Sonntag, 4. Mai 2014

Chernobyl 1 - the Wheel of Pripyat




The first print of the Chernobyl suite shows the ferris wheel of Pripyat, which has become a sort of icon for incident’s impacts. The town of Pripyat had been founded in 1970 as nuclear city for the Chernobyl plant. Two days after the explosion  53,000 people already contaminated were evacuated with the information of a possible return after some days. This ghost town now has become a famous place to visit, and numerous fotos and protocols are available (pripyat.com). The wheel has been said to never have been in operation and for me has always been associated with the site.


(found at fuckyeahabandonedthemeparks.tumblr.com-pripyat6).
I found the rusty steel with the yellow nacelles fascinating in view of the radiation symbol.


The linoprint approach with reference to the reductive approach offers some interesting aspects.  The iron construction details go beyond the resolution of the printing approach, see here a detail of a polycount construction by aranis and the drawing on the linoplate.


So cutting lines is a simpler path compared to leaving ridges. This resembles Picasso’s white on black prints end oft he 50s:




Cutting is done as drawing, but in the relief technique like wood or linocut the traditional drawing dark on light background needs printing light on dark.  This seems an enormous waste of printing colour but offers unique results, left alone printing noncovering white on black


It also permits the later introduction of background as a final step


So rust-like brown printed on yellow may resemble ferric oxide breaking through the yellow paint. 


At the same time a yellow background only incompletely covered by the follow-up print resembles radiating fallout particles. Likewise rust particles blown away also resemble loose fallout. 

A first set of prints used a blue background. The yellow colour together with blue resembles the ukrainian flag. At the time of the incident the plant was integrated in the soviet union, with white-blue-red as russian colours. The red is often dark or disappears giving rise to brown rust. The block lettering PRIPYAT is a prominent construction in the city, it has thus been added in russian colours.


The blue top plate is added in various tones, depending on the intensities of the brown backgrounds.

As in the Fukushima series the top MAGIC PLACES uses ffMark,a geometric type.


The first idea of showing the wheel integrated in the Pripyat surrounding has been abandoned, as the symbolic wheel is not fixed but free to be anywhere.  



This has been an idea of Brian Duggan constructing a highly detailed model (first shown in Dublin 2011, http://www.brianduggan.net/bd/home.html):



The free flying wheel not operating as meant to do with its radiation symbols may thus represent the state of atomic energy production with its unsolved problems for present and future generations, as one single project:   the Chernobyl sarcophagus (shelter project).
Printing of the first set starts with a yellow square, and the first plate is added in brown


In a second printing this plate is set directly in black on white paper


Followed by a white plate, and yellow colouring


In a third approach the final plate is inked in sky and earth tones, the bottom lettering in red

 

This printing type gives a feeling of the wheel in space.







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