#ARTEFACT: Chernobyl 33 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

telegid · 5 years ago

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З 26 вересня по 6 жовтня на Річковому вокзалі вперше пройде міжнародна медіа-арт виставка ARTEFACT: Chernobyl 33 із вільним входом. Вона поєднає сучасні технології медіа-арту, VR та AR-технологій, параметричну архітектуру, лазерні т�� проекторні інсталяції, кінект та інші напрями.

Медіа-арт – новий напрям мистецтва, що є дуже вражаючим та цікавим для кожного. Відвідування цієї виставки може стати культурною терапією для всієї української нації.

Чорнобиль: як звучить серцебиття Прип’яті, покаже унікальний музичний проект

ARTEFACT: Chernobyl 33 — перша культурна відповідь України на інформаційну трагедію Чорнобиля. Тоді від пропаганди, маніпулювання та замовчування правди постраждала ледве не кожна українська сім’я. І всі ми страждаємо до сьогодні.

Мета ARTEFACT: Chernobyl 33 — через медіа-арт закликати переосмислити роль Чорнобиля в минулому української нації.

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“Медіа-арт – мова 21 сторіччя. Мова, яку зараз розуміє весь світ. Ми хочемо презентувати Україну як інноваційну країну, яка є на одному рівні з Європою. Отже, доносити усі меседжі та емоції ми будемо саме за допомогою аудіовізуальних ефектів та технологій, де використовуються різноманітні лазери, світло, голограми, AR, VR. Дуже цікаво, як українські митці переосмислюють Чорнобиль у контексті його інформаційної складової саме через новітні технології, медіа та сучасне мистецтво. За результатами передпоказів бачимо, що завдяки цьому, враження у людей складається дуже яскраве”, – розповідають українські куратори виставки Ярослав Костенко та Валерій Коршунов.

У 33-тю річницю Чорнобиля Руслана провела арт-пер��орманс

Ярослав Костенко

Валерій Коршунов

Юрій Лех, міжнародний куратор проєкту ARTEFACT: Chernobyl 33, засновник іспанського медіа-арт фестивалю MADATAK: “Нова епоха потребує нового мистецтва. Ми живемо у час медіа, коли людина звикла сприймати безліч вражаючого контенту. Мистецтво – це завжди відображення епохи, відбиток культури конкретного часу. І якщо ми хочемо працювати з сучасною аудиторією, це має бути сучасна мова з технологіями медіа-арту”.

Річковий Вокзал – унікальна пам’ятка радянської архітектури. Тому за своєю атмосферою підходить для занурення у тематику часів Чорнобильської трагедії. Спеціально для виставки тут відкриється абсолютно новий простір, що стане своєрідним порталом у Чорнобиль.

Виставка ARTEFACT: Chernobyl 33 створюється за підтримки Українського Культурного Фонду, під керівництвом міжнародного куратора з Іспанії та за участю українських і європейських митців, музикантів, експертів. До створення одного з експонатів долучився й всесвітньо відомий музикант Dub FX.

Презентація перших експонатів виставки, створених українськими митцями, отримала позитивні відгуки аудиторії та високі оцінки експертів.

Беспрецедентно! В Україні знімають слов’янське фентезі

Науковий директор, заступниця директора музею Чорнобиля Анна Королевська: “Зараз я побачила, як завдяки сучасним засобам, до молодих людей доходить враження про катастрофу від тих, хто пережив Чорнобиль, і тих, хто, як я, займається Чорнобилем та спілкується зі свідками події. Я вважаю, що такі проєкти мають бути. Оскільки вони дуже важливі у нашій країні, яка пережила лихо”.

Наслідки інформаційної катастрофи Чорнобиля є й сьогодні. Ніхто не знає, що ж насправді сталося і навіть, як захищатися від радіації у випадку раптової небезпеки. Навіть ті, хто живе в Києві (у 100-кілометровій зоні найбільшої техногенної катастрофи світу) – не знають перших засобів радіаційної безпеки. До того ж, з 2012-го року наша країна перебуває у стані гібридної війни. Тому сьогодні ставлення до інформації, питань медіаграмотності повинні бути першочерговими для коректного визначення свого минулого. Адже це стане важливою основою майбутнього кожного свідомого українця.

