The artwork Archimedes’ Chamber from my series Critical Mass is featured in the Vladem Contemporary exhibition Off-Center, on display from June 8, 2024 through September in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
This multi-media installation features photography, video, sound, and poetic work, tied together in three brushed steel frames. This is the first time that the entire piece, including the inner chamber, has been exhibited since 1997 at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. The Portal to Archimedes’ Chamber was first shown at San Francisco Camerawork in 1991, and again at the New Mexico Museum of Art in 2011.
For this piece, Ellen Zweig reconstituted writing from Robert Oppenheimer, Edith Warner and the Bhagavad Gita to make her poetic soundwork. Voices in the soundwork include Joan La Barbara, poet Nathaniel Tarn, Ellen Zweig, and acoustic sounds made by playing the sculptures of Tony Price. Woody Vasulka hit upon the method of projecting slides as we burned and videotaped them, to mirror Archimedes’ use of bronze mirrors to deflect the sun to burn invading Roman ships during the Pyrrhic Wars. I made all of the imagery in the videos to be timed to fit the sound work.
Thank you to Southwest Contemporary for their review of this exhibition which features Archimedes’ Chamber as the exhibition’s “greatest spectacle”. Please read their synopsis of the exhibition and Archimedes’ Chamber in the article “Trying to See the Constellations for the Stars” by Jordan Eddy.
Above: The artwork Archimedes’ Chamber by Meridel Rubenstein, installed in the exhibition Off-Center at Vladem Contemporary, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Above: The artwork Archimedes’ Chamber by Meridel Rubenstein