The new Papermaker’s Garden greeted Manifest visitors this year with a portable papermaking station. The project, proposed by first year Book and Paper MFA Alex Borgen, will be built out over summer 2012 in the space at 750 South Wabash Avenue.

The project will be a collaborative and cross-disciplinary space for discovery and learning, and will contribute to Columbia College’s green initiative by producing fiber suitable for use in paper making, and providing a new green space in the neighborhood.

Current Book +Paper MFA students and alumni manned a portable paper making station in the space during Manifest, sharing the spotlight with the Dance department performances taking place in the bike parking lot directly next door.
The outdoor paper making studio was also the site for an afternoon performance piece,Experimental Military Device #017, by first year InterArts MFA Brent Koehn, shown here conferring with experimental scientists.

Koehn’s sculptural performance addresses the intriguing relationship between the U.S. military system and contemporary science. Historically willing to investigate every option, no matter how outlandish, “military science” has been responsible for both technological triumph and utter disaster.

This idea of well-funded yet wild-eyed experimentation is embodied in the scene of a fatigue wearing testpilot maneuvering an unwieldy metallic sphere under the watchful direction of scientists, standing behind the protective fence.

The Papermaker’s Garden is supported by the Office of Campus Environment, the Office of Academic Affairs, the Interdisciplinary Arts Department, the Center for Book and Paper Arts, and Pulp Ink and Thread (PIT) the Book and Paper graduate student organization.