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Mel Chin
03 / 03 / 2000
Lecture / Presentation
Discussion over the projects "Revival Fields" and "In the
Name of the Place"
Mel Chin (USA)
Mel Chin lecture, Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, 03 / 2000
Revival Fields Project Website
The
artist Mel Chin (USA) will introduce in a rare presentation and the first
time in Germany, his collaborative methodology via different works. Chin's
heterogeneous praxis include: his current work with MIT, a car-driving video
game as a new narrative form, threaded through an urban space generated by
specific nomadic carpet patterns; "Jerusalem OS", the concept for an open
source computer operating system based on the city map of Jerusalem, that
should go online and allow programmers to adapt it further; 'GALA Committee',
a group developed under the title "In The Name of The Place" (1997) for the
American TV series Melrose Place. The collaboration between different individuals
and institutions within the project "In The Name of The Place", concentrated
mainly on the development and placement of specific related artifacts (which
included the main set of 'The Bar' which is now the 4th floor of Künstlerhaus
Stuttgart as an extended loan from the Twodo collection). During the collaboration
the series reached millions within the television audience. "In The Name of
the Place" is an experiment - an ecology sketched out by Chin - between museums,
mass media and artistic praxis, which was intended to shed light onto a yet
unexplored creative field. The final auction of the works distributed the
money to two charities supporting minorities and women over 35 who wished
to continue university studies, echoing the classical public TV mandate of
"information, education, entertainment".
For this introduction, Mel Chin will also introduce another project, "Revival
Field", which began in 1990 as a trial series whose first version spanned
over three years. That project helped manifest the first actual soil tests
for 'hyperaccumulators' - plants that may prove to help detoxify soil contaminated
from heavy metals. The aesthetic of the "Revival Field" developed out of Chin's
continuing interest in alchemy and research on transformative processes as
well as the mutability of natural materials. The polluted soil is to be set
in a process that returns it to a cleaner state as a foundation for a rich
ecosystem. The first "Revival Field" was created on a former landfill in Minnesota,
a site which was polluted by cadmium, zinc and lead. Six different hyperaccumulators
were planted as wall as different soil treatments developed. Chin's field
trial was based on his dialog and work with the research of the American scientist
Rufus Chaney. The sites were chosen from the National Priority Cleanup list
from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Currently Chin has been in
discussion considerng the possibilities of creating a "Revival Field" in Stuttgart.