Faddishness still sees chaos theory - really the maths of the Mandelbrot set - impact across more disciplines than its pure and applied science origins. As metaphor ‘chaos theory’ sits perhaps too easily and still very happily within the social sciences and the arts, much as the proverbial cat in Schroedinger’s box turned up too frequently (dead and alive) when post-modernism was still current (less so as we now supposedly enter the world of ‘post theory’). One manifestation - it too a metaphor I suppose - seems always obsessively exemplary in applied chaos - it’s the story about the beat of a butterfly’s wings: One such wing beat in some distant hemispherical nook will affect the weather or indeed the ecology of the place from which the proponent speaks.

It is the metaphor of the butterfly - its fragility, transience, and of course sublime beauty, the more because fragile and transient, that Ken Yonetani’s installation of ceramic tiles - I think ‘installation’ is what it must be called - seeks to explore. But rather than the faddish, Yonetani’s unpacking of the butterfly’s instantly there/instantly gone - a present/absent immediacy - is profound, emotionally dense, and at once beautiful and terrifying (in the classical sense); he presents us a sublimely beautiful catharsis - a genuine tragic event during the moments of its launch - this piece has gravitas.

To the details. Yonetani is a post graduate student working in Ceramics at the Canberra School of Art (ANU). The piece in question consists of some 2000 tiles fired in the Japanese ‘fumie’ style tradition. This alone took about 6 months. Each tile is about 30 cm square, 5-6 mm thick, in a white biscuit-like clay - it looks highly porous even finished - and moreover appears to be very fragile indeed. There is considerable skill in the firing - too little and the tiles have no strength - too much and they are too strong. A certain brittleness is the firing’s balanced desirable effect. Why? In the first place I think this is a matter of pure aesthetics within the Japanese tradition - a 30 cm square thin tile is at once rigid and brittle, soft and hard and so easily broken. Beauty as momentary. The technology of production formalises one metaphoric relation then - the tiles are as fragile as butterflies.

Yet this is only the technical beginning underpinning the installation. Each tile has an image on its upper surface - the image is one of six different butterflies. So it is spelt out. Moreover and specifically the butterflies were chosen by Yonetani with the help of CSIRO scientists concerned with endangered species. Indeed Kim Pullen from the Australian National Insect Collection (and there’s an institutional title to conjure with) spoke at the opening. The recurrent images are quite detailed larger than life-size modellings of six of the most endangered species of Australasian butterfly. As part of the installation Yonetani mounted one of each of the images on the walls of the ‘gallery’ space, as a kind of museological reference point. So, what did he do with the other 1994 tiles?

The installation was on the ground floor of the CSIRO Discovery building (west of the ANU and on the lower slopes of Black Mountain in the ACT). This is a newish building with large open spaces for machines, experiments, and displays in the spirit of the new museology.

The entrance doors open into a large - indeed - 3 storey atrial space across which is that bridge or causeway joining entrance to a kind of foyer. In these areas Yonetani had completely covered all the floor with heavy duty black plastic liner and then laid half his tiles from front door, along the bridge, up to and over the rectangular foyer area. The same plastic underlay had been put down in the two room ‘gallery’ space and similarly tiled with the remaining half of the 2000 tiles. As far as I could see the six patterns of butterfly had been distributed across these two floors at random. It didn’t matter since 1/6th were any one design. The effect of the two floors was startling - inviting and daunting - they beckoned and threatened. Here was an idealised nature.
This then comprised the set up to the installation. No one was allowed into these spaces - or rather - ‘onto’ these two spaces until the opening of the exhibition that evening, when about 200 people who had been milling at the front door were allowed in. At first the front row, as it were, was slightly non-plussed - the tiles were beautiful - and yet walking on them was the only means of entrance - I’m sure that some people weren’t sure about their strength - or indeed contrariwise their weakness.
And then the first footfall. The atrial space clearly had another feature - it enhanced the sound. A loud CRUNCH. Then a few more cracks, and crunches as the crowd braved more steps, then a bit more of a rush - some tried to move down the sides to avoid the full effect, others and lots of children gave it the full march step after step. No singular crowd psychology here - although the crushing noise was now near cacophanous - the reactions ranged from luxuriant crushing to featherfooting, with some treading so lightly - trying to float. Others hung back until almost all was crushed and some tiles pulverised.

Let me say that as an observer I was able to watch it from inside along with the artist and crew, and although I knew what would happen I was unprepared for the effect. One does not think, I suppose, of ceramics as quite so interactive - certainly not noisy in this continuous breaking way - usually such a crunch would be the last thing to be heard - willingly. I looked at Ken Yonetani often during those opening moments and he was both thrilled to see and hear it work, and notwithstanding that, and I think without reading his mind too far, he was quite saddened. The destruction was almost complete within minutes and almost total. One point of the installation - the transience of these butterflies - as a literalising of its own metaphors - the ecological vandalism of the modern world had been all too strongly revealed for all to experience during the event. No tile remained unbroken. 2000 pieces were now innumerable fragments, most no bigger than 2cm square, thousands if not millions of smithereens. What impact? what chaos? and not a million miles

away - these slight actions had caused their effect right there and then. And of course another point - if the dominant species on the planet continues like this there won’t even be the beat of a butterfly wing to save or indeed to save us.

Not too much later I looked down at various parts of this floor and was struck by one further feature - the fragmented tiles with the black underlay gave rise to beautiful patterns - well - not really patterns - too random, too chaotic - to be designed - yet as graphic designs the crushed floor was striking. Even now in destruction there was an element of the sublime - the ruined. I wondered whether this upset the metaphors? I needn’t have worried. As I looked on members of the audience continued to walk over the fragments, pulverising all of them - before long most was a chalky dust. Yonetani could rely on even an artistically and ecological aware audience to prove his installation’s meaning. Gravitas indeed. Tragedy? Yes and who would have thought that ceramics could produce such blessedly mixed feelings. True, we always expect beauty of design and technical excellence - we may even see emotionally demanding and effective ceramics and potting; Rarely I think do we see the genuinely tragic in the medium. Yonetani’s installation is to be commended very highly. I look forward to this extremely intelligent and skilled person’s next works.

Jeff Doyle teaches in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, at UNSW@ ADFA, Campbell, ACT.

Writing widely on Australian subjects from literature and art, he has co-written 3 books on the Australian involvement in the Vietnam War. The last of these, written with Peter Pierce and Jeffrey Grey, and titled Australia’s Vietnam War was published by Texas A & M Press in 2002. He is currently researching a book-length study of the representations of Australians at war on film and TV, and continues long term work on a monograph study of Ken Unsworth.