Oppenheimer's Table
2015

From March 1st – March 8th, 2015 a group of twenty five people from all over the world, representing a wide spectrum of disciplines, convened in Averill Park, NY, at a snow-covered House on the Hill to take part in “Oppenheimer’s Table” — the first in a series of Arts Letters & Numbers workshops examining and expanding upon the nature of 132 doodles generated from the secret joint committee meetings held in 1947 and chaired by Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer.  The doodles, attributed variously to Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, I.I. Rabi, and other notable actors within the burgeoning Cold War became the conceptual and formal foundation for exploring the complex history, culture, and possibilities that lay ahead in our contemporary nuclear age. Through sessions on history, physics, maths, veils, artifice, risk and remains, a framework was established and the table was set for emergent creative actions to occur across disciplines. Within an environment of debate and group exercises, the participants embodied the condition of mimesis as a strategy for understanding and inhabiting the doodles. Redrawn, reorganized and reenacted, the artifacts revealed mysterious internal relations and interdependencies. They became the living model for the participants within “Oppenheimer’s Table”, informing everything from long-format improvisational performances to the sharing of food and stories. The workshop was codirected by Diane DeBlois, David Gersten, and Rob Dalton Harris, and cotaught with Arts Letters & Numbers Fellows and Visiting Artists.