Art Buff

With Farewell Tevatron I wanted to use art to provide a forum for Batavians to voice their feelings about the shut down of Fermilab’s particle accelerator. Named the Tevatron, it was was until 2009 the largest particle accelerator in the world, and until September 30th was operated by Fermilab scientists on the east side of Batavia. Fermilab plays heavily into the town’s image of their community. Its main building is featured on welcome signs alongside a windmill, the symbol of the city. Batavia’s slogan was also changed in 1983 from “The Windmill City” to “City of Energy” to encompass the legacy of both the windmill industry and Fermilab. I wondered then, how would people feel about its shut down? The Chicago Tribune, Kane County Chronicle, and Chicago Reader, among other newspapers have written about the scientists’ reaction to the change, but none have focused on the Batavia residents.

For the street art response, I asked artist Michael Jewell to create illustrations of images that related to Batavia and Fermilab’s history. There are twelve in all, some are symbols of Batavia’s history like a windmill, fox (the Fox River bifurcates the town), or ghost of Mary Todd Lincoln (she briefly stayed in Batavia’s sanitarium following the death of President Lincoln). Others are particles discovered by Fermilab like the tau neutrino or top quark. Each image then responds to the accelerator’s legacy and is accompanied by an image of a bulldog (the high school mascot) asking residents what their feelings are: How do  you feel about the shut down of the Tevatron? Write something! 80 images were placed around the high school and downtown area.

After two weeks, I returned to remove the installation and was excited to find responses left by residents. Overall, residents’ displayed a variety of emotions, mainly sadness, anger, optimism, an acceptance. The most impressive response was a woman who took down several fliers, scanned them, printed out new ones, and made her own shrine to the Tevatron on a telephone pole, complete with chalked hearts and a white bow.

Other responses were:

• “Well the probability that we will find something before the LHC [Large Hadron Collider] is low, so we have to move on to new and better things. Muon Collider FTW”

The Muon Collider is a yet to be realized particle accelerator that speeds up muons. Fermilab is a possible future site for the collider.

•”I’m angry. We should still conduct research here no matter the ring size.”

•”A part of me just died, but another part has just been born.”