Command and Control, ADAA Fair, Park Avenue Armory,
New York, 2008
Curator: Maria Lind
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Premiering at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, within a period room featuring portraits of generals including George Washington, General Patton, and the Marquis de Lafayette, this installation presented a replica of the Titan Missile Silo Command Room fashioned from plywood, tarpaulin, and two-by-fours. The Titan Missile was the largest nuclear weapon ever deployed by the United States, capable of producing a fireball three miles in diameter. Within the Control Room, the viewer encountered a handmade book of launch instructions alongside cardboard, paper, and colored-pencil monitors displaying various targets, with paper extension cords plugged into paper outlets—nonfunctional replicas rendering the machinery of annihilation inert. An adjacent back room, saturated with orange carpet and orange light, housed Sunday Punch, a sculpture named after U.S. General Curtis LeMay's preemptive strike plan to launch the entirety of the American nuclear arsenal—approximately 156 weapons over 70 Soviet cities in 30 days. It consisted of a handmade paper map of the world mounted on a sawhorse-style plywood stand, with paper airplanes suspended from the chandelier via fishing wire, alongside Khrushchev Direct and X-Zeit, featuring a clock reading five-twenty alongside a "red phone" that represented the fabled hotline intended to connect President Kennedy directly with Soviet Premier Khrushchev in moments of acute crisis between the superpowers.