what led to my concocting the neutron bomb idea and any number of other schemes, none of which have had any impact whatsoever on the shape of things, but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it.

Again, trying to assess myself as a human being, I’ve never had any qualms. On a surface level, I’ve rationalized my fascination with nuclear weapons by saying it’s important for the security of my country, and so there are no qualms to be had. If I went down another level in my psyche, I wouldn’t know what to say—I’ve done it because I wanted to. So that essentially sums me up. ~ What did you do at Los Alamos?

- I was in the Efficiency Group at Los Alamos.

Our job was to figure out the yield of the bomb that was burst over Nagasaki. To do that we had to learn how neutrons multiply once the chain reaction gets started. So this was my introduction to neutrons.

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~ Was there a sense at Los Alamos that these weapons were the beginning of something new in terms of war fighting?

- On the evening of Hiroshima, when Oppenheimer was describing in very crude terms the catastrophe that had taken place over that city, the scientists who were listening to him were a bunch of howling savages, ebullient beyond imagination, as pleased as punch at what they’d accom­plished. There was no consideration of what this might mean toward getting along with the Russians, or what the postwar complexion of the world might be, or anything like that.

This was a fantastic day, our product had been used, apparently very successfully, and that’s all they cared to know. There may have been a few who sat quietly while Oppenheimer was holding forth, but I don’t recall seeing any. ~ I’ve always thought of Oppenheimer as the man who said, “We physicists have known sin.”

- Well, that came later, and not too long after that, either. It had a very interesting result when it did come, I might add. Oppenheimer is rightfully called the father of the atomic bomb, but equally rightfully he could be called the father of the tactical nuclear weapon because he did the first conceptual spadework for using nuclear weapons strictly in a battlefield way instead of just decimating cities in a holocaust context. ~ So the father of the bomb that decimates cities is also the father of tactical nuclear warfare?

- He professed to be sufficiently guilt-ridden and aghast and appalled over the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that he never wanted that to happen again. So he recommended we design lower-yield weapons that wouldn’t wipe out cities but that could strictly be confined to battlefield use. ~ And where were you in all of this?

- Well, my own personal addiction in all this has always been to tactical nuclear weapons for battlefield use. ~ Okay, then, let’s talk about the thing you’ve come to be known for, Sam, the neutron bomb.

You’re called “the Father of the Neutron Bomb,” one of those nuclear-paternity epithets. Is that an accurate description?

- I invented the concept. As to whether that deserves parenthood or even knighthood, God only knows. Take your choice. ~ What is the concept?

- The basic concept is to be able to have a battlefield nuclear weapon that won’t have all these nasty side effects, like bringing down nearby cities and killing an awful lot of civilians and so on. It’s something that can get at enemy personnel without caus­ing what we call in the trade “collateral damage.”

~ Let’s talk about how a neutron bomb is different from the bombs used in Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Both those bombs were airbursts. Would a neutron bomb be an airburst?

- If it’s going to be used to get what we call the “separation of effects,” in other words, to get rid of the blast and heat, it not only has to be airburst, but it has to be burst high, sufficiently high above the landscape so the blast and heat will not reach the ground. ~ How high up does the burst need to be?

- Depending on the yield, between 2,000 and 3,000 feet. ~ So roughly the same height as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs?

- Right, not too much different, but the explosive yield is ten or twenty times less, so the blast and heat won’t do much, but the neutrons will. ~ And what’s the yield of a neutron warhead?

- Generally in the kiloton range, or ten to twenty times less powerful than the first atomic bombs. ~ Although it has ten or twenty times less explosive power than the first atomic bombs, the neutron weapon is still an H-bomb, right?

- Right, it’s kind of a micro-mini hydro­gen bomb. ~ And why is it that this type of H-bomb sends out so many neutrons? I heard H-bombs normally have an outer blanket of uranium that absorbs neutrons.

Is the neutron bomb missing this blanket?

- Look, I can’t go into too much technical detail or we’ll start getting into things that are classified.

But basically it has to do with the nuclear yield. The neutron weapon has this very low nuclear yield.

The technology allows you to get most of the neutrons out if it is a low yield. In very large yields it doesn’t allow you to do that. It’s about that simple. There’s no point in getting too technical. ~ How far do these neutrons travel in air?

- Neutrons are neutral particles, which means they can go a long ways in an un-dense medium like air, so you can have neutrons incapacitating people perhaps a thousand yards or so from the burst. ~ What can a neutron do to you?

- In a military sense it does two things. First, it really rips up the gastrointestinal system and causes all sorts of distressing symptoms, which the media has gone into galore, and I don’t want to ruin your lunch by going into now. And then, for some­what higher radiation doses, it affects the central nervous system and the brain. ~ What kind of a dose gives the gastroin­testinal effect, and what kind of dose does it take to affect the nervous system and the brain?

- From a dose of several hundred rads on up to, roughly, a thousand rads, you get these gastrointestinal effects. Once you start going over

a thousand rads on up to, roughly, 10,000 rads, you still get these gastrointestinal effects, but you also get a deterioration of the central nervous system so that the poor victim essentially is dysfunctional.

He can’t operate equipment. ~ What is a lethal dose?

- A lethal dose occurs roughly at 500 rads. At 500 rads, more than fifty percent of the people exposed will die. ~ Do they die on the spot, or does it take a while?

- No, they won’t die on the spot. To have them die on the spot, a dose on the order of 10,000 rads or so is required. ~ At 10,000 rads does a person die right away?

- Chances are, at the 10,000-rad level, the trauma will be so great that unless medical attention is available immediately, the per­son will die from shock. ~ Is there something medicine can do for a person who has received 10,000 rads of neutron radiation?

- No. Nothing. ~ All right, so the bomb is detonated 2,000 to 3,000 feet overhead, and its yield is about one kiloton or less. What kind of a radius are we talking about for the bomb’s deadly effects?

- We’re talking about a radius of roughly a thousand yards where you will have these crippling effects on the central nervous system. These effects will be greater as you go toward Ground Zero. So if we had, say, several thousand rads at the periphery and we moved in toward the center, by the time we got to Ground Zero the doses could be tens of thousands of rads. Any­body in that area would be wiped out immediately. ~ What happens outside that area?

- Radiation intensity falls off with dis­tance. So by the time you get out to, say, 1,500 yards, you’re perfectly safe from the radiation. ~ Is there a dose out at that distance?

- Oh yeah, but it’s probably less than 100 rads. And when one goes below 100 rads there are no really significant effects. You have a very small possibility that in the long run there may be an enhancement of such effects of leukemia, and other forms of cancer, but. . . . ~ . . .but that’s not militarily significant, right?

- Right. ~ How did you come up with the idea for this weapon in the first place?

- I’d had the idea for the neutron bomb about eight years before I figured out how to put it together.

I put together the actual concept in the summer of 1958. It came about purely by accident when I visited the Livermore Laboratory in the spring of 1958. I asked if anybody had any new ideas going around, and they said they really didn’t, though

they had begun work on some peaceful nuclear explosives. And the head of the division said, “Before you go home, you ought to take a look at these,” and he showed me designs for some of the peaceful devices. And there they were: the neutron bomb charac­teristics. One of those designs was called Dove, by the way, for “Dove of Peace.” ~ What was it about Dove that caught your eye?

- Well, there were two, Dove and Star­ling; both derived the major share of their energy from fusing deuterium and tritium. If the designs worked, there’d be an enormous outpouring of neutrons. But the designers weren’t interested in capitalizing on them because they were bent on peaceful pursuits. I was the guy, see, with his Mars helmet on, that came up and said, “Well, what does this mean for war?” The question I asked was, “How many neu­t rons come out of this thing?” They made a few back-of-the-envelope calculations and the answer was: a hell of a lot.

Then I took these calculations home and made my own calculations about the military effects of such a weapon, and, voilà, the neutron bomb! Then I put together the military concept of how to use this bomb and went off on a big sales campaign. ~ Was it easy to “sell” the neutron bomb idea?

- At first there was enormous resistance to the concept of a radiation weapon. The United States military has never been particularly enthusiastic about battlefield nuclear weapons in the first place, and in the second place, they think of nuclear weapons in terms of kilotons of TNT. It took a long time to convince them that a nuclear weapon doesn’t have to produce a huge blast to be effective. ~ Why is that?

- Ever since day-one we’ve patterned our nuclear war-fighting strategies after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But when you get both sides in a conflict slugging it out with nuclear weapons, then fighting a war with classical objectives like “winning battles” or “winning wars” becomes very, very fuzzy. I’d say the notion of using a nuclear weapon on the battlefield today still throws terror into the hearts of the military. And it’s out of this terror that our whole nuclear war–fighting philosophy has come. ~ Can you explain that more?

- It’s a circular argument: a nuclear war is too horrible to take place, so it won’t take place, and to make sure it won’t take place, we threaten that it will take place. So what we’re basically proposing here to deter war is the threat of our own suicide.

Now that’s not a way for human beings to behave that’s lemmings! And it’s all based on the premise that if we cross that nuclear threshold one more time we’ll bring on the beginning of the end. So you get people like Jonathan Schell and Carl Sagan with this idea of nuclear winter and everything else.

It’s Armageddon. I don’t find their ideas credible, and I’ll tell you why: because in order to get these results from using nuclear weapons against cities, you have to have nations willing to use them that

way. And I don’t see any signs that either side, the United States or the Soviets, wishes to wage that kind of war. ~ But might not such a war happen because our thinking is so fuzzy on the subject? We’ve got so many of these weapons, and we’re not thinking about them very straight.

- We’re really not thinking about them at all. ~ So what would be a more realistic approach?

- (Takes a long breath) Well, now I’m going to make the most terrible statement of your entire interview by far and away. You know what the United States has to do if it wants to survive? It has to accept the fact that there will probably be a nuclear war, and it has to prepare to fight it and win it. It’s a terrible, awful thing to say. But it’s true, in my opinion. ~ What would such a nuclear war look like?

- I don’t have the wildest idea. But we have to take certain basic steps that will enable us to fight one. ~ Are you saying we are not now ready to fight a nuclear war?

- If a nuclear war were to take place tomorrow morning, by tomorrow after­noon it would be all over.

We’d be licked, militarily. And psychologically.

The coun­try would just fall apart at the seams. ~ But 1 thought we had enough weapons to destroy Russia a hundred times over. Or is it a thousand?

- It doesn’t make any difference. ~ Why not?

- The only rational decision the president of the United States could make under such circumstances would be to throw in the towel. Unless he is going to be such a bestial, maniacal, immoral monster as to deliberately bring about the societal demise of the Soviet Union and kill tens of millions of Soviet civilians in revenge. And may God help us if we ever have a president like that. That’s the fix we’ve gotten ourselves into!

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~ Where does that leave our almighty Triad, the command-and-control in­frastructures, and the twenty-four-hour alert we’ve been on since 1960?

- It leaves all these things without a coherent strategy for use. If the war starts, we don’t have the wildest idea of what to do. In the current predicament the best use that we can make of all these nuclear goodies is not to use them. Because the only way that we could use them would be in a morally obscene way. So our current strategy is not a strategy in the slightest. It’s been U.S. national policy for more than a quarter of a century that nuclear weapons are actually unusable weapons.

That’s horseshit, and you can quote me on that. ~ The neutron bomb enables us to start a limited neutron-bomb war, but with the big ones still cocked and ready to go, that seems like a good recipe for global holocaust... .

- If we ever had to use neutron bombs it ought to be to defend U.S. terra firma, not the soil of allies.

Let the allies develop their own neutron bomb. As a matter of fact, let’s sell it to them! They should have discriminate weapons for their own de­fense.

The United States doesn’t need to take on the burden of defending all the rest of the world. That is in fact the best way of getting into a nuclear war, and that’ll be the end. But it doesn’t have to happen that way at all. A nuclear war can still be fought for political objectives, the way wars should be fought, and not for the extermination of the human species. ~ Sounds like a job for the neutron bomb .. .

- Well, let me put it this way: the neutron bomb offers a potential of waging far more discriminate warfare to avoid damage to the civilian fabric than any other weapon ever invented. If one wants to assume that fighting wars is basically immoral - let’s assume that it is - then fighting neutron wars is considerably less immoral than fighting conventional-weapon wars, for all kinds of reasons. ~ And one of the reasons includes the fact that a neutron war generally stays away from a population and is intended to destroy only soldiers?

- That’s a primary reason, after a neutron-bomb war you don’t have this aftermath of towns and cities lying in ruins, or popu­laces desperately trying to survive, going hungry, diseases spreading around, and so on. To me that is a moral plus.

General Paul Tibbets ­Columbus, Ohio, February 25, 1985 I was notified in September 1944 that the United States was undertaking the develop­ment of the atomic bomb. My respon­sibility was to develop and train an Air Force organization capable of dropping the new weapon. Not too many people knew that the directive also said to be prepared to make simultaneous drops in Europe and Japan.

This is what was meant when they termed it a “split operation.” ~ The plan was to use atomic weapons on Germany and Japan at exactly the same time?

- That is correct. ~ With only two bombs available?

- At the time I’m talking about we didn’t have any bombs yet. Production was only beginning. How many weapons would become available was not up to me. My job was to develop an organization and train it. I also had to work with the scientific element at Los Alamos and find out: What have we got? What does it look like? Where does it go?

What do we do with it? I spent ten and a half months working with those people to get the weapon into a shape that it could be dropped with predictable accuracy from an airplane flying at 30,000 feet. ~ Is that what is meant by “marrying the bomb to the plane” ?

- Yes, that’s what we called it. ~ What did marrying the bomb to the plane entail, exactly?

- First off, we had to get an aerodynamic shape to the bomb and one that would fit within our bombbay limitations. Addi­tionally, we had to keep battery-operated heaters around the bomb because we didn’t want the triggering mechanism to freeze up. Then next thing was, we had a weapon in there with critical material, and we had to monitor that as we were going along to be sure it wasn’t starting to get active.

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~ Did you have to learn any unusual things as the pilot of the plane that was going to drop this bomb?

- We hadn’t been used to flying at 30,000 feet with our airplanes at that time. It presented a new bombing problem, be­cause you had high-altitude winds aloft, “ballistic winds” they called them.

Also, with this weapon, we knew that once it was released, we could not continue to fly forward as we did in Europe and the Pacific at that time. There was no way you could keep flying over this bomb and still survive. The question then became: how do you get away from it after you release it? The only answer is, you have to make a reverse turn again, another flying prob­lem at that altitude. You only had fifty seconds in which to make the turn, because that’s the time it took for the bomb to fall and explode, the explosion to come to shock wave, and all of that. ~ And making that turn within fifty sec­onds was the most unusual thing?