На Річковому вокзалі в Києві відкриють виставку ARTEFACT: Chernobyl 33 З 26 вересня по 6 жовтня на Річковому вокзалі вперше пройде міжнародна медіа-арт виставка ARTEFACT: Chernobyl 33…

#ARTEFACT: Chernobyl 33 #річковий вокзал київ #чорнобиль

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spamzineglasgow · 5 years ago

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Bon Iver’s hauntological i,i (William Fleming)

Image Copyright: Bon Iver / Jagjaguwar

In this essay, William Fleming takes a detailed look at bon iver’s new album, i,i: through acid communist hauntology to oedipal melancholia and the future’s cybernetic fracture.

> This week I’ve been reading Mark Fisher and listening to Bon Iver’s new album on repeat so I combined the two.

> Mark Fisher, in his Ghosts of My Life (2014), laments the dearth of creativity in popular music after the turn of the century, the loss of experimentation and of hearing something New and Radical, and the persistent replication of past methods, sounds and images. Fisher was no Adorno though (I don’t think anyway?). His essays are emotive and developed from a deep desire for a compassionate politics; Ghosts evokes the pathos of his seminal Capitalist Realism (2009). One of the key themes associated with his work on pop culture, is the use of the Derridean term ‘Hauntology’: the haunted ontology of futures that never came to be, the spectral disturbance of time and place as the possibility of political becoming dissipates. As he details in Ghosts, Fisher initially used hauntology as a genre-defining term for music. He identified artists which were 'suffused with an overwhelming melancholy; and they were preoccupied with the way in which technology materialised memory', this results in us being made 'conscious of the playback systems’ and of ‘the difference between analogue and digital’, 'hovering' out of reach behind the media’. Fisher uses this conceptual framework to analyse a raft of musicians and their work but there is a consistent emphasis on the political narratives of class and race which shape these cultural offshoots.

> Despite being one of the biggest records of this summer – and thus perhaps a bit bait for me to discuss? – Bon Iver’s i,i bares all the hallmarks of the hauntological genre: melancholia, the clash of digital and analogue, anachronism, the suggestion of political solidarity, artistic experimentation.

> First a confession: I first listened to Bon Iver because, in 2011, there was a girl on twitter I fancied who posted a video to Birdy’s Skinny Love. Birdy’s rendition is a wisp of a song, sad and grasping and completely lost on a shallow sixteen-year old and probably rightfully so. Failing to select the next song, I’m guessing Bon Iver’s original version played. For the first time I felt I’d discovered adult Sad Music. None of the ghd straightened, dip-died, angst-ridden emo tunes I’d gotten into a few years prior to impress my first girlfriend; or the one ballad acting as the penultimate track on one of the indie-rock albums from my older brother’s excessive collection. (- Does anyone know how to recycle these properly?). I would wallow in performative sadness playing immediately gratuitous and instantly gratifying XBOX games, quickly repeating the heartbeating guitar of Lump Sum on For Emma, Forever Ago or the wails of Holocene from Bon Iver, Bon Iver as I pined for my yet-to-be second girlfriend.

> I went off Bon Iver for a few years: these days, the quiet acoustic melancholia of these first two albums doesn’t fit with any aspirational sense of masculinity of mine. Being a man and being non-toxically emotional isn’t about listening to acoustic guitars and barely audible snares whilst you lie sulking in your room or on the drizzled walk to the library or job you hate. Instead it’s about communication, solidarity and empathy – ‘I’d be happy as hell, if you stayed for tea’. And so, when 22, A Million came out I was into it. Everyone thought it was a bit shit the first time few times they listened to it but this gave me cover to pretentiously purvey that they just didn’t get it and listen to it over and over. It was still the same anguished voice of Justin Vernon – but it was finally coming to life. Revived through stretched synthesizers, neologisms which made you question the contributors on A-Z Lyrics, and deconstructed bass. The piano riff on 33 “God” interrupted by alien helium-infused voices and the stammering, looping saxophone of 45 are still highlights. Listening now, 22, A Million initiated the hauntology of Bon Iver.

