Montreal's 1976 Summer Olympics saw the city gesturing, often haphazardly, towards modernity.  One particular stride towards innovation was captured in the ceremonial torch relay.  Rather than being transported on foot as per tradition, the Olympic Flame was electronically transmitted via satellite from Athens to Ottawa by means of an electronic pulse derived from the eternal flame.  In Ottawa, the signal was transformed into a laser, which then ignited a torch that was carried by hand to Montreal.

We propose to transport a flame from the site of the first nuclear reactor built for commercial use in the United States in Shippingport, PA to an exhibition at the Society for Art and Technology Studies in Montreal, QC.  Rather than simply restaging the 1976 relay, our collaboration seeks to collapse the distances between this artifact of the atomic age and the context of the Montreal Olympics as a way to reinterpret their inherent utopian ideologies and access their entropic potential.   

Through this dramatization, we intend to explore the genealogy of energy and technological progress as a cyclical and transformative process, where primordial flame becomes converted into nuclear fission, electricity, signal, light, and back into fire.  

Location

Craig Fahner is interested in negotiations between the virtual and the real, the ubiquitous and the unlikely. His electronic and sound based work has been exhibited across Canada and the United States, such as the Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas and the Nuit Blanche festival in Toronto.  web: craigfahner.com/

Steve Gurysh explores the relations between artistic, ecological, and technological inquiry through field research, site-specific sculpture, and alchemical gestures.  He has exhibited his work at venues such as the Center for the Study of the End of Things in Charlottesville, VA and Cabinet Magazine’s Exhibition Space in Brooklyn, NY.  web: stevegurysh.com/