- Absolutely. The rest of it was just flying, navigating, and bombing. ~ The plane was called Enola Gay, and it’s generally known that this was your mother’s name. At what point did you name it after your mother?

- I put the name on the airplane the afternoon before we took off the following day at two A.M. ~ Did you check with your mother on that?

- No, no. Because obviously I couldn’t talk to her, and I didn’t think that was really necessary. ~ How did she feel about being made relatively immortal as a result of that?

- Well, when I was able to get home, my father told me—he always called her “the old girl”—he said, “You ought to have seen the smile on the old girl’s face when they said the airplane was Enola Gay.” ~ I heard, General, that you were the one who sent the code to Washington that got the wheels rolling on the timing of the actual bombing. Can you explain how it fell to you to do this?

- We had started training in September 1944. By the following April I had a good outfit of people that had been driven hard and trained well. I put myself in a position of a football coach who knows that if you overtrain, it can cause you more trouble than you can imagine. So the question was, how workable was the bomb? I approached Dr. Oppenheimer and said, “What do you think the chances are of a failure to explode?” He said, “I don’t really know, but I’m looking for that possibility of one in a million that it will malfunction.” I said, “One in a million! Those are terrific odds. What are the odds right now?” I told him, “I really need to know.” He said, “Well, if you need to know, I’m convinced that right now we’re one in ten thousand.” I said, “I’ll take onein-ten-thousand odds anytime.” I was afraid we’d never get over there to get on with the primary purpose of the weapon, which was to stop the war.

Now at that time any organization that had trained

to go overseas had to be inspected. An Air Force or a Higher Command organization would do this, but the Higher Command in this case didn’t know what we were doing, and I had been told you have to do all of this yourself. They gave me a code word, which today I don’t remember, and that was my word to send to Washington when we were ready to go. I, arbitrarily on my own, independently, sent that word to Washington because I wanted to get that organization moving over to the Pacific theater. ~ There’s all this talk of training the crew for Hiroshima. What about the crew for Nagasaki?

- I had fourteen separate crews. And I did the same thing with each one of the crews. It was all one organization, and I was commander of that organization. It was called the 509th Composite Group. ~ At what point did it become clear that you had two bombs rather than, say, one, or three?

- Well, put it this way: there were three bombs that could have been used. One on the island, one en route to the island, and one at Wendover. Now how long it would have been before there would have been a fourth one I don’t know, but it wouldn’t have been too long. Anyway, there were three that were readily available. ~ I always thought it was only two.. .

- There were three. And when Japan didn’t surrender after the one in Nagasaki, I flashed a code word back to Wendover, Utah, and that bomb was loaded into an airplane and headed for the Pacific but got stopped at Moffett Field because the war was over. ~ What type of bomb was the third bomb?

- It was the Nagasaki type. ~ Can you describe what happened when you dropped the Hiroshima bomb?

- Well, as we came into the target my mind was really on the navigation of the airplane to the target, the stability of the airplane to furnish what we call a bombing platform. I wanted it absolutely tabletop smooth. And that’s the way it worked. We worked that, all the way in from the target. We could see the city from seventy miles distant. And as we closed in on that distance we had certain procedural things we had to do. We had a check and recheck situation.

First off, when the bombardier says, “I can see the city,” the rule was that the navigator had to step up from his position, go up and look over the bombar­ dier’s shoulder, and say, “Yeah, I agree with you, that is - that is Hiroshima.” The next thing is when we got much closer and the bombardier says, “I have the aiming point,” that meant he put the cross-hairs of the Norden bomb-sight on that aiming point and the navigator then had to come up, look through the bomb-sight, say, “Yes, I agree with you, that is the assigned aiming point.” I’m looking over the shoul­ders of both of them as they go, and, based on target study I had done trying to imprint the outline of this city in my mind, I couldn’t do anything but

agree also, be­cause we had absolutely unrestricted vis­ibility, it was just as clear as a picture. Now as we come in, there were some things that had to be done at the last moment. We had to activate a tone which was transmitted over the radio to the other two B29’s accompanying us so that they would know we were only one minute away from the bomb release point. Now this tone was silenced when the bomb departed the airplane. That was the signal for those people to release their instru­ments and start this turn away from the bomb that I talked about. ~ What kind of instruments did they release?

- They were recorders to record the blast, and those recorders were attached to bat­tery-operated radios to transmit that signal by radios to receivers back in the airplane. ~ Was the bomb dropped by parachute or did it just fall?

- It fell. The blast gauges were floating down by parachute. ~ What happened when the bomb went off? What did you experience?

- Well, nothing, strange as it may sound. The airplane had its back to the explosion, and it did not have a lot of windows in it. Now when the bomb exploded, the bril­liance was such that even though it was a bright, sunshiny day, I could still see this silver light, it was kind of a bluish silver flash. So, fine. That is something that you didn’t normally see.

And the next thing I tell everybody is that I tasted it. And they say, well, how could that happen? I say, well, years ago when I was a young fella, the dentists, when they did work on your teeth, would fill your teeth with a combination of silver and lead, and when you would accidentally touch it with a fork or a spoon you would get a feeling of a pain going through. It’s commonly called electrolysis.

And that’s exactly what happened. It was just a momentary flash and then it was over. I knew then that the bomb had exploded. Now at about the time I tasted it, my tailgunner, who is in the back with welder’s goggles on so he wouldn’t be blinded by the flash, he’s looking for the shock wave. And he said, “Here it comes.” He could see it coming up. A mirage like you see on the desert. Beautiful, everexpanding cir­cles coming right up to the airplane.

We felt the first one with the force of two and a half g forces. It wasn’t a scary, dramatic jolt, but it was one that positively got your attention. The second one was much lighter, and the third one wasn’t strong at all. ~ And did you ever see the cloud from the blast?

- After the bomb exploded, I was still in a partial turn, and I kept the airplane coming right around to come back because we hadhand-held cameras, and we were instructed to take all the pictures that we could while we were in the air. So everybody got their cameras and they started taking pictures. We had gone in on basically a westerly heading, and when we came out I headed to the southwest. So I

passed to the left of the mushroom cloud that was going up. By the time I could turn around and look at it, the mushroom cloud was higher than we were.

And we were still at about 29,000 feet. The cloud was tumbling, rolling, and boiling, and, I mean, it was obvious that there was a tremendous amount of energy contained within that cloud. ~ What color was it?

- Well, dirty gray. That’s the best color I could give you. And it was not the classic mushroom. This one was kind of strung out. Did you ever see a parachute come down that failed to open, what they call a straggler? That’s what it looked like. ~ At what point did you see this mission from the point of view of the people on the ground? Did you ever feel that it had inflicted suffering that was beyond what anybody had experienced in a war before? Or did it seem to you similar to other kinds of bombings and simply what happens when wars start up?

- Well, I think you’ve basically touched on my philosophy. We had a famous old southern general who said, “War is hell.” Sherman. And I couldn’t agree more with him. It is. When I was dropping bombs in Europe, iron bombs and such, against the Germans and so forth, I knew that people were getting hurt on the ground, and when I realized that I was understanding people were getting hurt, I said to myself, “You gotta quit thinking about this. You can’t be effective if you’re going to be worrying about who’s getting hurt down there. You’re out to destroy a target. That’s the name of the game, destroy the target.” And on the basis of that, I must say that I never did dwell on it. Sure, I knew that there had been terrible loss of life. I knew all kinds of damage was taking place. But again, I took it objectively, not personally. ~ You mentioned the name of the game was hitting the target. What was the target in Hiroshima?

- The city was the target, period. We figured we’d wipe out most of the city. There was not much of a question about that. But the aiming point was a bridge right beside a Japanese temple. Don’t ask me the name of the temple or the bridge, either one, but it was a positive geograph­ical landmark that you couldn’t mistake. ~ And how accurate was the drop?

- I think we were pretty accurate. The bomb exploded within 600 feet of where we intended to explode it. ~ Let me ask you, Mr. Tibbets, what would you say is the lesson or legacy of Hiroshima, speaking for today?

- The weapons available today make the ones we used look like miniature fire-crackers. Yes, we do have some weapons that we must do some serious thinking about. And I certainly don’t advocate war.

I would like to believe that nuclear weapons as such will never be used again, but I’m not that naive. I think they will be, just because we have them. The question is how to use them.

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~ Is there some way out of where we are today?

- What was done cannot be undone. But at least we can promote initiatives to use nuclear explosives in a defensive way. We should consider, as well, using all other means which in many cases may be more efficient and more appropriate, and not make distinctions between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons, but make a strong distinction between aggression and de­fense. That, I think, would lead us out.

Dr. Edward Teller, Hoover Institute Palo Alto, California, December 14, 1984 ~ Dr. Teller, my first question to you regards something you wrote in a book called The Legacy of Hiroshima. You stated there that we entered the atomic age with dirty hands. This was in reference to the fact that we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki without prior warning. How has this particular lesson of Hiroshima in­fluenced our subsequent nuclear-war thinking?

- I think it is truly regrettable that a suggestion to demonstrate the atomic bomb before using it has not been put into practice. Imagine that we might have carried out such a demonstration, for instance, dropping a nuclear explosive over Tokyo without warning, but at such altitude that it would have lit up the evening sky for many miles and not done any damage whatsoever. In the end we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, and the Japanese leaders were completely undecided what to do about it.

The war was ended only by the personal and illegal intervention of Emperor Hirohito, who was God, and was not supposed to interfere with any military decisions. But I believe there was a very real chance that the demonstration over Tokyo with a subsequent demonstration of what it was, a demonstration that Hirohito would have seen, might have led to the same consequence. We could then have followed up with an actual bomb in two weeks if they did not surrender. But I think the chances are they would have surren­dered. If we could have started the atomic age by having demonstrated the power of technology to end a dreadful war without killing a single person, I think we all would have a better conscience, we would be able to think more calmly about nuclear explosives, we would be more safe, and war would be less likely today.

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~ You once stated, “For as long as I could remember I have wanted to do one thing: to play with ideas and find out how the world is put together.” Could you describe, in your career, the role that playfulness, imagination, and curiosity have had in terms of your own major scientific break­throughs?

- To apply imagination to pure science was what I wanted, and that’s what I did. It is something wonderful in its day-to-day execution, and it brings people together. But as soon as the practical element enters, serious differences will unavoidably ap­pear.

Unfortunately, when the Second World War started we had reason to believe that the Nazis would work on an atomic weapon, and I was persuaded that we had to do likewise. And this needed an entirely different style of work. No more could we enjoy a completely free exercise of the imagination. That was not the kind of work I like. It’s the kind of work I pursued because I understood it to be my duty.

After the passage of almost half a century I still believe, unfortunately, that it is my duty, because the simple idea that tech­nology must be developed and applied wherever it can be, but it must be applied by reason and limited by the decisions of a democratic society - that straightforward point of view is not accepted by the scientific community.

Most scientists imagine they create weapons which then become independent of man, and, whether man wants it or not, these weapons will work destruction.

Too few understand that technology for peace, technology for defense, cannot be sepa­rated in its technical origins from tech­nology for destruction.

These important differentiations have to be made, not by scientists, but by the public, which decides in a democratic society how technical advances should be used. There are too few spokesmen who continue to insist on the development of technology for defense and the welfare of the people, and not excluding arms because arms cannot be excluded in the present unstable political situation. Arms instability is caused by deep historical and ideological differences, and not by the arms race.

This point of view needs people to defend it, and I happened to acquire at least an opportunity to be heard, which for me also is an obligation. From my own personal point of view, nothing would be more wonderful than if I could return to pure science, which I still am trying to do in my few free moments. That I’m not doing it full-time is simply due to the fact that among my colleagues the majority happen to look at nuclear war from exaggerated points of view. I find that the point of view which is for technology but also insists on its right application is underrepresented.

~ I’ d like to ask you a question, Doctor, about the arms race. One disquieting aspect of it for many people is its mirror-like quality. It goes like this: if we can think of it, so can they, and we may as well build it, because if we don’t they will. Yet if you have two parties who both think this way, it seems you have a situation that will never end. Is there a way out of such a mirror-like condition?

- You have mixed up in a most unusual and yet ingenious fashion what is correct and what makes no sense. If we can think of it, so can they - of course!

The point is that one year before the hydrogen bomb debate started, before most people in our scientific community said, “If we don’t do it, neither will the Russians,” a year before that, Sakharov had already decided to work on the hydrogen bomb. The simple fact is true: we can think of it, they can think of it, but this does not need to lead to an impasse, because if we could work on defensive weapons, and we can prove, as I hope we can prove, that they are more effective than offense, then that will lead to two armed camps facing each other armed not with swords but primarily with shields. And that will be a much less dangerous situation than the present horrible balance of terror. Therefore, there is a way out. It seems to me to be a thoroughly worthwhile objective, and it should not be condemned as an element of the arms race. One should understand that any new development in technology can be applied to thoroughly peaceful purposes or to war and within war it can be applied to defense or attack.

These distinctions will have to be made, quite obviously, by the public. But the technology must be made available to the public because otherwise the technology of attack, or of world domination, will de­velop in that country – Russia - which has applied suppression and pursued expansion for hundreds of years. That is why the situation is not mirror-like. The mirror does not exist. ~ Is weapons development in America a democratic process?

- The arms race is not a purely democratic process, as long as secrecy excludes the full participation of the public. But the arms race is deeply influenced by public opinion. To that extent it is a democratic process. ~ A final question, Dr. Teller, about what I sense is an underlying assumption through­out your writing, I would put it this way: man is here to stay, the human race shall survive. Today many people are full of fear and trembling over whether man shall be here to stay and whether the human race shall survive. Could you comment on this?

- I am afraid I have to contradict you, just in a flat and complete manner. That the human race will survive was never my basic assumption. It was my conclusion in every case where the question arose. I did not begin with any conclusion during the fallout scare, the scare connected with the depletion of the ozone layer, and now the scare connected with nuclear winter. In each case many of us, including me, have taken a careful look and tried to separate exaggeration and propaganda from fact. And in each

case we came to the conclu­sion that the human race will survive as certainly as could certainly be stated at any time in the past. Without exception, those who object to war like to find additional reasons why war should be excluded. So we frequently are led to exaggeration, like picturing the end of the human race. Let me tell you, I am afraid that we may not survive. I am not very much afraid of this; I am somewhat afraid of it, in connection with biological warfare, which might get out of control.