> At times, i,i feels like Bon Iver’s latest album is a playback of their first album, but one done through a signal sent by an analogue walkie-talkie found on the abandoned spaceship from Alien: Isolation – itself maybe the most harrowing video-game I’ve ever played, one which is played in constant anticipation of being found. Listen to the intermittent signal of Holyfields,: the bleeps and radio fuzz a beacon we sent out into space, only for it to sporadically and hauntingly talk back at us – a cultural SOS signal.

> i,i is the same guitar riffs from albums one and two but cybernetically fractured through time. The same syncopated kick drum but ripped out from the mid noughties and dumped in a Iain M. Banks novel or an episode in Love, Death + Robots. Fisher, quoting Derrida, quoting Hamlet: ‘the time is out of joint’. In these time fractures, it’s not just the music’s original location which is torn into the future, but also objective fragments of past culture: the sax (Sh’Diah) and violin strings (Faith) torn from eras when politics and music were still intertwined.

> The first track on the album, Yi, is garbage. But it is orbital astro-garbage – a notable anthropocenic feedback loop! – sitting uncomfortably at the stratosphere of an album which explicitly reflects on ecological destruction. Yi’s inaudible conversation and the ‘Are you recording, Trevor?’ set it up as a soundcheck for the album too. Including a soundcheck evokes Vernon’s emphasis on the album as a performance piece in the accompanying mini-documentary Autumn. In the doc, Vernon mentions the problem of ‘How is it going to be played live?’. Immediately, we are forced to imagine i,i as more than just another album on Spotify.

> Yi bleeds into iMi, a psychedelic echo of a track built from interspersing a melancholic vocals/arpeggio combo and an encroaching synth/dub beat combo. We is similarly eclectic, digitalised vocals juxtaposing with endearing, major-key sax. Following is Holyfields,, perhaps the most alien but most beautiful song on the album.

> Hey, Ma is the headline single from the album. An ode to Vernon’s mother and a sense of the sunrise walk home after the summer party (I’ll try and avoid further seasonal references: the four albums are set up to represent the four seasons, i,i being autumn, but IMO this is pretty naff).

> There is a sense of time passing in Hey, Ma, a nostalgia for the yet to be – ‘Well you wanted it your whole life’ – but with this passing is a sense of desire – ‘I wanted all that mind, sugar / I want it all mine’ – and of becoming or evolving – ‘You’re back and forth with light’. Becoming is the famous Deleuzean postmodern motif; i.e. being is constantly flowing and reforming. Bon Iver’s becoming, however, is not a flow, but a hauntological wrench into the future state. The entire album feels as though you’re experiencing the tech-enhanced evolution of Bon Iver’s music. That skipping between soft indie and futuristic synth reminiscent of the OG Pokemon games when your Pokemon was evolving and it would flicker between its past and future states. But becoming is never complete. As Fisher highlights, ‘futuristic’ no longer refers to a time/space but is now merely an adjective. We’ll never hear the Bon Iver made entirely on digital tech.

> For Fisher, melancholia is a productive force of political resistance. He distances his ‘hauntological melancholia’ from that of Wendy Brown’s ‘left melancholia’ which ‘seems to exemplify the transition from desire (which in Lacanian terms is the desire to desire) to drive (an enjoyment of failure)’. Fisher’s melancholia, ‘by contrast, consists not in giving up on desire but in refusing to yield'. Under scrutiny, Bon Iver’s first two albums fail this melan-test – they are a spectacular, self-pitying self-indulgence. Self-pity as a common form of masochism. For Deleuze, thinking through Jung, thinking through Bergson (yeap, I know), masochism is always regressive, flipping the Oedipal on its head as a form of un-becoming.

