Raphael Griswold
Mil-9 wall
Tyvek, Sherwin Williams Federal Standard 14062 latex exterior house paint, wheatpaste, grommets, zip ties, soil, mining detritus, and other fill
39 x 30 x 150 inches
Mil-9 Wall is a wall made of 5 Tyvek bags filled with dirt, rocks, and other materials excavated from the site of a collapsed limestone kiln. The bags are modeled after Hesco Bastion Mil-9 Concertainer units, a brand of gabion defensive barriers manufactured by Hesco. Hesco barriers are used by militaries to quickly fortify forward operating positions like encampments and airfields. They are fabric-lined wire baskets filled with dirt, and are effective shields against bombs and bullets. Gabion fortifications are a simple tactical military architecture that transforms labor into freestanding structures without importing many materials: troops fill a frame with dense matter like dirt and rocks.
Gabion construction is also a popular approach for DIY Outdoor
Home Projects. The materials used in Mil-9 Wall are waste from a derelict cement-production operation that in its heyday enabled the construction of much New York architecture. Mil-9 Wall is also a printmaking project; the Tyvek bags are painted with a water-soluble paint/wheatpaste substance that will weather over the next few months, retaining an impression of the materials they contain. You can acquire one of the five Mil-9 Wall bags/prints in exchange for 5 shares of DuPont (E I Dupont De Nemours And Co) stock.
“I wanna build a wall. It will be ugly and made out of everything around. It will be pointless and expensive. It will be terrible and a failure. I will hate it. You will hate it. It will have references and be a pun. It will look like shit. Shit is an important material; it is all the materials after. Make a print from it. It will look like nothing… A record of labor only a record of labor. It will disappear. It will fail. It will kill you it is dangerous, everyone will hate it. A glowing screen. Monolithic made out of stone and shit… I will use money to make a thing not made of anything. It not cost money in materials, it will be ephemeral. I use labor to
make it, I will use money to facilitate labor. The labor will not be compensated. The labor will be my contribution. The labor will be made out of food. Maybe the food will be paid for. How close to a closed circuit can this wall be? THIS IS THE HEART OF ANY WALL. YOU
KNOW THE THE ONE I’m Talking about…it will fail. It will fall.”