In nuclear warfare the extinction of the human race is much less likely. A nuclear winter is already an exaggeration, because the probabilities are for only a limited effect on temperature. It might get big enough to influence crops in the hemisphere, but it is practically certain not to lead to the extremely serious consequences that have been discussed.

Actually, I believe that fallout, ozone depletion, nuclear winter - or, more prop­erly expressed, nuclear temperature change - will cause possibly great addi­tional suffering, but, with practical cer­ tainty, not as great as the suffering or slaughter that will occur in the nations that participate in the nuclear conflict. Nuclear war could result in probably more than a hundred million deaths, perhaps a thousand million deaths. Still - survival.

But to­gether with survival, the probability not only of immense suffering in the nations participating in the conflict, but destruction of all human ideals.

German science, which used to be something really splendid before Hitler, never yet has recovered from what the Nazis did. A nuclear war will leave behind, I am afraid, no matter how it works out, some sort of madness, and some of my friends say that madness may turn out to be incurable. Of that I am much more afraid than of the end of the human race. The wish to avoid nuclear war need not be strengthened by fairy tales of the end of the human race. What is really to be expected should be sufficient to make us strongly determined to keep our ideals without a nuclear war. And I think it can be done, and the most hopeful approach today is the development of defensive weapons, non-nuclear or nuclear, as long as they defend the innocent. The way out of the present difficulties exists through increased emphasis on defense. I think a peaceful future can be secured only if those who want peace also develop technology to its limits.

31

NEUROSCIENCE SERGIO DELLA SALA HUMAN COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH The seductive allure of neuroscience

When we go to grab a burger we are allured by luscious pictures of succulent sandwiches, filled with tender beef, and moist with the most delicious sauces. Should we compare what we really get with the feigned advertisement, we would run a rudimentary scientific experiment. Which is the evidence that if I cross my palm with silver I will get exactly what it says on the tin? A claim should be supported by evidence. The same applies to most realms of science.

This is why randomised controlled trials are carried out and constitute the basis of treatment in medicine: to know whether or not a drug works, doctors give this drug to a group of patients affected by a particular disease, at the same time they give a “placebo�, typically sugar pills, to another group of patients with the same disease. In so doing they are able to find out whether or not the drug has any beneficial effect over and above the placebo effect.

However, when it comes to brain related stuff, we abort our critical thinking and blindly accept unproven techniques.

The media, on the whole, like discussing matter of the brain. They like the colourful blobs showing which bits of the brain do what. We all do! Two recent published papers make this point very clearly. Weisberg et al. (2008, The seductive allure of neuroscience as an explanation, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, pp. 470-477) presented to lay people brief descriptions of psychological phenomena followed by right or wrong accounts of these phenomena. They found that when the wrong accounts contained some irrelevant reference to the brain, lay people were much more inclined to rate the explanation as satisfactory. The pervasive influence of brain images was further reiterated by McCabe and Castel (2008, Seeing is believing, Cognition, pp. 343-352).

They demonstrated that a brain picture added to an argument made the argument much more acceptable and people rated it higher than the same argument without the picture of the brain.

Perhaps for this reason, most training programmes proposed as remedy for ailments and impairments make loose and implausible association to brain theories, to appear more convincing. For example, the simplistic dichotomy between the two brain hemispheres ill-inform a series of training programmes. Such programmes, the best known of which is the notorious Brain Gym, are based on the popular assumption that we have a creative half hidden in our right hemisphere, which needs to be awakened.

How do we stimulate our dormant right hemisphere? By practicing movements based on fanciful concepts of brain anatomy and preposterous logic based on loose concepts like energy activation. The reasoning is doubly flawed: first it is not true that the left hemisphere epitomises the military-industrial establishment of the West, while the right brain has the glamour and mystery of the East; second even if this were true, we could not stimulate the right hemisphere by means of these asinine exercises.

We all wish to be more intelligent and show off to our friends and family our skills in solving puzzles, we would wish to have better memory and absorb volumes of material effortlessly, or to flaunt our astuteness and acumen at parties. However, to reach these goals by long hours of swotting seems a daunting enterprise, hence many jump at the idea of shortcuts and are prepared to cross palm with silver for a quick fix. People believe that their children could improve their scholastic performances by gulping up fishy pills or other improbable supplements. Newsmakers too often than it

would be advisable fuel these beliefs in tall tales by running uncritical stories advertising preposterous methods and ignoring their obvious flaws. The only question that matters should be “Where is the evidence? And which is its source?”.

Is there any evidence supporting the claim that by playing the Nintendo game one can actually improve their brainpower, or even counteract the ageing of the brain?

So far we have little more than anecdotal reports, and several debunking studies. The original Dr. Kawashima’s study included two groups of people suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, which is a severe degenerative condition progressively damaging the brain.

Each group was followed up for six months in a nursing home in Japan. The difference between the two groups was that one group continued with the usual activities, while the other group engaged in a “learning therapy” method consisting in reading fairy tales and doing some simple mental calculations. The results indicated that the “learning therapy” group deteriorated slightly less than the non-treated group. However from this study it is impossible to disentangle whether this advantage was due to the extra mental stimulation or to the extra attention and social interaction that the treated group received. Moreover, speculating that some mental stimulation which allegedly slows the havoc caused by dementia should also long-lastingly improve the performance of healthy elderly requires a long leap.

We live in a very credulous world, several people are prepared to pay good money in the hope to achieve goals that would require more effort. As a rule of thumb, if something looks too good to be true, it usually is.

Embarrassing a neuroscientist

Cocktail party conversations can be strenuous for a brain scientist. Questions like “is it true that we only use ten percent of our brain?” leave the poor fellow nonplussed. The stoneless olive spiralling in his stirred dry Martini, the academic, struggling to retain his (it’s a he) natural pomposity, puts on a stereotyped smile and utters that in fact this is not the case, that there is no evidence for such a claim, that all we know about the brain indicates that this assertion is sheer nonsense. But, given the weakness of the nullhypothesis argument, how can we convince somebody that something simply is not as they think?

Cognitive flaws

It seems safe to say that most people are of two minds about the mind. On the one hand, they dutifully don their helmets before hopping on their motorbikes and change their diets to avoid clogging their cerebral arteries—because they know that damage to the brain from accident or disease will wreak havoc on their ability to think, perceive, and respond. At some level, they are acknowledging that the brain is the organ of consciousness and that having an intact one is necessary for any semblance of normal mental activity. In this way, they are further conceding, whether they realize it or not, that if the brain is a physical organ, whose operations are bound by well-established physical, physiological and psychological principles, then certain cherished beliefs about the mind and its alleged powers are on rather shaky ground. On the other hand, many of these same people shove this inconvenient implication—which is as well-supported as any in science—aside and line up to buy any doctrine, course, exercise, or gadget that offers to mitigate this unpalatable corollary of the proposition that mind equals brain function. Consequently, entrepreneurs rarely go broke selling books or documentaries that assert that minds can leave bodies and still see, hear and remember, or that powerful spiritual entities can play us like unseen puppeteers. Poll after poll attests that a substantial majority believes that people can bend spoons with their bare minds and “see” through walls and the barrier of time. Hucksters successfully peddle power drinks, mental exercises and devices that purportedly create super brains, even though such claims fly in the face of most up-to-date evidence in modern neuroscience. Note the inconsistency here: dualists who fundamentally believe that the mind is a spiritual rather than a physical, brain-produced phenomenon, trying to enhance their immaterial minds by refurbishing their material brains. Claims of this sort seldom disappear, of course, because they offer substantial comfort to the believer. Thus, profitable but ridiculously tall tales of the mind and brain recycle endlessly despite the best efforts of the scientific community to debunk them. Hope really does spring eternal it seems. Newsmakers too often than it would be advisable fuel these beliefs in tall tales by running uncritical

stories advertising preposterous methods and ignoring their obvious flaws. The only question that matters should be “Where is the evidence? And which is its source?”.

Is there any evidence supporting the claim that by playing a Nintendo game one can actually counteract the ageing of the brain? Is there any evidence that forcing primary school children to make unsubstantiated daft exercises, as those proposed by Brain Gym, will improve their brainpower? So far we have little more than anecdotal reports, and several debunking studies. Show me the evidence!

Mind Myths

Myths are beautiful fables devised to account for all the mysteries of life and death. Few people now would maintain a supernatural cause of infections, though only little more than a century ago, before the discovery that bacteria caused diseases, this was the common view. In the dearth of understanding of the mechanisms of the mind and the brain, and the effects of their diseases, we still tackle their mysteries by aping early man: invoking divine intervention or taking shelter in simplistic dogmas.

Popular books sustaining such myths overflow from the shelves of the science section of several bookshops. We live in a very credulous world: in the country where I live, the heir to the throne supports unproven treatments whereas the wife of the ex-PM praises the virtues of crystal healing. In the country where I come from people believe in miraculous events, which are unfortunately never spectacular (grow a new leg in an amputee) but rather petty (healing from a disease which has limited but quantifiable chances of healing with time). Any right-minded alien visiting us would wonder whether there is intelligent life on earth. As with most domains of human knowledge, the various disciplines loosely lumped together as neurosciences are not exempt from personal beliefs, prejudices, faith, hopes, hunches, and ultimately, myths. The neuroscience and psychology literature is the principal myth-maker. Nevertheless, the scientific tradition has embedded rules which decrease the chance of blunders existing for very long. The acceptance of these rules in accruing knowledge marks the difference between science and beliefs, between what we do know about the mind and the brain and what we think we know about them. Perhaps more important, accepting these rules allows us to admit what we do not yet know, and avoids the pompousness too often linked to science and scientists.

A number of misconceptions about brain mechanisms are taken for granted even by well-read, educated people. These include the belief that people can be resuscitated from a coma by listening to their favourite songs; that magic pills preventing ageing do exist; that we can be trained to capitalise on non-physical energies of the brain; or that one can retrieve pre-adolescent sexual abuse by means of hypnosis, that we have a creative, hippie half in our brain, the right hemisphere, opposed to a nerdy left hemisphere which acts as a rigorous accountant, from which believe it derives the false postulate that it would be desirable to stimulate the right side to enhance our hidden creativity. Not to mention the far-fetched idea that we only use 10% of our brain.

Indeed, if this were true nine out of ten patients with a stroke would show no symptoms.

Unfortunately this is not the case.

We will look in some more details at two such neuromyths: The ideas that listening to Mozart music makes one more intelligent and that memory works as a videocamera allowing one to learn a language by listening to tapes while sleeping.

The Mozart effect

In the film Phenomenon, George Malley (played by a grievously miscast John Travolta), having been struck by a beam of light from outer space, finds himself with an intellect of galactic proportions. We all wish we were more intelligent. In recent years the ‘Mozart effect’ promised to deliver just that, and rather effortlessly.

The story began in 1993 when Gordon Shaw and his colleagues (REF) of the University of California, reported that 36 college students, after listening to Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major (K488) for only ten minutes, achieved scores on standard spatial tasks from the Stanford-Binet intelligence test which were fully 8-9 IQ points above the levels they achieved either after listening to a relaxation tape or experiencing complete silence for the same length of time.

Don Campbell, an entrepreneur, was the quickest in capitalising on these findings, he termed them “the Mozart effect”, and became rich by selling the idea that

listening to Mozart makes people cleverer. Educators and politicians jumped on the bandwagon, but it is important to note that Shaw dissociates himself from many of the claims made under the umbrella of the Mozart effect (see the Preface of his book Keeping Mozart in Mind).

According to Campbell, the Mozart effect is: ‘the power of music to heal the body, strengthen the mind, and unlock the creative spirit’ (which actually is the subtitle of his book). It is clear from this definition that the powers attributed to music range far beyond intellectual enhancement. According to Campbell, listening to music can also cure physical ailments – in animals as well as in humans. Some of Campbell’s assertions, however, stretch credulity beyond breaking point, such as the claim that Beethoven’s music improves the rising of bread (Campbell, 1997, p.14). Even micro-organisms, it would seem, benefit from exposure to music.

The Mozart effect failed to replicate in a number of studies. In a meta-analytic study, published in Nature (1999, pp.826-7) Chabris reviewed 16 studies on the Mozart effect (with a total of 714 participants) and found that there was no effect whatsoever.

Yet, the myth persists: a Google search makes over 250,000 hits. Amazon offers over 40 books with “Mozart Effect” in their titles.

The Morpheus effect

The brain does not work as a computer. Memory does not work as a video-camera.

The brain is an organ of representation, no memory is stored unchanged. Little learning is possible without active attention to the stimuli. A form of putative learning without awareness has been explored using so-called subliminal learning or by exploiting the largely mythical capacity for learning while asleep. On these points over 15 years ago the British Psychological Society (The Psychologist, March 1992, p99) drew a very firm conclusion: “There is no evidence that people can learn while asleep. Learning can only occur if the sleeping person is partly awakened by the message”.

A related claim is that audiotapes with repeated suggestions played while asleep can help you to give up smoking, stop drinking, think creatively, increase confidence or make friends. Tapes are also available claiming to help you improve your memory through subliminal message. These have been shown to lead to people reporting that their memory is better. One very attractive study involved giving people audiotapes that were labelled to indicate that they were for memory improvement but in fact were tapes intended for enhancing self-esteem. This experiment is reminiscent of an episode of Friends (series 3, episode 18), whereby Chandler wishing to stop smoking borrows from her friend Rachel a stop-smoking tape, which allegedly acts during sleep. However, the tape was meant for women and kept stating that one could stop smoking being a strong and confident woman. This led Chandler to behave in a girly fashion.

The memory-enhancing tapes lead some people believing that their memory had improved, but when tested, their memory ability was no better than it was before (BPS Working Party Report, 1992). Having made the commitment and the financial investment, the simple belief that the purchased tapes might work can be sufficient to change your beliefs or even to change your habits.

In sum, understanding how the brain functions through the methods of science can be a creative endeavour; unsubstantiated beliefs are rather tedious and mindnumbing.

Further reading Della Sala, S. (ed.) Mind Myths: Exploring Popular Assumptions About the Mind and Brain. Chichester: Wiley, 1999.

Della Sala, S. (ed.) Tall Tales About The Mind & Brain. Separating Fact From Fiction.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

NEUROSCIENCE

Book Reviews

Petit éloge de la colère Petit éloge de la colère

Patrick Amine

2€

INÉDIT

Patrick Amine dort quatre heures par nuit. Il se lève avant l’aube pour écrire : cela signifie, pour lui, désarticuler le réel, le déchirer, le trouer pour faire jaillir, dans le magma opaque des conformismes, des étincelles de vérité, des éclats de liberté.