> Is Vernon’s song to his mother a masochistic form of melancholia; a self-pitying reversal of the Oedipal? ‘I wanted a bath / “Tell the story or he goes”’; ‘Tall time to call your Ma / Hey Ma, hey Ma’. The type captured by Maggie Nelson in The Argonauts (2015) when reflecting on Ginsberg’s poem Kaddish, which is dripping in, in Nelson’s words, ‘misogynistic repulsion’. Or is Bon Iver’s a hauntological melancholia? One of stubborn resistance. The type of mother-son relationship photographed by Donald Weber in his response to Alison Sperling and Anna Volkmar’s conversation on the post-atomic (Kuntslicht, 39: 3/4). Weber’s photographs were taken over two years in Chernobyl. The, now fetishised, explosion in Chernobyl perhaps the example of the nuclear, a hauntological theme post-WWII, made material. The bursting of a political, biological and biopolitical reality which was never meant to be. Weber’s photo of a middle-aged man and his elderly mother is captioned: ‘Mothers sought to be photographed sitting close to their sons, in domestic scenes of proud companionability. Their eyes signal an unalterable communion. And more – elevation. A man’s mother transcends the material order, and rises easily above even the most squalid circumstances. It is the frank declaration of her biological supremacy: This is my child’. If it is this relationship captured in Hey, Ma, it may promise a spectre which can be made material. An artefact which can continue its evolution, its becoming. ‘Let me talk to em / Let me talk to ‘em all’.

> Finally, that Hey, Ma’s nostalgia is a culturally productive one is suggested by one of its more memorable lines: ‘I waited outside / I was tokin’ on dope / I hoped it all won’t go in a minute’. In Fisher’s posthumously published Unfinished Introduction to Acid Communism, he, when imagining the process of resistance and a new politics whilst citing Jefferson Cowie, writes 'these new kinds of workers – who “smoked dope, socialised interracially, and dreamed of a world in which work had some meaning” – wanted democratic control of both their workplace and their trade unions’. The curious, outdated use of ‘dope' in Vernon’s lyrics then mirrors Cowie’s use of 'dope', echoing Cowie’s nostalgia for a lost working-class culture of 1970s America. Fisher uses Cowie’s argument to piece together an acid communism, which I will return to, but this, surely consequential, similarity further constructs i,i as a contemporary hauntological album.

> Following Hey, Ma comes the Sunday-school piano of U (Man Like). Raising an image of a crisply ironed, white America, like that depicted in Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone (2000), which acts as a reminder that nostalgia isn’t always productive. However, the nostalgia is continued with Naeem ‘Oh, my mind, our kids got bigger/ … / You take me out to pasture now’. Fisher asks ‘is hauntology, as many of its critics have maintained, simply a name for nostalgia?’. However, he argues that it is not a ‘formal nostalgia’ but one of solidarity and of a longing for the process of social improvement. Naeem, despite its nostalgia, continues the flickering between hope and despair. The joyful ‘More love / More love / More love’ and ‘I can hear, I can hear’; the anguished ‘I can hear crying’ and ‘What’s there to pontificate on now? / There’s someone in my head’. The latent and angelic child-like choir on Naeem another hauntological theme. As Fisher declares, ‘no doubt there comes a point when every generation starts pining for the artefacts of its childhood’. However, Vernon’s evoking of childhood is one perhaps linked to the, at times damaging, trope of ‘future generations’ in environmentalism. It is still a political longing though – ‘I’d Occupy that’. Occupy: that great post-2008 political uprising which dissipated into a mere exemplar in an undergraduate geography textbook.

> Next, Faith brings back the aliens from 33 “God” but this time, for attention, they’ve brought their clean guitar and slowly morph into the catholic choir we began to hear on Naeem. God died and, despite the sexy, liquidity of our modernity, we miss him.

> Marion momentarily brings us back from the cybernetically fractured semi-future. Back to the £3-coffee coffee-shop where you’re telling your friend that you think you and that girl will probably get back together but you need the time to be right. The hope is sucked back out; we’re back in capitalist realism and Arctic Monkey’s fourth (fifth?) album. Luckily, Salem restarts the signal to bring us back from our self-pity, dragging us to the obfuscation we were enjoying. Salem’s witches are still here and they’re pretty good at Ableton.

