ORGANIZED COMPLEXITY GERT JAN KOCKEN SEP 21 – NOV 09 FRANS HALSSTRAAT 26 Gert Jan Kocken | Depictions of London | 2019 GRIMM is proud to announce a solo exhibition by Gert Jan The photographs visualize the conflicting ideologies Kocken (1971 Ravenstein, NL). The exhibition Organized which prevailed during the Second World War, the cities Complexity combines a selection from the artist’s eminent representing axes of fascism from East to West and from Depictions series with works from his Fission series. North to South. The exhibition will open during UNSEEN Photo Festival’s In Fission, the artist meticulously traces the origins Open Gallery Night and is programmed to coincide with the of the nuclear program leading up to the bombings of commemoration of the Second World War, which started both Hiroshima and Nagasaki through the use of texts, eighty years ago this year. Organized Complexity is the photographs of speeches, classified military documents first exhibition by the artist with the gallery. and images. The resulting work is an entropic conjunction which must be both seen, and read, to fully grasp. For almost a decade, Gert Jan Kocken has been working Accompanying this work is a large photograph, Charles on his Depictions series; in this body of work hundreds of Sweeney, Pilot, B 29 Bock's Car, Nagasaki, 9 August 1945. unearthed historical maps are used as source material to create expansive views of cities such as London, Rounding out the exhibition is Kocken’s latest work; a Amsterdam, Dresden, Rotterdam, Łódz, Warsaw, Berlin, palimpsest of German aerial photographs showing London Munich and Rome. The maps are scanned or photographed bombing targets with text superimposed on the photographs and methodically layered into a single digital image, to form a visualisation of the propaganda machine and the subsequently rendered as a large digital C-print. The chronological course of the war. resulting compositions contain a welter of information representing the breakneck change, contradictory claims, and massive data production of the Second World War. Opening: Saturday September 21st, 2019 from 6 pm until 8 pm not for publication For more information, interview and royalty free image Frans Halsstraat 26 Keizersgracht 241 202 Bowery Tel +31 (0) 20 6752465 requests, please contact the gallery manager Jorien de Vries: 1072BR Amsterdam 1016EA Amsterdam New York 10012 [email protected] [email protected] +31 (0)20 6752465 The Netherlands GRIMM Fine Art BV United States www.grimmgallery.com CHOOSING THE TARGET ABOUT THE FRANCK REPORT ESTABLISHMENT OF THE INTERIM COMMITTEE A DEMONSTRATION NOT FAR FROM TOKYO VALUE FOR MONEY HOW OUR WORK WOULD AFFECT SOCIETY SOMEWHAT INEXPERIENCED IN HUMAN AFFAIRS OPPENHEIMER’S UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES DON’T YOU THINK GOD KNOWS THE FACTS? GOD MADE US BLIND FERMI’S RELATION TO FASCISM VOLUNTARY CENSORSHIP SZILÁRD TO FRÉDÉRIC JOLIOT–CURIE, THE MARTIANS FROM AUSTRIA-HUNGARY MORALE WINS WARS SZILÁRD TO FRÉDÉRIC JOLIOT-CURIE, 12 APRIL 1940 ASSEMBLY OF THE MAUD COMMITTEE BRITAIN WANTS AN ATOMIC BOMB MEITNER’S REFUSAL TO WORK ON THE PROJECT GROVES TO THE MANHATTAN ENGINEER DISTRICT, 20 JULY 1943 MIGHT BE A FRANKENSTEIN SUFFICIENTLY SPECTACULAR In June 1945, the Interim Committee presented Truman with the fol- After learning of the advice of the Interim Committee, a group Following Stimson’s advice, Truman set up the Interim Lewis Strauss, special assistant to Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal: Szilárd was opposed to using the atomic bomb. In an argument with Byrnes, Robert R. Wilson, a young physicist working on the Manhattan Project, Victor Weisskopf supplies another account of the impact of Bohr’s presence BOHR MADE THE ENTERPRISE SEEM HOPEFUL In the high years of McCarthyism, Oppenheimer found himself in the middle of more than SOVIET ESPIONAGE FIRST LIGHTNING AKA JOE 1 In 1943, Szilárd told Bethe: “I am going to write down all In 1934, in Fascist Italy, Fermi together with his team As a university professor and a founding member of At the beginning of 1939, Szilárd told Fermi, who at 2 FEBRUARY 1939 Von Neumann, Szilárd, Teller, and Wigner were On 21 October 1939 Szilárd, Teller, and Wigner briefed the US “Many things have considerably changed since March After Frisch and Peierls’ warning, a committee later In July 1941, the MAUD Committee advised the US to Meitner refused to work on the Manhattan Project and “[I]t is desired that clearance be issued to Julius Robert Oppenheimer On 31 May 1945, Stimson explained to the scientists The minutes of the Manhattan Project’s target committee lowing recommendations: of seven distinguished scientists in Chicago published the so- Committee in May 1945 to advise him on decisions “My proposal to the Secretary was that the weapon should be demon- he stated that even just testing the bomb would be unwise, because a test