C’est un combattant de l’ombre. Il n’a pas endossé d’uniforme mais il possède une panoplie de déguisements : journaliste musical, critique d’art et de littérature, biographe, éditeur free lance, écrivain. Difficile de trouver un homme plus calme, plus courtois, plus maître de ses pensées et de ses gestes, et, intérieurement, plus inquiet, plus animé d’une rage sourde.

Il vient de nous livrer un ouvrage court, un petit manifeste à la portée de toutes les bourses car publié dans la collection Folio 2euros : Petit éloge de la colère.

Ce livre lui ressemble : électrique, nerveux, pugnace, à la fois ambitieux et modeste, n’hésitant pas, lorsqu’il s’agit de donner l’exemple, à mettre en avant ses propres craintes et ses propres souffrances.

Patrick Amine a fait le voeu, ici, de donner ses lettres de noblesse à la colère. Un sentiment mal compris, mal aimé, dont notre société consensuelle, lénifiante et, in fine, obscurantiste, souhaite vivement se débarrasser.

Il écrit : « J’éprouve constamment de la colère lorsque je sens immédiatement chez les êtres qui m’entourent leur esprit pernicieux, prêt à déverser sur vous des idées doucereuses, assiégées de bonnes intentions, leur sentimentalisme de quatre sous, leurs falsifications fondamentales ». Érudit sans être pédant, il illustre son propos par de nombreux exemples, convoque les héros grecs de l’Illiade mais également Guy Roux, Antoine Gallimard, Charles Baudelaire, Thomas Bernhard, Reinaldo Arenas, Elias Canetti, parmi d’autres, pour nous inciter à saisir le glaive de la révolte. « La colère est un avant-goût du ciel. Elle renvoie à la métaphysique de celui qui l’assume et l’exerce, elle s’incarne dans une sorte de joute poétique avec le monde. » Quand beaucoup choisissent l’autosatisfaction et les bons sentiments, quelques-uns, comme Patrick Amine, ont opté pour le combat solitaire, qui nécessite mobilité, vitesse, précision dans le tir. En somme, toutes les qualités du sniper.

Book Reviews

Les Plaisirs Difficiles Mark Greene è uno scrittore di nazionalità franco-americana. Nato nel 1963 è già noto per due libri: “Le Lézard” e, soprattutto, per “Les Maladroits”. In questa raccolta di racconti brevi tratteggia i ritratti di otto personaggi ossessionati dal loro passato. Sono personaggi solitari, tormentati dal pensiero di occasioni perdute, impotenti di fronte alla banalità quotidiana che, giorno dopo giorno, si fa gioco delle loro vite. Sono cronache in prima persona, diari distaccati di persone consce della crudeltà del loro destino, ma che riescono ad osservarsi con uno sguardo ironico e rassegnato. Ed è così che i malinconici anti-eroi di Mark Greene, perduti in un patetico anonimato, ci dipingono il quadro dello smarrimento contemporaneo. Di un mondo dove tutto si vede e nulla si è.

Short novel from « Les plaisirs difficiles » À l’aéroport de Pise, ce soir-là, tous les vols sont retardés. C’est la fin du mois d’août, les voyageurs sont en majorité des touristes. Ils font la navette entre la salle d’attente et la cafétéria, d’où ils rapportent des boissons et des sandwichs. Des enfants pleurent, les toilettes sont prises d’assaut.

Vincent Decroos l’a remarquée en arrivant. Il a cherché un siège orienté de telle sorte qu’il peut la contempler à sa guise. Le profil italien, s’est-il dit lorsqu’il la repérée (sans trop savoir, au juste, en quoi cela consiste). Elle est vêtue d’une blouse et d’une longue jupe vertes, assez amples. Sa peau est mate, ses cheveux longs et bouclés. C’est, indiscutablement, une très belle femme. Il aimerait bien qu’elle se lève, pour pouvoir la regarder en détail, mais elle ne semble pas vouloir quitter son siège. Elle tourne négligemment les pages d’un magazine, qu’elle finit par ranger dans un gros sac en cuir. Puis elle regarde devant elle, dans le vide. Parfois, elle suit des yeux quelqu’un qui passe, mais pendant un laps de temps très bref, sans manifester de réelle curiosité.

Ils attendent depuis plus de deux heures (les retards, semble-t-il, son dus aux rafales de vent qui balayent la piste) lorsque enfin le départ est annoncé. Un murmure de satisfaction traverse la foule. Certains, déjà, vont s’aligner devant la porte d’embarquement. Il préfère, quant à lui, rester assis. Il a horreur de faire la queue. Et puis la jeune femme n’a pas bougé. Peut-être n’est-elle pas inscrite sur le même vol que lui.

La file d’attente se résorbe assez vite. Au dernier moment, la jeune femme se lève et s’engage derrière lui dans le couloir qui mène à l’appareil. Il se débrouille pour s’asseoir derrière elle, de l’autre côté du couloir. Ainsi, il pourra l’observer tranquillement pendant toute la durée du vol.

Mais, à nouveau, le décollage est retardé. Le commandant de bord explique que les bourrasques de vent en provenance du sud ont repris. Il attend l’autorisation de la tour de contrôle. Les minutes passent, il est presque onze heures.

La journée a été épuisante : Vincent Decroos est monté dans l’avion à sept heures et demie, à Orly. À son arrivée à Pise, il a loué une voiture et, muni d’une carte de la Toscane, il s’est lancé à la recherche des deux villas où l’attendaient ses clients de la journée. Depuis trois ans il travaille pour la Sécurflex, une entreprise spécialisée dans les systèmes de protection électronique, qui jouit d’une réputation mondiale et dont le siège est à Livry-Gargan. En compagnie des propriétaires, il a longuement fait le tour des villas, examiné les portes et fenêtres, dressé un diagnostic précis. Dans quelques jours, il leur enverra un devis qui devrait avoisiner les trois cent mille euros (les deux maisons regorgent d’objets précieux et de tableaux de maître).

Dans l’avion, les conversations se sont ralenties. Les enfants dorment. Un hôtesse descend l’allée centrale, la mine soucieuse. Quelque chose ne va pas, pressent Vincent Decroos. En effet, cinq minutes plus tard, le commandant annonce que le vol est définitivement reporté. Le vent dépasse la vitesse autorisée, les consignes internationales sont formelles. Les voyageurs sont priés de descendre et de se regrouper devant le comptoir de la compagnie aérienne, où le personnel au sol les informera de la marche à suivre. La belle Italienne descend la rampe d’accès quelques mètres devant lui, monte dans l’autobus et se tient debout près des portières. Elle semble imperturbable, absente. Pendant une fraction de seconde, ses yeux se posent lui. Il ébauche un sourire qu’elle ne lui rend pas.

Dans l’aéroport, une jeune employée de la compagnie aérienne leur explique qu’ils vont être dirigés vers un hôtel. Bien entendu, les frais d’hébergement seront pris en charge par la compagnie. Deux autocars sont déjà en route : rendez-vous dans quarante minutes, devant la porte principale. Nul ne songe à protester, l’heure est à la résignation. Certains passagers vont se restaurer à la cafétéria, qui s’apprête à fermer.

Il est tard, l’aéroport est presque vide. À l’heure dite, deux hommes pénètrent dans le hall. Ce sont les chauffeurs des cars.

Ils dirigent les passagers vers le parking. Rapidement, les bagages sont chargés dans la soute. L’Italienne, remarque-t-il, garde son grand sac avec elle. Cette fois, il s’assoit juste derrière elle, de sorte qu’il aperçoit son épaule entre les sièges.

Le trajet est interminable. Les deux autobus semblent faire le tour de la ville, circulant

Book Excerpt Les plaisirs difficiles

San Giuliano Terme

Ils traversent une bourgade dont il lit le nom sur un panneau : San Giuliano Terme.

Puis l’autobus ralentit, tourne à droite dans une allée, s’arrête devant un long bâtiment d’apparence moderne, surmonté d’un néon vert émeraude : Grand Hotel Tosca.

Pressés d’aller se coucher, les voyageurs se dirigent vers la réception, refont la queue pour obtenir les clés qu’un homme assez âgé, vêtu d’une chemise blanche sous un débardeur gris, leur distribue. Dans un mauvais anglais, il demande à chacun d’exhiber sa carte d’embarquement et de décliner son nom, qu’il inscrit sur le registre.

Malgré ses quatre étoiles, l’hôtel est dépourvu de charme : piètres imitations de meubles d’époque, papier peint défraîchi, grandes baies coulissantes pourvues de poignées en plastique.

Il attend derrière l’Italienne et, lorsqu’elle présente au réceptionniste sa carte d’embarquement, il parvient à lire son nom : Leandra Bolli.

-Room 33, dit l’homme en lui donnant la clé. Elevator A, ajoute-t-il en montrant du doigt le long couloir qui jouxte la salle à manger. Sans un mot, elle tourne les talons et se dirige vers l’ascenseur. Vincent la regarde partir avec regret. En descendant de l’autocar, il a caressé l’idée de l’aborder dans le hall de l’hôtel. Il s’est demandé, même, si l’établissement disposait d’un bar, où il aurait pu, qui sait, l’inviter à prendre un verre.

-Room 32, fait le réceptionniste.

Oui, c’est à lui qu’il parle. Vincent sursaute, saisit la clé qu’on lui tend. Grazie mille, dit-il avec un sourire appuyé (il parle un peu l’italien), comme si le vieil homme venait de lui faire un merveilleux cadeau.

Il se précipite vers le couloir, parvient à s’engouffrer dans l’ascenseur dont les portes métalliques sont sur le point de se refermer. Scusi, dit-il, un peu essoufflé. La jeune femme ne répond pas, se contente de lui adresser un petit mouvement de la tête.

Ils sont seuls dans la cabine. Les quelques secondes qui les séparent du palier du troisième étage représentent sa dernière chance d’entamer une conversation. Il cherche une phrase, une idée. Son expérience commerciale lui a appris à remplir les vides… Aujourd’hui, par exemple, il a parfaitement su meubler les temps morts, ne pas laisser de place au doute et aux tergiversations, faire accepter à ses clients (un banquier suisse et un artiste conceptuel de réputation mondiale) les prestations les plus coûteuses. Pourtant, face à la jeune femme, il ne trouve rien à dire. Il ose à peine la regarder. Elle n’a pas l’air sur la défensive, comme d’autres femmes pourraient l’être dans des circonstances similaires. Mais elle l’intimide, le paralyse.

Les portes de l’ascenseur s’ouvrent. Il la précède dans le couloir, pour ne pas donner l’impression qu’il la suit (elle ignore que leurs chambres sont contiguës). Tirant derrière lui sa petite Samsonite à roulettes, il annonce, à mi-voix, le numéro des chambres, s’improvisant dans un rôle de guide ou d’ouvreur. « Ah, voilà », fait-il lorsqu’il aperçoit la porte 32. C’est la dernière, à l’extrémité du couloir. Il glisse la clé dans la serrure. « Buona sera» lance-t-il d’une voix mal assurée. « Buona sera», répond-elle.

Il pose sa petite valise sur le lit mais ne l’ouvre pas : elle contient exclusivement des brochures et des articles de démonstration. Il n’a même pas emporté de brosse à dents.

Le seul effet personnel qu’il possède est un flacon de Ventoline, dont il ne se sépare jamais à cause de son asthme.

Il s’allonge tout habillé sur le couvre-lit, regarde la chambre. La moquette et les rideaux sont d’un rouge fané, comme mangé par le soleil. Il y a de la poussière sur la table de nuit. L’idée d’ôter ses vêtements et de se glisser sous les draps le dégoûte un peu.

Book Excerpt Les plaisirs difficiles

sur de petites routes périphériques. Les agglomérations qu’ils traversent sont assez laides, constituées d’immeubles modestes de construction plutôt récente. Plusieurs fois ils ralentissent devant un hôtel, Vincent Decroos se réjouit à l’idée qu’ils sont arrivés, mais ils poursuivent leur chemin. Il jette des regards vers le centre de la ville – ou ce qu’il croit en être le centre, car son sens de l’orientation est un peu perturbé - dans l’espoir d’apercevoir la tour penchée, ou le sommet de la cathédrale de l’Assomption, mais en vain. Les autocars s’engagent sous un petit aqueduc, bifurquent, paraissent hésiter. La route est mal éclairée. À un moment, celui qui est en tête s’arrête sur le bascôté, laisse l’autre venir à sa hauteur. Les deux chauffeurs se concertent. On dirait qu’ils sont perdus. Puis, lentement, ils redémarrent.

De temps en temps, il glisse un œil entre les deux sièges devant lui. L’Italienne se tient droite, immobile. Il la distingue assez mal – l’intérieur du bus est plongé dans la pénombre, seuls les lampadaires de la rue projettent par intermittence un peu de lumière- mais il lui semble qu’elle a les yeux fermés.

Le couloir est éclairé par des plafonniers ronds, qui diffusent une lumière jaune. Vincent Decroos se tient devant la porte 33, les bras le long du corps. Elle est allongée sur le lit, spécule-t-il, ou devant la fenêtre, scrutant la campagne désolée, battue par le vent. Ou bien, c’est une autre possibilité, elle est debout derrière la porte, à moins d’un mètre de lui. Il lui suffit de frapper, la porte s’ouvrira. Sa main se lève, s’avance lentement, quand soudain la minuterie s’éteint. Le long couloir est plongé dans l’obscurité : il n’y pas une lueur, pas le moindre halo en provenance des escaliers. Alors, il s’aperçoit qu’une ligne rouge suit le contour de la porte, une ligne fine mais régulière, qui forme un rectangle parfait, une ligne qui lui rappelle les rayons laser dont, cet après-midi même, il a vanté les mérites et décrit les nouvelles utilisations.

Son bras retombe. Non, pense-t-il, toute cela est absurde : il a mal interprété certains

Book Excerpt Les plaisirs difficiles

Malgré sa fatigue – il s’est levé très tôt pour être à l’heure à Orly-, il craint de ne pas s’endormir.

Et puis, derrière la cloison, la présence de la jeune femme le met mal à l’aise. Il aurait mieux valu, en fin de compte, qu’elle dorme à l’autre bout de l’hôtel. Probablement, se dit-il, est-elle allée immédiatement se coucher. Elle se moque éperdument de lui.

