Montreal's 1976 Summer Olympics saw the city gesturing, often haphazardly, towards modernity. One particular stride towards innovation was captured in the ceremonial torch relay. Rather than being transported on foot as per tradition, the Olympic Flame was electronically transmitted via satellite from Athens to Ottawa by means of an electronic pulse derived from the eternal flame. In Ottawa, the signal was transformed into a laser, which then ignited a torch that was carried by hand to Montreal.

We propose to transport a flame from the site of the first nuclear reactor built for commercial use in the United States in Shippingport, PA to an exhibition at the Society for Arts and Technology in Montreal, QC. Rather than simply restaging the 1976 relay, our collaboration seeks to collapse the distances between the context of the Montreal Olympics and this artifact of the atomic age as a way to reinterpret their inherent utopian ideologies and access their entropic potential.

Craig Fahner & Steve Gurysh

August 2011