commented: “Bohr was the one person who was consistently concerned at Los Alamos: “…we were working on something which is perhaps the most “Bohr at Los Alamos was marvelous”, Oppenheimer one controversy. On 7 June 1949, he testified before the House Un-American Activities Among the physicists in Los Alamos was Klaus Fuchs, a communist On 29 August 1949 the first Soviet atomic test was that is going on these days in the [Manhattan] project. began systematically bombarding all the known elements the fascist Accademia d’Italia, Fermi was required to the time was working at Columbia University in New “When Hahn’s paper reached [the US] about a fortnight exceptional Jewish scientists who were all born in Army on possible military applications of nuclear chain reac- last year, and therefore I should like to raise once more called MAUD was assembled in April 1940. It included develop an atomic bomb as quickly as possible, for the declared, “I will have nothing to do with a bomb!” without delay, irrespective of the information which you have con- his attitude as well as that of the army towards the meeting included the specification that the military target — The bomb should be used against Japan as soon called Franck Report. The report was named for physicist James pertaining to the atomic bomb. The committee was strated over some area accessible to Japanese observers and where its would disclose that the bomb existed. Then, however, Byrnes took a turn in with postwar problems. The rest of us [at Los Alamos] seemed just too questionable, the most problematic thing a scientist can be faced with. At told an audience of scientists after the war. According Committee that he had associations with the Communist Party in the 1930s. In April and who had fled Germany and spied for the Soviet Union. After working successfully executed on a steppe in the Kazakh Soviet I am just going to write down the facts – not for anyone with neutrons. Fermi misunderstood the nature of the become a member of the Fascist Party. He was not York, of the possibility of an arms race and suggested ago, a few of us at once got interested in the question Budapest around the same time. They left (or did tions. An Army representative told them that they were naïve to the question whether or not results concerning chain Nobel laureate James Chadwick, but excluded Frisch committee considered it “likely to lead to decisive results cerning Mr. Oppenheimer. He is absolutely essential to the project.” Manhattan Project: “I told them that we did not re- should be located in a much larger area subject to blast as possible. Franck and was signed by Donald J. Hughes, J. J. Nickson, composed mostly of politicians and was reinforced effects would be dramatic. ... [A] satisfactory place for such a demonstra- explaining to Szilárd how domestic politics work, stating that Congress would busy, I regret to say, doing what had to be done to usher the atomic age. that time physics, our beloved science, was pushed into the most cruel part to an unedited transcript of the same lecture, he said May 1954, he was interrogated again in a security meeting. During those hearings, Edward for Peierls in Britain and later New York, Fuchs joined Bethe’s team Socialist Republic. The Soviets gave it the code name to read, just for God.” “Don’t you think God knows the results. Emilio Segrè, who assisted him, later said: politically active and in 1938, when the anti-Semitic a voluntary censorship. Fermi disagreed. Szilárd tried whether neutrons are liberated in the disintegration not return to) Germany and Austria-Hungary when believe that a new explosive could make a significant contribu- reactions in uranium ought to be published. It is reported and Peierls, because they were officially classified as in the war”. It continued to pressure the US to commit gard it as a new weapon merely but as a revolutionary damage to avoid undue risks of the weapon being lost due — It should be used on a dual target – that is, a military Eugene Rabinowitch, Glenn T. Seaborg, J. C. Stearns, and Leo by a Scientific Panel. The Panel members were tion would be a large forest of cryptomeria trees not far from Tokyo. want to know the results of the two billion dollars it had invested in developing As we later learned, the situation at the ‘Met Lab’ in Chicago was quite of reality and we had to live it through. We were, most of us at least, young that Bohr “made the enterprise which looked so maca- Teller testified that he considered Oppenheimer loyal, but did add the following: “In a great in August 1944, where he worked on the problem of imploding the “First Lightning”, but the Americans referred to it as facts?” Bethe asked. “Maybe he does”, Szilárd replied, “God, for His own inscrutable reason, made everyone Charter of Race came into effect, Fermi emigrated to convince other colleagues, but initially only Wigner, of uranium.