Sans doute a-t-elle un amant à Paris, qu’elle s’apprête à rejoindre, ou peut-être un mari. Cependant, il ne l’a pas vue utiliser son portable, contrairement à la plupart des voyageurs, lorsqu’on leur a annoncé le report du vol.

Il se lève, regarde par la fenêtre. L’autocar qui les a transportés est garé sur le petit parking. Un peu plus loin, faiblement éclairés par les lampadaires de l’hôtel, il aperçoit quelques arbres malingres, dressés au milieu d’un champ aride. Le vent souffle assez fort, par rafales. Une persienne couine. Il lirait bien quelque chose, cela l’aiderait peutêtre à s’endormir, mais il ne dispose que de ses propres brochures commerciales. Il saisit la commande de la télévision, zappe pendant quelques minutes, mais rien ne capte son intérêt. Il finit par atterrir sur une chaîne d’information italienne. On y parle de Venise, du système de vannes Moïse qui doit freiner la montée des eaux de la lagune.

Il s’efforce de suivre le commentaire, commence à se détendre un peu quand, soudain, il sursaute. Trois coups secs viennent d’être frappés contre la cloison. Il se retourne et considère le mur, comme s’il était à même de lui fournir une explication. Un instant, il se demande s’il n’a pas été victime d’une hallucination auditive. La fatigue, la nuit sont propices à ce genre de choses. Mais voici que les coups se répètent, parfaitement distincts et audibles. Ils proviennent de la chambre voisine, cela ne fait pas de doute.

L’Italienne, réfléchit-il, est peut-être dérangée par la télévision. Il baisse le son, demeure aux aguets pendant plusieurs minutes. C’était bien la télévision, conclut-il. Il se relève, entrouvre la porte de la chambre, jette un coup d’œil dans le couloir. Tout est calme, il n’y a rien d’anormal.

Il décide de garder sa chemise et son caleçon, se glisse dans le lit et éteint la lumière.

Subitement, il pense au tableau qu’il a vu l’après-midi même chez l’artiste conceptuel (dont la luxueuse villa, contrairement à ce qu’il avait imaginé, est remplie d’objets archéologiques et de toiles anciennes) : Judith et Holopherne. Une pièce d’une valeur inestimable, a dit l’artiste conceptuel. Ils sont restés devant elle pendant un certain temps, tandis qu’il décrivait les derniers systèmes de détection mis au point par sa compagnie. Il revoit le visage de la femme brandissant un poignard, de l’homme terrorisé, les yeux révulsés comme s’il était aux prises avec le diable.

Les trois coups résonnent à nouveau. Plus fort, cette fois, ou bien c’est à cause du silence, de l’obscurité qui amplifie les vibrations. Vincent Decroos se redresse. Il devrait se réjouir : il s’agit incontestablement d’un appel, d’une invitation, peut-être, à rejoindre la jeune femme dans sa chambre, mais la stupéfaction l’emporte, il reste figé, le dos contre l’oreiller, les mains à plat sur le matelas.

Il essaie de se calmer, parvient à reprendre ses esprits. Que faire ? Après quelques secondes de réflexion, il décide, à son tour, de frapper trois coups. Il tend la main vers la cloison, mais, au dernier moment, il hésite. Il allume la lampe de chevet, regarde autour de lui dans la chambre. Tout est en ordre, constate-t-il, comme s’il avait craint qu’un intrus se soit faufilé dans la pièce, ait déplacé les meubles à son insu. Il se retourne et frappe rapidement, presque furtivement, contre le mur. Le sort en est jeté, se dit-il. Si l’appel se renouvelle, il lui faudra se présenter à la porte de la chambre 33.

En effet, moins d’une minute plus tard les trois coups se font entendre à nouveau. Il enfile son pantalon et remet ses chaussures. Dans la salle de bains, il se rafraîchit le visage.

Courage, se dit-il en se regardant dans la glace. De quoi se plaint-il, d’ailleurs ? Une femme l’attend dans la chambre d’à côté, une femme, certes, trop belle pour lui, mais la vie n’est-elle pas faite de surprises, de surprises épouvantables ou extraordinaires ?

Il se force à sourire, se passe la main dans les cheveux.

À sept heures, le réveil de son portable sonne. Il a le temps de se doucher et, même, de prendre un petit déjeuner. Le départ des autocars est prévu à huit heures.

Dans la salle à manger, il guette en vain l’arrivée de l’Italienne. Les événements de la nuit lui paraissent confus, il ne sait plus très bien quelle est la part de réalité, de fantasme.

Malgré lui, il se sent un peu coupable à l’idée qu’il a peut-être manqué une occasion exceptionnelle.

Lentement, les voyageurs se regroupent dans le hall. Mais il n’aperçoit pas la jeune femme.

L’employée de la compagnie aérienne qui les a cornaqués la veille les invite à rejoindre les autocars. Ils sortent docilement de l’hôtel, en file indienne, s’avancent vers le parking. Le soleil brille, le vent est tombé. Le paysage alentour semble plus amène qu’au moment de leur arrivée. On aperçoit, au loin, les crêtes des Apenins.

Il s’assied à la même place qu’à l’aller, contre la fenêtre. Le car se remplit rapidement.

Munie d’une feuille de papier, l’employée de la compagnie aérienne parcourt l’allée centrale, compte les passagers. Elle descend, remonte quelques instants plus tard. Un conciliabule s’engage avec le chauffeur. Ce dernier se lève, procède à son propre comptage. Lorsqu’il passe à côté de lui, Vincent lui fait signe.

-Cosa succede ?

-Manca un viaggiatore, dit l’homme.

Il est huit heures et quart, les passagers commencent à s’impatienter. Par la fenêtre, il voit l’employée de la compagnie se diriger vers l’hôtel. Elle revient quelques minutes plus tard, s’assied derrière le conducteur. Vincent se lève.

-Somebody’s missing ? l’interroge-t-il.

La jeune femme acquiesce.

-What room ?

Elle semble hésiter à lui répondre, puis finit par lâcher : - 33. You know the person ?

Il fait non de la tête.

-You have visited the room ? demande-t-il.

- It’s empty.

Elle se tourne vers le chauffeur, lui fait signe de démarrer. À l’aéroport, il se précipite vers le comptoir de la compagnie, demande à voir le responsable.

C’est une femme d’une cinquantaine d’années, qui parle français. Il lui fait part de la disparition.

-Oui, dit-elle, je suis informée.

-Vous avez prévenu la police ?

Elle le considère avec méfiance. Il est vrai qu’il paraît nerveux, agité.

-Vous êtes un ami de la personne ? lui demande-t-elle.

- Non, je…

-Ne vous inquiétez pas, coupe-t-elle. Nous savons ce qu’il faut faire. L’embarquement va commencer. Bon voyage, Monsieur. » Dans l’avion, il essaie de lire le journal mais n’y parvient pas. Il se sent responsable. Mais de quoi, au juste ? De n’avoir pas frappé à sa porte ? De l’avoir laissée seule au milieu de la nuit ? C’est absurde. Il tourne les choses cent fois dans sa tête, cherche une explication plausible. Il finit par échafauder un scénario : à l’arrivée dans sa chambre d’hôtel, saisie par une profonde tristesse, en proie à une violente crise de mélancolie, la jeune femme n’a trouvé d’autre solution, d’autre réponse à son angoisse que de frapper contre la cloison.

Elle espérait confusément qu’il vienne lui parler, lui apporter un peu de réconfort. Elle a fini par se calmer, toute seule, sans pour autant trouver le sommeil. À l’aube, elle a renoncé à son voyage. Elle a rassemblé ses affaires, a quitté l’hôtel. Le gardien de nuit qui somnolait ne l’a pas vue sortir. Elle a longé la route jusqu’au village de San Giuliano Terme, situé à moins d’un kilomètre. Le soleil se levait, la marche lui a fait du bien. Sur la place du village elle s’est assise sur un banc. Plus tard, elle a trouvé un taxi. Elle est rentrée chez elle, tout simplement.

L’avion amorce sa descente. Une hôtesse lui fait signe de boucler sa ceinture de sécurité.

Vincent Decroos s’exécute, puis il tourne la tête vers le hublot, regarde les nuages en contrebas.

Oui, c’est cela… C’est la seule explication possible, se dit-il en fermant les yeux.

Book Excerpt Les plaisirs difficiles

bruits, il s’est imaginé des choses. C’est la fatigue, le vent, le périple en voiture dans les collines toscanes, les interminables explications fournies aux clients, l’attente à l’aéroport.

Il fait machine arrière, revient dans sa chambre. Sans attendre il se glisse dans le lit et, cette fois, ses yeux se ferment, ses paupières sont lourdes, une nuit d’encre l’envahit.

Fabio Amaya Prometeo ante el fuego, 2006 Tecnica mista s/lino 160 x 120 cm

Las voces del silencio para Fabio Amaya I Hay hombres que hacen propios el dolor ajeno, la ajena desesperación; hombres, con el oído atento al clamor de su prójimo, a su silencio; hombres, a quienes no les tiembla la voz en el momento de expresar su cólera.

Tal eres tú, en la noche que avanza , siempre presto al reclamo de la luz, hombre dado a observar con amor reverente el sufrimiento humano en su desgarradora desnudez.

Hurgas en su interior y nos devuelves todo lo que en ti queda aún por exorcizar la tortura, el exilio, la enfermedad: locura que en la memoria fija la nostalgia.

De esa garra tenaz, que apresa cuanto pasa, no importa cuán fortuito o veloz, se apodera tu alma ¿o es ella su perfecta encarnadura?

Insistes en mostrarnos, para que no olvidemos

Foto Andrea Livio © Fabio Amaya

cuán presentes y en acecho están esos ruinosos heraldos «que nos manda la Muerte».

Nadie, creo, conoce como tú la soledad, su aridez, su vacío, su blancura.

Por eso, sin dureza y sin monotonía, sabes dar color a la piel de los cuerpos desnudos (desnudez de la piedra, desnudez de la lava, desnudez de la arena), contra espacios que crean fondos inabarcables.

También la desnudez en el color expone sin recato la soledad humana.

Blanco y oscuro imponen al dibujo, elaborado con precisión científica, su inconmovible fuerza.

Sin embargo, cuando fue necesario, cuando la obra comenzó a acrecentar su variedad cromática, el dibujo, integrado a color y textura, sobre la tela se esparció en torrentes con los encrespamientos del dolor.

Fabio Amaya Piovean di fuoco dilatate falde - Inferno XIV:30 Dalla serie: «Guardando Dante», 2000 Tecnica mista s/lino 147 x 197 cm

II Si la pintura, Fabio, se hiciera con palabras, la tuya escogería aquellas que en Vallejo la soledad expresan en su médula más fieramente descarnada: «Golpes como del odio de Dios», el exilio como caída, la irreversible soledad del proscrito, algo que se ha hecho universal y tal vez, típico de este siglo; el desamparo, la orfandad, el abandono en la contemplación introspectiva, o en vuelo solo y desolado hacia las remotas esferas siderales, ya Narciso, ya Ícaro, ya Amaya, devuelto del abismal descenso a las entrañas del ser; devuelto del abismal ascenso.

Si la pintura se hiciera para sonar, la tuya sería un dúo, en el que el charango y la chirimía establecieran un contrapunteo, donde «la resaca de todo lo vivido se empozara en el alma».

Pero sucede que la pintura, en este caso, digo, se hace esencialmente con Amaya y las materias elegidas para dar cuerpo a sus visiones: lienzo crudo virgen, cuarzo, hierro, mármol, pigmentos, polvos de grafito, cola, disolventes, emulsiones, óleos.

Con estos elementos materiales

Fabio Amaya Danza inmóvil (Icaro postrado) Estudio XXII, 2007 Tecnica mista s/lino 90 x 90 cm

Fabio Amaya Figura en azul, 1999 Tecnica mista s/lino 147 x 197 cm

expresas universos del espíritu.

Prescindes del pincel y como el ciego de Gambazo, para recuperar el ideal antiguo de belleza, el retorno al Edén, a la gestualidad recurres en el trazo –las yemas de tus dedos, las palmas de tus manos–.

Abolido el pincel, eliminas el lápiz y pintura y dibujo ahora entablan un diálogo: en espejo se trueca la pintura, y cuanto es real en el dibujo experimenta una transformación, se hace transpuesto, críptico, fluctuante.

Tal mutación te asiste para relacionar lo que en el arte fuera para ti fogueo de hombre en soledad con el hombre que vive entre sus semejantes.

Tu obra hace sentir que es real y viva y que de cierto modo nos incluye.

Poesía de la soledad, la tuya, de una nueva y feliz coloración, de un actual y perenne movimiento que tiende a revelarnos los misterios de la continuidad.

Pablo Armando Fernández La Habana, enero, 1990

Fabio Amaya Distancia,1999 Tecnica mista s/lino 198 x 198 cm

Fabio Amaya Pensando en Gabriella, 1990 Tecnica mista s/lino 198 x 198 cm

A house made of steel and flesh Text by Fosco Bianchetti

Transmutations

O

1975

n the 22nd of April 2008, Giulia and I, coming from opposite directions, converged on Lubbock.

Lost in the middle of Texas, a point in nowhere, Lubbock has condensed into a substantial town the fine dust of farms and villages which once spread over miles of farmland.

Living in Europe, we would have never known of its existence, if not for a remarkable structure that Giulia had discovered in its vicinity and whose purpose was somewhat obscure to us.

The memory of that day is still vivid to me, but many months have gone by since.

And, as you will later understand, this lapse of time has now taken on a poignant resonance.

So far, in this play, I have introduced the place and our humble storytellers, but the two leading characters are still missing: Maria and Robert.

Maria, shining with the splendour of her youth and beauty, arrived from New York.

Robert, our beloved Robert, didn’t have to come.

He had been there, on and off, for a good part of his life and was expecting us.

The extras reached us piecemeal.

With the entire troupe in place, the next morning, we were ready to work on the task of shooting a fashion story for ‘Twill, the very purpose of our trip.

And this we did. Or, at least, so we thought. In hindsight, I have the sensation that a mysterious design had called us for the precise mission of acting the last scene of a play started 30 years ago. But let’s step back a few hours, to our first meeting with Robert.

The shape of the Steel House, our extraordinary shooting location, was not unknown to us, because our trip had been thoroughly planned for a long time.

As anticipated, the massive structure, covered by a delicate skin of thin rust, projected itself towards a deep canyon; its gigantic eye overlooking those lands with a curious gaze.

