“A border is not a connection but an interval of resonance, and such gaps abound in the Land of the DEW Line. The DEW Line itself, the Distant Early Warning radar system installed by the United States in the Canadian North to keep this continent in touch with Russia, points up a major Canadian role in the twentieth century, the role of hidden ground for big powers. Since the United States has become a world environment, Canada has become the anti-environment that renders the United States more acceptable and intelligible to many small countries of the world; anti-environments are indispensable for making an environment understandable.” "The artist is an antenna" The Geodesic Radome is the ultimate metaphor symbolising the shift in modern warfare in the second half of the 20th century: an architecture that distributes its structural tension through a network similar to the communication network it shelters. Paul Virilio argued in 1975 “the bunker is the last theatrical gesture in the endgame of Occidental military history”; and it could be argued the geodesic dome is one of the first known architectures to introduce the theatre of communication and networked warfare. With the onset of the Cold War, reality shifted into game theory where communication of ideologies between players became as much propaganda as defense asset—such as the strategy of M.A.D (Mutually Assured Destruction). In order for such strategies to be implemented new infrastructures were built such as the high arctic DEW Line (Distant Early Warning). A joint venture between the US Air Force and the Royal Canadian Airforce, the DEW Line was a network of remote radar and communication stations extending from Alaska, across Canada, to Denmark's Greenland. Always on alert for Russian bombers flying over the icecap to deliver nuclear warheads, the stations required new technological developments in radar, automatic signal detection and the Buckminister Fuller rigid radome. Today these same countries (Canada, Russia, US, and Denmark) are again turning their attention towards the North driven this time by what could be called the “Warm War.” The Cold War might have been a successful negotiation over the frozen landscape of the Arctic but will the current battle over natural resources and sovereignty in a rapidly melting world share the same quiet fate? A germane topic today, sustainability is not just a question concerning a particular architectural design but the infrastructure and networks between nation states that will determine not only what—but who—is sustained in the future. The DEW Project revisits the issue of boundaries—both in regards to the environment and sovereignty—while observing how communication technology plays a pivotal role in the definition and delivery of such ideologies.
: : Media Contact : : post[a]stankievech.net : : download Press Kit with press-ready images [70MB] : : download 1min audio mp3 for media purposes [1.4MB] : : Exhibition Schedule: |
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