Ken McMullen

Ken McMullen is a distinguished independent filmmaker whose many films include the international features Zina, 1871, Partition, Ghost Dance and Resistance. From his early work with Joseph Beuys, collaboration has played a significant part in his work and he has produced works with, among others, Heinz Koppel, Jacques Derrida, Ian Hamilton Findlay, Taduez Kantor and Tariq Ali. Ken has also had significant involvement in collaborations between art and science and art and industry.

Ken McMullen's work.

During the three years of engagement with CERN I found myself in an unknown world which offered both the unique opportunity to explore new territory whilst confronting many previously held certainties. The journey was both exciting and at times terrifying in so far as my own artistic practice was concerned. During this time there were many periods when I was completely lost accompanied by moments of exhilaration as some works found their form and occasionally their resolution.

The works used different mediums, conceptual frameworks, technical opportunities and means of production. The process offered collaborations with some remarkable people. The guiding principle behind these works was that each should engage with ideas and experiments in particle physics, but from shifting perspectives. No works should attempt to conform to a stylistic approach and each should, as far as possible, approach its subject free of pre-conceptions. No work would be purely illustrative but each would have been the product of a 'correspondence' with the physics involved. Each new work would have to stand outside any single artistic dogma and each must carry the risk of complete failure, as some did.

The works named below are the completed pieces as of February 2001... other works are still in progress whilst others have been abandoned either as too ambitious, completely impracticable, financially excessive, or utterly unresolvable... but then again... who knows? Particle physics is a strange world for the uninitiated and as we now know, so much depends on the position of the observer.

Skin without Skin Crumple work 89
An encounter with the 'Crumple Theory' where the uppermost surface has been stripped leaving the structure with its own accompanying surface area. Only light helped by the projective imagination of the observer can offer a glimpse of a lost form.

2 Roman Lead Resurrectionem Mortuorum Triptych in more ways than one. Considerations of radioactive decay. In the presence of the most radioactively innate material in the known world. The 'Roman Lead' was extracted from the ground 2000 years ago in Spain and had sunk on its voyage to Rome where it was to be used in the construction of the water system. The accompanying wall pieces are titled 'Excavation' and 'Half Life'.

3 Piranha Particle Mysterium Fidei
Considerations on: colour not only as visual sensation but also as temperature, matter and anti-matter. Current experiments to produce particles of anti-hydrogen at CERN.

4 Fields of Ash
Six 'fields' of heat produced by: drawing through steel with oxyacetylene flame, the heat of the body, interactions between the atmosphere and the steel surfaces which continue to burn at the atomic level.

5 Dark Time Crumple Work 69
The 'Crumple Theory'... the signature of an instant of time overdrawn with graphite line which took 'ages'. Crumpled with immense force and flattened with even more.

6 ? Lumen de Lumine
Motion Picture playing with quantum theory, the nature of light, near-miss particle collisions. A meditation on solitude (18 min loop with three variations).

7 Signatures Commemorationem
A motion picture cartography with accompanying equations (30 min loop). Additional motion picture works include 'Chain Reactions', 'Freeflow' and 'Snapshots'. These document John Berger's visits to CERN to partake in the project including discussions with physicists, artists and observations and contributions to works in progress. For either video projection or flat screen play.

The work created involved collaborations with: John March Russell, theoretical particle physicist; Paul Cheetham, artist who works in the same tradition (London); Ramon Folch, head of prototype workshop Building 100; Christian Boudineau, laser scanning and measurements; Ian Sexton, engineering; Professor Maurice Jacob and Professor Alessandro Pascolini, theoretical physicists; Michael Doser, experimental particle physicist; Terry James, writer; Martha Parsey, artist (Germany); Justinian Buckley, camera/editor; Tim Barker, sound field; Barry Guard, composer and Lusia Films.

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