But, when we came close, we felt something that we could not have perceived in the small pictures that had attracted Giulia’s attention: a sort of supernatural energy emanating from the globular roundness of that immovable space ship.

Not frightening, and yet, that shell of knitted scrap-iron plates appeared to hide something mysterious.

1974 49

1975

There was a door, but, wisely, no locks or bells.

We timidly tapped on the entrance and, as you would expect from a piece of art, nothing happened.

The elaborate glass panelled gate was ajar and we found natural to push it a bit, and timidly step inside.

We paused, in awe of an astonishing, timeless cathedral that did not resemble anything we had ever seen, when Robert, suddenly, materialized from some opening, cheerfully greeting us.

Expecting a quixotic artist, his normality took me by surprise, because, with some exceptions, I have always regarded conteporary artists as performers whose fame needs their look, and overbearing ego, as much as their work.

It has always amazed me how often their search for the key to universal art drowns in vane pretence, choked by hopelessly egotistic narcissism.

50

Which, in the market, is more sellable than art, thus, as often, conveniently hiding their artistic failure in commercial success.

Conversely, Robert’s unassuming demeanour and his curiosity for our work revealed a modest disposition untouched by the arrogance of the weak.

Nothing in him revealed any pride for the years of toil and his achievement, but the tender affection that tied him to that inanimate creature was palpable.

Timid and gentle, he played the polite host. We played the polite guests.

And yet, there was something else looming behind the friendly atmosphere of that encounter, intriguingly touched by just a speck of sadness.

The next day was hectic.

Giulia, possessed by a creative frenzy and tormented by the anguish of not being able to capture the essence of that place, was taking pictures from all possible angles.

Her restless agitation contrasted starkly with the detached calm of Robert and Maria.

Robert was casually coming and going, while Maria, obedient and thoughtful, duly executed the usual modelling routine.

I tried to help with the lights.

But, between each take, the dress switches and make-up fixes let me a lot of spare time to talk.

I didn’t want to pry into Robert’s personal life, though, because, the day before, masked by his courtesy, I had perceived a certain uneasiness in letting strangers intrude into his own life.

May be, even a certain regret for having let us come so close to his nest.

He had not called us there; he had not been paid for the use of the location.

He had simply and naively accepted, out of kindness, our request.

Therefore, curious as I was, I felt that it would have been unfair to punish him with direct questions.

Our conversation, for a while, proceeded in the most conventional way, clearly disconnected from our deeper thoughts and from the weight of the past, and of the future.

1979

1978 Useless as they were, those fake and formal exchanges, broken by spurts of intense shooting activity, slowly developed into a growing complicity.

I told him of our chimerical ‘Twill project and of Giulia’s photographic dreams.

Robert told me of his younger days, when, long before Maria was born, 35 years in the past, he had chosen this wild and isolated cliff as the site for his architectural sculpture.

He could not exactly recall how and when the project of the house had suddenly become his recurring dream, an artistic urge that he could not escape.

The house, though, had never been part of a plan to astonish the world, to redeem humanity with a message of beauty and introspection.

Or so he thought. Not that he were spiteful of people, but he had absolutely no interest in becoming a celebrated artist, an oxymoron to him. He was in no

hurry, then. With the boundless future of the young fully open in front of him, he had easily committed to an inevitable journey with no destination.

He also explained how he had planned to transpose the Steel House from his mind to the real world.

The calculations, the foundations, the trusses, the plates‌ everything had been conceived and put in place by him, all alone. I was listening, deeply fascinated by his fantastic story.

And while he was talking, the album open on the table, my eyes glided over those grainy old pictures that had frozen instants of the construction phases and the merciless progress of time on his body.

My imagination wandering around that solitary fusion of flesh and metal, my mind pondering the meaning of that affectionate intimacy that excluded everybody else.

51

Then, he described how, plate after plate, year after year, the embryo of the Steel House developed into a fully formed being.

To impress those wonderful curves on the sculpture, he had flexed each single steel plate, his muscles pulling a handhoist then entrapping the rebellious energy of the springy metal with stitches of arc welding.

He was carefully proud to emphasize that the plates had not been “bent”, only “flexed”, ready to bounce back to the native flat, if let loose. Subdued, but not beaten! Each surface had absorbed moments of his life and this, to him, was no minor detail. In fact, it was the essence and soul of the house.

The rounded forms of the house shared with him the memory of the past negotiations between his artistic vision and the will of steel.

Having being made part of this secret, now I could nearly see how, in the constrained iron, his toil and soul 52

were preserved. The ferrous material reluctantly bowing to his genius, the energy of his body, inexorably, transferred to the house.

And I finally understood why he had passionately begged us not to scar that silky layer of rust that covered everything: it was his own skin. And the mysterious aura we had perceived the day before found its explanation: over three decades of endless efforts, a tremendous amount of energy had accumulated into the sculpture, finally enveloping the house in a powerful field of force. At this point, you may wonder if my recollections, entwined with my fantasies, can tell the tale from the truth.

But does it matter? The luscious pictures of Giulia give enough of a foothold to our story. And a reliable witness, the Steel House, is still there.

During the day, I had noticed how Robert had shared, with growing participation, our emotions and, eventually, I considered him part of the group.

The evening, we had dinner all together and, at the restaurant, I found a round table. It was clearly too small for the number of people. But I like the cosy feeling of physical contact and we squeezed next to each other, ready to enjoy the comfort of backstage complicity.

The thoughtless and gay atmosphere created by our youthful band definitely charmed Robert, the guest of honour.

At times, I could even see him radiant with glimpses of childish happiness.

The princess of the table was Maria, but Robert, after having watched Giulia at work, was definitely seduced by the energy and devotion that she offered her art. Most of all, I believe, he affectionately envied her naïve faith in the future.

The next day we started to work early and, like the day before, we kept talking, and talking. The three of us bound into one of those rare and strange friendships that are not based on common experiences or familiarity, but rather on untold feelings and deep respect.

Friendships that live in a world, parallel to your ordinary existence, where

1982

they can be cherished and forever stay silently close to your heart, needless of constant care.

As he was a man of wide interests and culture, our conversation touched varied subjects. I avidly enjoyed those casual chats, because the vantage point of his seclusion offered a different and enlightening perspective.

But, surrounded by the house and its countless fascinating details, we came frequently back to this subject.

So I learned that only recently, after all the years of work, the house had been brought to a liveable condition, with still a few unfinished bit and pieces.

He had just moved in a few weeks before. His mission nearly accomplished, I asked what plans he had for the future.

After a long silence, he briefly hinted to a much larger undertaking that did not leave him much room for anything else.

He did not elaborate, but I noticed a pensive light in his eyes. Cowardly, I did not pry further. I didn’t want to know

more, because, somehow, the gravity of his comment made me fear that his life was at stake.

And, in fact, it was, as I later understood.

The undertaking he had mentioned was a war. The battlefield his body, evil cells the enemy and chemotherapy his sword.

He appeared neither scared nor overly concerned, thought.

As always, as working on the house, his focus was in the process, not in the outcome.

Hiding my sadness, I let the show go on, take after take, because it had to go on, as we both knew.

Soon the curtain had to be lowered and we all had to play our role, ‘Twill being the last paragraph in the story line.

The Steel House had been Robert‘s journey for 35 years and now, long expected, but suddenly too close, the decree of time had to be executed.

And the transmutation of Robert into his sculpture being completed, the journey was close to the end. As guided from

above, we had been called there to celebrate that moment with joy rather than sorrow, to give a happy ending to the play of his life. According to the script, Maria, white skin in white dress, had to be there, standing in sharp contrast against the rusty plates of the house, as a symbol of the ever renovating flow of life. Her innocent face a tribute to a forthcoming rosy future, as it had yesterday been for the young Robert. We finished the shooting in the afternoon, as always, too late. In a rush, we warmly thanked and kissed Robert, the lack of time providentially hiding from me the meaning of that farewell. I quickly escorted everybody to the airport and they dispersed in opposite directions.

Suddenly the day had grown colder, and, in the approaching dusk, I began my long and solitary drive to Dallas. When home, as woken from a dream, we all went back to our daily chores, all absorbed in self-consuming activities bound to leave no trace. Occasionally, I thought of those two very special days, of Robert and his reassuring peace of mind, of his majestic

Steel House and its mysterious secret.

And I imagined Robert, inextricably melded with his sculpture, sometimes, thinking of us.

With Giulia we discussed the photo-story many times, something always delaying the publication. But time flies so fast, life is so greedy that, lost in the glittering of the world, I quickly forgot the brave fight of my friend. Thousand of miles away, time had another meaning and Lubbock was again a remote point in nowhere.

In December, Giulia received the following message from Mark, Robert’s neighbour and friend.

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2007 Dear Giulia, Many photographers have “documented” the Steel House including Robert himself, but he told me that your pictures were the first to “add” to the art of his home. To me, this is the highest compliment that he could have given. He was looking forward to visiting you in Europe. Alas, our dear Robert is gone. Tuesday morning on December 8 he died of an infection he contracted because his immune system was so lowered from his chemotherapy. Heroic measures were employed, because he was responding so well to his chemo. If only we could have got him over the infection. Giulia, your encounter and pictures gave him joy and excitement near the end of his life. Thank you for that.

Sincerely, Mark Lawson

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Giulia was desperate and cried for days.

I felt guilty for not having yet published those pictures, which he liked so much.

Our plans to go back to the Steel House and hand him a few copies of Twill, with the Steel House on the cover, shattered in emptiness. Eventually, time healed our grief and I was able to look at Robert and our adventure in a light of beauty, joy and hope. Hope in art as an expression of our feelings, not of our vanity. Hope in the individuality of man that can always redeem, and be redeemed, even when lost in the damnation of the masses.

Then, so as not to forget, I wrote this piece.

2008

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ENTANGLEMENTS PHOTOGRAPHER: GIULIA NONI STYLIST: HAZEL & DIANA @ WWW.THEREXAGENCY.COM & MARIANNA REDAELLI HAIR & MAKE UP: APRIL GREAVES

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ALESSANDRO DELL’ACQUA.

Corset, Farthingales LA .

Corset, Period Corsets.

Leotard, Hazel meets Heffington.

Corset, Farthingales LA. Leotard, Hazel meets Heffington.

Leotard, Hazel meets Heffington.

Blouse eN VOILE DI SETA RICAMATA, LA PERLA. Corset, Farthingales.

Shoes , Devious.

Corset, Farthingales LA. Leotard, Hazel meets Heffington.

Leotard, Hazel meets Heffington.

Dress and lace shirt, Patrizia Pepe. necklace, Daniel Von Weinberger. shoes, Tommy Hilfiger.

ARDENNES PHOTOGRAPHER: KURT STALLAERT PHOTOGRAPHERS ASSISTANT: BRITT GUNS HAIR & MAKE UP: SIGRID VOLDERS MODEL: KLODIANA AND LORE @ IMM BRUXELLES POSTPRODUCTION: THE LIVINGROOM

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Red dress and blouse, Annemie Verbeke. bikini bottom, Princesse Tam Tam. sunglasses, vintage Lacoste. havaianas flip flop, Brazil.

Shirt Levi’s.

Skirt Levi’s, vintage bra. headband, stylist’s own. doll necklace, Christophe Coppens.

T-shirt, Episode.

Leggings, Chine.

Bodysuit, Chine. dress, Jerome L’Hullier.

Sweetheart, KIM YOUNG HEE. (Sculpture 2D Published by rupa publishing)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KIM YOUNG HEE. (Sculpture 2D Published by rupa publishing)

ROBOTS, CHINESE LANTERN, KING KONG, KIM YOUNG HEE. (Sculpture 2D Published by rupa publishing)

BY LISA HILTON

GAZE

Foucault argues that beneath the dread Gaze, woman “vanishes as a biological entity and becomes instead a socially constituted product which is infinitely malleable and highly unstable’.

But what of women who seek to evade the discipline of the gaze by embracing it?

Who seek solace in the dictum that il faut souffrir pour etre belle? Consider Pauline reage’s exquisite novel L’Histoire d’O. From the first scene, on the journey to the libertines’ lair at Roissy, where O’s lover slices through the straps of her bra with his penknife, O’s story is concerned as much as anything with the challenges of being beautiful. The progress of her subjection, from the anonymous beatings and buggerings at Roissy through the procuring of her lesbian lover Jacqueline as a gift to the libertine collective to the final haunting choreography of the novel’s coda where O is displayed naked, shackled by the labia and masked as an owl to the guests of the sinister Commander, is as much concerned with fashion, of the freedoms and constrictions imposed by clothes, as with the delights available to the adventurous masochist.

O is troubling because its project is far more subversive than even the Sadean abandonment of any form of social contract as the only authentic path to pleasure. O is obsessed with emancipation not from gender norms but from the self herself, a consensual will to disempower. Beauty and fashion form the onjective correlatives to O’s psychological transformation.

Once she arrives at Roissy, the well-read connoisseur knows precisely what form her slavery shall take, since the chateau’s staging (though mercifully not the dragging prose in which it is described), is derived

from Sade. The women are costumed as eighteenth century chambermaids, the valets operettic Figaro derivatives. O’s own green gown is a couturier’s miracle, with strings to raise the skirts and frame her captive form like curtains on a stage, from which her torso rises like a slender nightmare flower. Staggering to her cell at night, drunk with beating, O’s progress is hampered by her towering Venetian chopines. When she returns to Paris, O must sacrifice her wardrobe as she has already sacrificed her body, spending a mournful two hours discarding the outfits and accessories which no longer suit his demands for accessibility. She has a sorry moment with her pink corset, and if she has to surrender slipover dresses, she muses practically, perhaps it’s still possible to obtain the same effect from a shirtwaist. O is then presented with new clothes, cunning boleros which unfasten to bare her breasts, cleverly zippered trousers with a convenient rear flap, taffeta corsets which violently confine her wait let leave her body open and vulnerable.

Given that most men would rather suffer the torments of Roissy to half an hour on the Via Montenapoleone or the Avenue Montaigne, it’s hard even for those of us not submissively inclined not to envy the interest O’s lover takes in her wardrobe.

Like any vocation, slavery is sartorially demanding, even though there are compensations when the snowy pavements of the Rue Royale create a delicious frisson as a stilletoed foot stirs up the ice against naked flesh.

