Ghost Nature

Caroline Picard

The predominant cultural tradition prioritises humankind and human culture above all other life forms – a linear, anthropocentric narrative wherein the human appears as the latest, most developed draft of life in a grand opera of consciousness; the opera begins with the origin of a universe that has since continued until now, forward from the darkest beginning of A to an elusive horizon of B: that spot in the distance that shall never be reached. The following exposition reflects notes, quotations, and autobiographical incidents that muddle this mythology. This assemblage of sources composes a constellation without beginning, centre, or end in an effort to enact a more general and omniscient intellectual environment that highlights the longstanding hierarchical expectations inherent in the Western world.

Jeremy Bolen, 350 feet above the Large Hadron Collider #1–4, 2012. Archival pigment prints, neodymium magnets, 14 1/2 × 18".

‘Such photographs redefine the parameters and expectations of photography, undermining its most basic tradition. If a photograph does not document some measure of light, then what? In the case of Jeremy Bolen, negative film can document radioactivity. The scarring of its surface appears like spots and halos of light; these look alien and abstract. They map the footprint of phenomena […] onto paper. In Above/below ground and In the Fox River at NPL-11 (remnant of radiam dial company), Ottawa, IL, photographs were placed underground in Ottawa, a town where radium watches were produced. Imagine all the employees – mostly women – painting tiny numbers on watch and clock dials. They used a radioactive paint called “‘undark”. Sometimes they painted their nails with the stuff to brandish show off glow-in-the-dark hands. People grew ill from exposure. More and more people. They stopped making the watches, and maybe because they didn’t have any better way to handle the town’s traumatic loss, they just tore the factory down. Contaminants leached into the ground, spilling into the water. More people (and plants and animals) grew sick. Bolen buried unexposed photography film in this town. It bears a record of the still palpable radioactivity, reminding us to respect what is invisible. Yet also, you see sediment on part of the Ottawa diptychs – this comes from the still-running river.’ – Excerpt from ‘The Net of Invisible Things’, my catalogue essay for Hyde Park Art Center’s 2012 Ground Floor Exhibition.

Jeremy Bolen is a Chicago-based artist and educator interested in site-specific, experimental modes of documentation and presentation. Much of Bolen’s work involves rethinking systems of recording in an attempt to observe invisible presences that remain from various scientific experiments and human interactions with the earth’s surface. Bolen received his MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2012 and is a recent recipient of a Center for Land Use Interpretation Residency in Wendover, Utah, and the Provost Award for Graduate Research from the University of Illinois at Chicago. His work has been exhibited at various venues, including Galerie Zürcher, Paris; Andrew Rafacz, Chicago; Salon Zürcher, New York; The Drake, Toronto; Untitled, Miami; Gallery 400, Chicago; DePaul University Art Museum, Chicago; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; and Roots and Culture, Chicago.

Jeremy Bolen, Above/Below ground and In the Fox River at NPL-8 (remnants of radium dial company), 2012. Archival pigment print, sediment from Fox River, 14 × 11" ea.

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