ARGUABLY ALIVE: the virus taxonomy

Context:

Created at the turn of the present millennium,Arguably Alive: the virus taxonomy anticipates the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic which brought viruses into global consciousness. Made possible by the advent of the internet, Arguably Alive holds six millennia within its conceptual, material, and biologic frame.

The rational scientific order is juxtaposed against the source of great personal fear.

Description:

This work consists of chartreuse, Egyptian Paste (faience) canopic jars, on the lids of which are the representations of each of the families of virus recognized by the ICTV at the time of produciton. The representations are scaled at 5 inches = 100 nanometers reflecting the 100nm bar used in electro-micrographs. Each virus is labeled with its taxon number and its studio fabrication code. The canopic jars are shown at eye level; they are not specimens. They are presented in a grid on stainless steel tables and dramatically lit. The taxonomy system is included as wall text. Jars representing 81 virus families were originally produced. 20 of the most complex virus forms are extant.

The work pivots metaphorically around the shared status of material, image, subject, and title – all are neither here nor there.

Material: neither clay nor glaze

Said to be the oldest artificial material, created in the 5th millenium, faience, is a self glazing silica body, not a typical clay. Salts and coloring oxides mixed with the clay, leech from the inside of the clay to the surface by evaporation, covering the surface with crystals,(efflorescence) which create the glaze during firing. The inside comes outside. Similarly, canopic jars were containers for the embalmed internal organs of the dead; inside the jar - outside the body. The crystal growth disrupts the surface, obscuring the hand and distancing the maker. The surface sometimes continues to produce salt crystals after firing; Egyptian paste is not inert.

Image: neither object and image

The popular fascination with the ancient Egyptian canopic jar is well known. Sharing the profile of canopic jars, vitrified and capped, these are both urns and, due to their recognizability, iconic representations of historic urns; object and image. Among the most primordial of things, viruses themselves are newly seen and thus have no historical iconography. Visible only with the instrumentalized viewing of electro-microscopy, the “unseen,” are rendered in the oldest ceramic. While the faience is ancient, the chartreuse color is inauthentic, and clearly from contemporary culture.

Subject: neither living nor dead

While made from life-forming protein and DNA or RNA, viruses are not technically “living.” While viruses like HIV are culturally identified with death, the viruses themselves are at best “arguably alive.” In addition, virus morphology is not particularly “biomorphic,” but is, instead, built on the icosahedron, the ideal 20 sided polyhedron, of Plato. The representation of these forms with any eye to verisimilitude utterly collapses the line between representational form and the purely geometric.

Title: neither poetry nor prose

Employing a strategy parallel to the material allegory, the title is binomial. The first part of the title names poetically but it does not inform. It is followed parenthetically by a prosaic explanation which appears to inform but resists revelation. The title is taken from Five Kingdoms by Lynn Margulis, 1994.