Bathing suits are not an option for the Cote d’Azur- how to accommodate one’s labial padlock, and how to explain to the corsetiere that the breasts must never be

covered? Love demands private as well as public subjugation- O struggles with her makeup, discovering that ordinary lipstick refuses to cling where required, whilst the kissproof sort has a discouragingly arid tendency. The wearying reassembly of the self in preparation for its willful destruction is both punishment and pleasure. Like Swift’s battered Corinnas, O is constantly dragging herself from the “mangled plight” in which her lovers leave her and reforming anew for the next onslaught.

Thus she constructs herself, quite consciously, as an object to be taken apart.

O is a happy prisoner, but surely a slave who acknowledges her condition is no less a slave? In comparison with de Sade’s parodically distressed victims, imprisoned first in Gothic labyrinths and again by the psychopathically repetitive list-making of their creator, O’s masochism charms in the complex aesthetic of its detail. Yet her slave’s uniform, whilst it compels, also terrifies. Written in O’s very flesh is the violent disjunction of soul and body. Her submission is a radical reductio ad absurdum of fashion’s raison d’etre. Our manacles might come prettily packaged, but we should not deny the cut of their steel on our skin.

Look in the mirror. Ask who you are.

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PHOTOGRAPHER: STEVEN LYON 1ST ASSISTANT: MARTIN BAEBLER 2ND ASSISTANT: GARRETT LYON STYLIST: RUFUS KELMAN HAIR: LOUIS BESTER MAKE UP: SERGE HONDONOU MODEL: TAYLOR WARREN @ ELITE PARIS SET DESIGN: DOROTA OKULICZ SPECIAL THANKS: WILLIAM LITTMAN & FUJI FILM

STOCKINGS, FALKE. KNICKERS, PLEASURE STATE.

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BRACELET, ELA STONE.

STOCKINGS, FALKE. KNICKERS, PLEASURE STATE.

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GOLD BOLERO, LUTZ & PATMOS. STOCKINGS, FALKE. SHOES, FREELANCE.

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EARRINGS, ELA STONE. GOLD BOLERO, LUTZ & PATMOS STOCKINGS, FALKE. KNICKERS, PLEASURE STATE.

STOCKINGS, FALKE. KNICKERS, PLEASURE STATE.

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PHOTOGRAPHER: YANDIV ENDRY STYLIST: SIMON ELMALEM ASSISTANT STYLIST: ORIT EFRATY HAIR: JAN COHEN MAKE UP: SHIRLY VIENER MODEL: BRUNA B. @ MC2 TEL AVIV

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Dress and scarf, Tovale. pantyhose, Wolford. bag, Michal Edry.

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Dress, Eliance Stolero. scarf, Tovale. pantyhose, Wolford. shoes, Michel Perry. bag, Edry.

Dress, Arzi Ifrach. pantyhose, Tovale. scarf, Tovale. shoes, Michel Perry.

Dress, Lila Mist. scarf, Tovale. bag, Arzi Ifrach. brown bag, Louis Vuitton shoes, Michel Perry. pantyhose, Wolford.

Dress, Arzi Ifrach. scarf, Tovale.

Dolls house PHOTOGRAPHER: ELENE USDIN PHOTOGRAPHERS ASSISTANT: CÉCILE HENRYON STYLIST: CANDICE FAUCHON HAIR & MAKE UP: CÉLINE EXBRAYAT MODEL: AIDA MMANAGEMENT

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Dress, Paule Ka. leather jacket and sandals, Yves Saint Laurent at Montaigne Market.

Earrings, Helene Zubeldia.

Waistcoat, Diesel. top, Just Cavalli. short, Miu Miu. pump, Christian Louboutin. earrings, Viveka Bergtrom.

Waistcoat, Diesel. top, Just Cavalli. short, Miu Miu. pump, Christian Louboutin.

Perfecto, Guilty Brotherhood. dress, Gardem. open boots, Halston at Montaigne Market. bracelet, Ella Stone.

Dress, Sonia Rykiel. denim shirt, Zadig&Voltaire. glasses, Tom Ford. fingerless gloves , Eric Tibusch.

SUBURBIA

I look at the houses, i look at the girl, i watch her, IT kills me.

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2369

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PHOTOGRAPHY KOURTNEY ROY

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Nero Bianco Rosa PHOTOGRAPHER: JEAN PHILIPPE MALAVAL HAIR: BRUNO SILVANI @ JED ROOT MAKE UP: BRIGITTE HYMANS @ MF THAVONEKHAM MODEL: MARIE @ METROPOLITAN, ANNA @ VIVA, ILONA @ MARILYN POSTPRODUCTION: DOOR6 PARIS

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ATELIER PHOTOGRAPHER: TIM BRETT DAY STYLIST: CHARLIE ANDERSON @NAKED ARTISTS HAIR: TANAKA @ BALCONY JUMP MAKE UP: CLAUDINE HENDERSON@ NAKED ARTISTS MODEL: GRESANDE @ ELITE LONDON

Pink silk bustier dress, Dior.

Silk and glass beaded dress, Etro.

Orange leather shoes, Sergio Rossi Orange bead necklace, Pebble. brown lucite bangle, Alexis Bittar.

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Black silk top, Brown hessian skirt , Red silk toga style pleated skirt, Brown and black hessian shoes, all by Miu Miu. Brass, copper and silver necklaces, Pebble.

Turquoise, coral and metal cuff bracelet, Erickson Beamon. gold vermeil bangles, Alexis Bittar.

Beige silk fringe dress, Alberta Ferretti.

Blue tulle, feather and diamante capelet, Manish Arora.

Blue patent leather and beaded shoes, Andrew GN. Gold vermeil segmented cuff bracelets, Manguette.

Natural feather and tulle dress, Julien Macdonald.

Pink leather and fabric shoes, Manolo Blahnik.

Large turquoise necklace, Pebble.

Brown/cream speckled shell necklace, Dark wood and metal inlay curved bracelet, Pebble. earrings, Turquoise, coral and metal cuff bracelet, both by Erickson Beamon. brown and red lucite bracelets, Alexis Bittar.

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PHOTOGRAPHER: GARY EDWARDS FASHION: ILARIA BARANI HAIR: MARCO TESTA AND KILLIAN HARTMAN MAKE UP: KRISTEN ARNETT AND MARTINA CARPANESE MODEL: ALEXANDRA PIANKA AND VIVENNE VIDAL @ JOY MILAN POST PRODUCTION STUDIO_VANBRAND

dress, jorando. shoes, Ungaro. watch, Timex 80.

dress ioannis dimitrousis. bracelet, maria francesca pepe. shoes, gianni barbato.

dress, Rohka. belt, Ugo Cacciatori shoes, Robert Clergerie - Paris. bracelets, Ugo Cacciatori. tights, wolford.

dress, bluemarine. leggings, wolford. necklace, frankie morello. sandals, robert clergerie - paris.

dress, Normaluisa.

Hat, Naoki Takizawa legging, Margela. shoes, santacroce. groche, ugo cacciatori.

Goodbye Emmanuelle PHOTOGRAPHER: ANGELIKA BUETTNER FASHION: ILARIA BARANI HAIR: DAVID MARTINEZ @ WWW.SYBILLEKLEBER.COM MAKE UP: SARA LEROY-TERQUEM @ WWW.SYBILLEKLEBER.COM MODEL: INGA @ IMG PARIS POSTPRODUCTION: BENEDIKTE MESLIN @ WWW.FUTUREMATIX.COM

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Gown with lace fringes, Chantal Thomas.

Top, Jitrois.

High waist latex knickers, Atzuko Kudo.

Crystal whip, Agent Provocateur.

Black elephant print leather sandals, Raphael young.

Lace kimono, Roberto Cavalli.

Underwear, malizia by la perla.

Latex holdup stockings, Atzuko Kudo. shoes, Vivienne Westwood.

Eiffel gold necklace, Vieilles canailles.

LEATHER HOTPANTS WITH BRACKETS, Agent Provocateur.

BRA, Roberto Cavalli.

HAT, Katie Eary.

POSCHETTE, Maria Francesca Pepe. mabe’ PEARLS SILVER NECKLACE, Ugo Cacciatori.

bra and pasties, Agent Provocateur. latex briefs and fingerless latex gloves, Atzuko Kudo. silver rings, Ugo Cacciatori. suspender belt, Agent Provocateur.

LACE AND PEARLS NECkLACE, Anteprima.

SHAWL, Bee Queen.

HIGH WASTED LATEX coulottes, Atzuko Kudo.

JACKET, Vivienne Westwood. baby doll, Fifi Chachnil.

LATEX STOCKINGS, Atzuko Kudo. shoes, Marsell. bow hat, Federica Moretti.

Top, Jetrois. briefs la perla. latex blind fold, Atzuko Kudo. gold and silver bracelets, Ugo Cacciatori.

underwear, Agent Provocateur. latex cincher belt , Atzuko Kudo. sandals, Giuseppe Zanotti. leather and silver necklace used as bracelet, Ugo Cacciatori.

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portraits by alyosha quooss

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dress, AZZEDINE ALAIA. stockings, BERNHARD WILLHELM. necklaces, YOSHIKO CREATION and AMERICAN APPAREL. shoes, AZZEDINE ALAIA.

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COVER, DAVID BOWIE ALADIN SANE. PHOTO BY MASAYOSHI SUKITA

PHOTOGRAPHER: SABINE VILLIARD PHOTOGRAPHERS ASSISTANT: HANNA BLUETHMANN STYLIST: ANNABELLE JOUOT HAIR & MAKE UP: SYLVIE CLAIRE BLAVET MODEL: GAELLE H @ ELITE PARIS SIMON @ SUCCESS PARIS

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dress, AZZEDINE ALAIA. stockings, BERNHARD WILLHELM. necklaces, YOSHIKO CREATION and AMERICAN APPAREL. shoes, AZZEDINE ALAIA.

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COVER, ROLLING STONES TATOO YOU. PHOTO BY ANTON CORBIJN

COVER, THE ROLLING STONES GOATS HEAD SOUP. PHOTO BY DAVID BAILEY.

sweatshirt, AMERICAN RETRO. belt, SONIA RYKIEL. leggings-skirt, BERNHARD WILLHELM. necklaces, YOSHIKO CREATION and AMERICAN APPAREL. bracelet AND ring, YOSHIKO CREATION. shoes, AZZEDINE ALAIA.

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SHE WEARS sweatshirt, BLAAK. leggings, REPETTO. necklaces, YOSHIKO CREATION & AMERICAN APPAREL. bracelets, POPY MORENI. HE WEARS jacket, KOSTAS MURKUDIS. trousers, RAF SIMONS.

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COVER, IKE AND TINA TURNER WORKIN’ TOGETHER. PHOTO BY HERB KRAVITZ.

SHE WEARS Jacket, KOSTAS MURKUDIS. leggings, AMERICAN APPAREL. necklaces, YOSHIKO CREATION and AMERICAN APPAREL. earings, bracelet AND ring ,YOSHIKO CREATION. turban, stylist’s own.

COVER, JOHN LENNON AND YOKO ONO DOUBLE FANTASY. PHOTO BY KISHIN SHINOYAMA.

HE WEARS jacket, JUUN J. trousers, PETAR PETROV. hat, stylist’s own.

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L’amour 174

Noir

PHOTOGRAPHER: JORG SCHIEFERECKE STYLIST: FRANK OBERBERGER @ AVENGER PHOTOGRAPHERS HAIR & MAKE UP: EROL KOYU @ AVENGER PHOTOGRAPHERS MODEL: MONIKA K @ MD MANAGEMENT

DRESS,KAVEH. BELT, FLIP MUNICH. SHOES, VICINI.

DRESS, SHIVA DIVA.

DRESS, PATRICIA PEPE. HEAD PIECE, JOHN GALLIANO

TOP, PATRICIA PEPE. TIGHTS, PALMERS. HOT PANTS, PRADA. SHOES, ALESSANDRO DELL ACQUA.

FUTURISM REBORN

CHORDS

BY BEN HARRIS

I’ve got to get out. It’s like an infection.

The only thing I can feel, every other sense has deserted me. Even the fear that’s kept me here, that’s turned me into this, what I’ve become… Suddenly I’m on my feet, it’s not a conscious choice but it’s like something’s snapped inside. It’s still me.

I’m opening the door and I get swamped by the light and the noise. Sanctuary is passed. Ignore them, don’t let them call me, don’t look up don’t respond look normal. Just keep going, this is what I’m thinking. The noise they make swims in a distant chamber I remember and wanted but its on another level somewhere out of reach. Hearing my name I carry on, the eyes follow but it’s okay, they don’t hurt, they don’t delve like hers. A flash of blonde, I think I mumble something but I can’t be sure. The gate, the light is there I walk for it, no one stops me and the water I’m wading through parts with relief as I reach the air and I breathe like it’s the first time. It’s like this inescapable feeling something’s going to happen, I can’t remember time before this feeling.

That I know I am not free. But I turn the key and hear the engine’s thunder. I’m off into the hordes of flesh and machines, of lights and stone and I know I’m safe for now. Three blocks down and my hands are sweating all over the wheel, I’m just sitting, existing, trying to quell the fear that knows I can’t remember how I got here. Was there anything before this?

I pull out a cigarette - something real, something tangible. As I feel for a lighter it’s a few seconds before I scream and realize it’s burning a hole through my hand. This is MY reality. Shrill. I leave the phone ringing around me and smile.

And laugh at my smile. The inevitability of their call keeps me warm and I wonder how they’re panicking now. The window

comes down and the phone departs to be crunched from pillar to post. That’s the power of my will. One of their machines on one of their machines. I feel stronger than I’ve felt since the day this all began.

This is it. This is the moment I’ve been trying to dream of. And then it happens.

From nowhere. The light drains from my body. I’m empty. I’m nothing. Now you know what I’ve been talking about all along. Can you feel it? Or not feel it? Is it possible to feel nothing? The pulling.

Half like a longing, half like a need. A love, an addiction. I can tell you it’s not real but when it hits you it’s not just something it’s the only thing. No forwards, no backwards. Just Now. And there’s a part of you that wants it. I’d love to pretend to you there isn’t but then I’d just be doing exactly what they want me to do. It splits you into pieces. Instantly I’m out. I’m in between the cars and one of them spins me round but my eyes are not for them.

The horns sound but they don’t even come close. Don’t they know I’m beyond that?

This is it. I’m strong. This is my end. Just got to keep my thoughts narrow until I get to the station. Or maybe this isn’t feeling at all? I have the strength remaining for one single focus. I have to keep it all out but there! You feel that? It’s clever, it cycles round. You’re watching the front while it seeps like mercury in the back. You think it’s you but it isn’t; it’s them! Think about not thi nking about it and you’re thinking about it. Every single second is a losing battle and the circles get smaller but I can still do it. Grand Central Station.

