FLO(we){u}R is a performance installation focused on a little known history involving American terracotta companies and the US military. In the summer of 1918, the Northwestern Terra Cotta Company of Chicago was commissioned to create 25,000 ceramic bomb casings. The ceramic bombs were used to practice aerial shelling. It was curious to find that the clay bombs were filled with household baking flour so as to leave a trace to calibrate targeting. In a playful exercise of impossible labor combined with an experiment in repositioning, we attempted to reproduce the commission.

Through the Chicago Loop Alliance and the Chicago Artists’ Coalition, Amber and I were allowed the use of a Chicago storefront as a part of the Pop-up Art Loop. We had the space for 2 months to setup our factory and begin production.

The factory space and equipment were both practical and imaginary. Not seeking to replicate a historical factory, we re-imagined and simplified the space and equipment to facilitate the current environment and the reproduction of this historical object. The form and its accumulation took precedence. Some of the particulars were left vague and in some instances completely removed. For example, the fins of the bombs were not rendered, as the bombs may never be used as such. The use for these forms is yet to be determined. Instead potentials were allowed to proliferate as the bombshells began filling the factory floor.

Performance is interpreted loosely. The performance occurs as we go about the operations of the factory. The presence of an audience creates an atmosphere of hyper awareness locating our movements to a level beyond the real or mundane. The fantastic demand to produce 25,000, though not feasible by any measure, placed us within a process of repetition freeing our minds to generate new possibilities for these historical objects.

On the final day of the installation we hosted a seed gathering activity and mixed together a suet made from local seed. The suet was formed into munitions tips that were then attached to the bombs. The ‘armed’ bombs were then placed in an open space where birds could eat the suet and conduct aerial droppings of their own. This poetic undoing uses the birds to generate a random seed dispersal to counter the precision of military targeting.