Grand Central Station, say and believe.

Picture it, feel it smell it, just like I learned.

Breathe.

Breathe.

Slow.

The street opens up for me as though it’s right. There’s a warmth creeping up my spine and into my neck. New York she still loves me, after all we’ve been through. The warm feeling you have to feel for yourself. I’m quite sure about that.

Please tell me this what I’ve left behind all this time. And that’s when I see it: the crowd. Women and children and suits and screams. I follow their wild eyes up and up and up and up. I can’t see I’m too far but I can feel their fear. Someone on the edge and too high. They’re going to fall and somehow it’s about me. It’s familiar. Somehow I’ve seen it but not like that, it’s deeper. Like deja vu. I don’t have to think because I’m running.

Across and through and through and up and in. With my hands across my face I press the button. Don’t look don’t let them in but somehow the pain is leaving, the need is washing away. All I know is I have to get there, it all makes sense now.

I have to save her. The doors open at the top and I run and it’s like it’s all behind me… Is what behind me? Everything works now all light and I’ve never been this fast. I know I can get there and as she falls she won’t fall, I’ll put out my arm and she’ll take it. I’m running down the tunnel but which door? So many and they all look identical in black and green and the heavy silver handle. No way of knowing and seconds are passing and I fly past the doors and then it hits me… I must use it, I must for this last time before I leave. This it what it should have been like; this is why I’m here! So I look up at the doors and somehow it’s not nearly as frightening as I expected. They’re like an old friend and as soon as we make contact I can see it. The sequence stretches out in front of me, making my senses tingle again. How could I refuse it? Why would I deny it? Within itself I always knew it was alive, greater than me. Things don’t matter when it’s like this, like it was in the beginning. The sequence leads, as it always did, to an inevitable conclusion.

We’re dealing in absolutes. The door with no number. Of course! I’m there, hold on I shout, conviction back in my voice for the first time, it feels good to be me again.

My hands grasps the silver handle and sure enough, we turn it together….

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Futurist Film Uncovered The serendipitous genesis of a Futurist Photoromanzo

Futurism has been an important movement in the early 20th century, but its legacy has never left the world of art. Occasionally, it has appeared in overt form, as with the Neo-Futurist and Post-Futurist revivals, more often just as an influence.

Recently, many exhibitions linked to the centennial celebrations of Futurism have brought this movement in the limelight.

This attention is probably the underlying cause for the discovery of an unknown script for a futurist film. It is amazing that this document has survived two wars and about hundred years of neglect, but even more surprising is how the script has fallen into our hands. This is a little story in itself and we have asked Mr. Tomas Carpenter to let us publish the correspondence that eventually has led him to ‘Twill and ‘Twill to publish a Futurist “photoromanzo” based on that lost project.

Proud to unveil this rare finding, we offer this production as our homage to Futurist artists.

From: Tomas Carpenter To: editor@timesliterary supplement.co.uk Dear Ms Franklin, I write to you in the hope that you might be interested in a remarkable discovery which has recently been made in my family. I have learned that my great great grandfather was the Italian Futurist artist Umberto Boccioni and have come into possession of a script for a film that he was planning to make at the time of his death in 1916. As one of the most important representatives of Futurism in Europe, I felt sure that the draft for his last work would be of interest to the TLS. Perhaps you might like to publish it, with a commentary? You can contact me at the email address above. Many thanks for your time and consideration, your faithfully, Tomas Carpenter From: editor@timesliterarysupplement.co.uk To: Tomas Carpenter Dear Mr. Carpenter, Thank you for your interest in the TLS. Unfortunately, in the present climate, it would be inappropriate for us to associate ourselves with a movement which defined its intentions as “ We will glorify war- the world’s only hygiene-militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of freedom bringers… and scorn for women”. I wish you luck with your project. Your, Frieda Franklin From: Tomas Carpenter To: stevebrown@lightbox productions.co.uk Dear Mr Brown, I greatly admired your company’s recent documentary “ Cubism and the Violent Twentieth Century” and wished to bring another potential project to your attention.

My great great grandfather, the Italian Futurist artist Umberto Boccioni, exhibited in London at the Sackville Galleries in 1912, during which time he met my great great grandmother, then a student at the Slade. Though they never married, my great great grandparents remained in correspondence and before Boccioni’s death he sent a film script for safekeeping to London, which has recently emerged at our home here. Given your interest in twentieth century art, I thought that the script might be of interest to you, either as the subject for a documentary or as a potentially realizable fim project in its own right. I would be happy to meet and discuss the idea with you whenever convenient. You can contact me at the email address above. With many thanks for your time and consideration, I remain yours faithfully, Tomas Carpenter From: lily@lightboxproductions.co.uk To: Tomas Carpenter Hi Tomas, Steve Brown asked me to let you know that he’s in LA for the next three months.

Best, Lily From: serena6@wanadoo.fr To: Tomas Carpenter Hey, T, How’s London? Any news on your aged ancestor? Love Serena From: Tomas Carpenter To: serena6@wanadoo.fr Hey Serena, Thanks for getting in touch. Can’t say I’m getting anywhere with the Boccioni project. It seems ironic, really, that Marinetti wrote about their contempt for “the spineless worshipping of old canvases, old statues and old bric a brac” and then the script turns up in the attic after the funeral, next to an ironing board and dad’s old skis! The film is really mad- you know they were obsessed with the colour red? Boccioni has this huge red horse in that painting “States of Mind”- well this is all about painted women and the idea that objects and their surroundings can’t be separated. Mental but fascinating. I guess I’ll keep trying. How’s Paris? Love T

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Futurist Film Uncovered From: Tomas Carpenter To: gcox@bbc.3.co.uk Dear Ms Cox, I have recently come into possession, through family connections, of the original draft of Umberto Boccioni’s last projected work, a film script which he was hoping to produce at the time of his death in 1916. I feel that this would be an ideal project for BBC 3, perhaps as part of a series on Futurism. If this interests you, please do not hesitate to contact me at the email address above. Many thanks for your time and consideration, yours faithfully, Tomas Carpenter From: gcox@bbc3.co.uk To: Tomas Carpenter Dear Mr Carpenter, At present BBC 3 is not accepting submissions, but many thanks for your interest. Yours, Gail Cox From: andrewferguson@sharkagents.co.uk To: Tomas Carpenter Dear Mr Carpenter, I recently heard from Frieda Franklin at the TLS that you are in possession of an original Boccioni manuscript. Have you any interest in taking on representation for the project? We should be very glad here at Shark to learn more about your plans. Yours, A Ferguson From: Tomas Carpenter To: andrewferguson@sharkagents.co.uk Dear Mr Ferguson, Thank you so much for getting in touch and for your kind interest. It’s a fascinating story. As you probably know, the Futurists got started in 1909 with Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (for whom I am named), when he published his manifesto Le Futurisme in Le Figaro. He demanded an art of the “young and strong”, rejecting the languourous posturing of the nineteenth century aesthetes and allying himself with science, technology, iconoclasm and, most controversially, war. Futurist art was to be instead an aesthetic of violence, discontinuity, a weapon if you like. I studied Futurism as part of my Art History degree, but it was only recently that my interest in it began to seem-well, almost hereditary. Umberto Boccioni was a friend of Marinetti’s and one of the bestknown exponents of the Milan school of Futurists. In 1912 he showed here in London, at the Sackville gallery, and at the vernissage he met my great great grandmother, an art student named Hester Wilson. We know from her diary and my grandmother’s stories that they fell in love, and my grandfather was conceived during Boccioni’s visit, but Umberto had to return to Italy, where he died in 1916 whilst training as a cavalry officer. They never met again, but he and Hester wrote to one another and some of their letters have stayed in the family. recently my grandfather passed away, and when we cleared his home in Chelsea we found a box in the attic containing some sketches and a script for a film that Boccioni had sent to Hester for safekeeping. I am passionately interested in the Futurist project, and feel that it would be a tribute to Umberto Boccioni to bring his vision to life. I have approached several potential leads, but so far without success. I would be thrilled if you could help me in any way. I look forward to hearing from you, with best wishes, Tomas From: andrewferguson@sharkagents.co.uk To: Tomas Carpenter Dear Tomas, We would be most interested in representing you. We charge a finder’s fee of £500 and would expect to take 50% of any future earnings on the project. Yours, A Ferguson To: serena6@wanadoo.fr From: Tomas Carpenter Hey Serena, Great to talk to you last night. I’m just about in despair. That agent’s having a laugh, right? I think maybe the best thing would be to try to sell the stuff to one of the auction houses and just forget about it and go travelling. They just don’t want to know. Glumly, T

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Futurist Film Uncovered From: serena6@wanadoo.fr To: Tomas Carpenter T, Don’t give up! There’s a magazine fashion (know, I know, but still) It’s the Future”. Maybe they’d be the right a stylist if she can get a contact for

I’ve seen here, reckons itself as intellectual called ‘Twill and their tag line is “A Toast to sort of people? I could ask my friend Anna who’s you. Let me know, Serena x

From: Tomas Carpenter To: serena6@wanadoo.fr Thanks, worth a go, I suppose.

From: annalepeyre@wanadoo.fr To: Tomas Carpenter Salut, Tomas, J’ai recu ton email de Serena. Elle m’explique que t’as un project qui peut etre interressant pour ‘Twill magazine. Je viens de faire un shooting pour eux, et le nom de l’editrice est Lisa Hilton . Tu peux le contacter sur lisahilton@gmail.com . Amities, Anna From: Tomas Carpenter To: lisahilton@gmail.com Dear Ms Hilton, I received your details from Anna LePeyre, and hoped you might be interested in a project I’m developing on Futurism for inclusion in the magazine. Maybe you could call me on 0207 834 8657? Many thanks, look forward to hearing from you, Tomas Carpenter From: lisahilton@gmail.com To: foscobianchettied@twill.com Ciao Fosco, I’ve just spoken to an English guy named Tomas Carpenter. Check this outhe’s a direct descendant of Umberto Boccioni! aAnd he’s got an original film script from 1916 that he’s been shopping around. So, I did a bit of research, and what’s fascinating about Boccioni is that he was the more spiritual of the Futurist thinkers- he took the idea of the technological triumph of humanity over nature and turned it into a sort of metaphysical outlook, conflating the object with it’s environment. Boccioni wanted to capture the essence of objects as well as their forms (look at his sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space to get an idea, it’s in the Tate), and to meld discrete art forms to capture the synaesthesia of reality- smell becomes touch, movement becomes sound and so on. I know we can’t exactly make a movie and stick the DVD on the cover, but do you think we could shoot this?L x From: foscobianchettied@twill.com To: lisahilton@gmail.com Ciao bella, Sounds promising. What do you have in mind? F x PS where’s your copy?

From: lisahilton@gmail.com To: foscobianchettied@twill.com Fosco, Get off my case about the sodding copy! This is what I’m thinking. Tomas has mailed me a synopsis of the script, which is a sort of choreography of colour and light playing over the female body. I looked into some Futurist poetry, the idea of parole in libertà (they were totally bonkers, these guys), and it’s virtually uninterrupted lists of nouns, conceptually quite similar to the way a photographer shoots images in sequence and then imposes narrative. We can inhabit the Futurist idea visually, if you will.

Then, the suggestion of the ineffable within the object, the blurring of boundaries in the material world. What if we incorporated something else- something concrete, that also played with the idea of deception and the fragility of perception? That guy with the sculpture place might be able to help. I think we should go for it. L x

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Futurist Film Uncovered From: lisahilton@gmail.com To: Tomas Carpenter Hey Tomas, It was great to talk to you and the synopsis you sent was very helpful. We would love to shoot this as a story. Could you maybe give us a couple of hundred words on your feelings about the script to include alongside the pictures? I’ll let you know what the schedule is, and you’d be very welcome to attend the shoot. Best, Lisa From: Tomas Carpenter To: serena6@wanadoo.fr Serena, Result! Thanks so much. I’ll keep you posted, love T From: lisahilton@gmail.com To: foscobianchettied@twill.com Ciao, I’ve copied you in on Tomas’s copy, as below.

A Toast to the Future

In his 1909 manifesto Le Futurisme, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti wrote “We rebel against…everything which is filthy and worm-ridden and corroded by time. We consider the habitual contempt for everything which is young, new and burning with life to be unjust and even criminal”. Well, so do I. My great great grandfather, the Futurist painter, sculptor and writer Umberto Boccioni left the manuscript of his final work in London in 1916, and it did indeed become worm-ridden, though thankfully not corrupted by time. Although the Futurist project was overcome by the outbreak of war and has subsequently been perceived as no longer politically correct, I believe that the Futurists were both sincere and correct in their desire to establish not only new art forms, but new ways of looking at art, as a means of breaking down the hierarchies and stereotypes which had stultified creativity in Europe by the end of the nineteenth century. Now more than ever, it seems right that the conventions of art should be challenged, that we should teach ourselves to reconsider what art is and what it means to us. Conceptual art has had its day, and for me the allure of Futurism is that it allies genuine technical competence and an interest in (an albeit disturbing) aesthetic with a powerful philosophy.

I am delighted that ‘Twill has had the courage to take on this project. The magazine is committed to breaking down prejudice and commonplace thought in a way of which I’m sure my great great grandfather would have approved. I hope the result will be a new, original and challenging manifesto for the future.

C. Tomas Carpenter 2009

From: foscobianchettied@twill.com To: Tomas Carpenter Dear Tomas, I understand the publishers that rejected your proposal, definitely too daring for most readers. At ‘Twill, on the other hand, we enjoy picking up with an open mind stimulating artistic and intellectual challenges. It is a luxury that we can afford, because ‘Twill is an intellectual project more than a magazine and we don’t have to please specific readers-customers. In conclusion, we are extremely happy and grateful to you for the opportunity that you are giving us. As you may know, ‘Twill publishes in every issue a “photoromanzo”, which, in its unique form, has created a new genre of expressive art: something in between a film and a photo story. Of course we don’t produce films, but we believe that our photoromanzo can be an ideal medium to give life to the script of your great ancestor. In essence, we will use the aesthetics of our time to interpret the poly-expressive symphony and photo-dynamism theorized by futurist cinema.

Unfortunately, most dialogs are missing from Boccioni’s script, but appropriate words taken from the literature of the period have been used to fill the gaps. The photoromanzo will be published in ‘Twill #12. The task is definitely not easy, but I trust that we will not disappoint you!

Fosco Bianchetti - Director

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