> Next, Sh’Diah grows from an autotuned prayer – ‘Just calm down (calm down) / And she’ll find time for the Lord’ - into a yearning saxophone riff/rift. But, alas, RABi, the album’s final song, returns us to a blues guitar and Vernon’s vocals. If the oscillation between past and future throughout i,i was a dialectic, the depressing outcome is ‘consumer capitalism’s model of ordinariness' (Fisher) of the neoliberal present. As in Fisher’s hauntology, the technologically-infused creativity of i,i is a lost future. Watching Vernon being interviewed feels like this. He’s got the Pacific-North-West hipster look: vegan but drives a V6 truck. Goes to the craft brewer’s bar and talks about that latest public health campaign to encourage men to talk about mental health over a pint but refrains from actually talking about depression. (Maybe serving beer in 2/3rd schooners means you never end up getting to the important part of the conversation?)

> But why does it matter? Because it’s about political and cultural (and creative) imagination. Fisher’s last big, and tragically but appropriately unfinished, philosophy is that of Acid Communism. Maybe there is a future !

> Fisher mourned not only the flattening of pop music, but also the ‘culture constellated around music (fashion, discourse, cover art)’. In contrast to a digital album which you never perceive in any physical manner, Bon Iver have emphasised various forms of art in their work, ensuring a communal creativity. There are multiple iterations of the album cover art on public posters and on social media. More excitingly though, is the collaboration with WHITEvoid, a Berlin-based sculpture group/company, which is discussed on Autumn. Prepared for live performances, WHITEvoid have constructed an ensemble of floating mirrors and kinetic lighting made from ‘space-age metal’ and motion tracking sensors. An artistic contribution as ethereal and tech-enhanced as the accompanying music and one which aestheticises our material sciences. The lighting provided by WHITEvoid in collaboration with the experimentation in sound system, similarly shown on Autumn, constructs the performance of i,i as an ongoing innovation and experimentation. The effort put into the upcoming live performances of i,i ensure that it is a music to be experienced not merely consumed. In another discussion on Autumn, Michael Brown, Bon Iver’s Artistic Director, says ‘you have to be in the moment with other people, you have to be able to know that the person next to you is having the same communal experience’.

> In Krisis (2018:2), Matt Colquhoun sees acid communism as a “project beyond the pleasure principle” (2) and of an “experimental” politics. If the sounds of i,i are hauntological, then the spectre it suggests is one of acid communism. The acid is provided by its accompanying artistic experimentation and the communism is its emphasis on the political and the communal.

Text: William Fleming

Published 30/8/19

#SPAM #essays #music criticism #bon iver #ii #Mark Fisher #acid communism #hauntology #Derrida #capitalist realism #ghosts of my life #William Fleming #essay

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visitonair · 5 years ago

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Dark Tourism: Are These The World’s Most Macabre Tourist Attractions? – Forbes

Dark tourism is generally defined as tourism involving travel to places historically associated with death and tragedy. It’s an interesting, somewhat macabre idea and as such its definition has recently been expanded upon to include the reasons people may want to visit a site beyond its gruesome appeal – namely its historical value rather than associations with death and suffering.

Whatever the reasoning behind it, dark tourism is on the up. And shows like the recent smash hit Chernobyl have only heightened people’s focus on visiting places with a grisly appeal. In particular, Pripyat in the Ukraine – the hometown of Chernobyl – is on track to become 2019’s surprise hit tourism destination.

In a nod to this strange trend then, My Late Deals has looked into the top dark tourism destinations around the world that explore, commemorate, try to understand and pay tribute to some of the greatest tragedies humans have inflicted upon themselves over our short but checkered history.

Flowers and a toy are placed to mourn the victims of the 9/11 terror attacks at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in New York.

Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images

National 9/11 Memorial and Museum

New York, USA

A tribute of remembrance and honor to the 2,977 people killed in the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 and the six people killed in the World Trade Center bombing of February 1993. Twin reflecting pools sit within the footprints of where the Twin Towers once stood and bear the names of every victim etched into the bronze panels surrounding the pools. They’re a sombre but powerful reminder of the largest loss of life from a foreign attack on American soil.

Visitor info: The 9/11 Memorial is free and open to the public daily from 7.30am to 9pm. You can buy museum tickets with entry to all exhibitions online at the museum website up to six months in advance.

Home | National September 11 Memorial & Museum

911memorial

The entrance of Auschwitz I, Poland bears a warning to anyone entering.

NurPhoto via Getty Images

Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau

Near Krakow, Poland

The largest German Nazi concentration camp and extermination center ever built, Auschwitz stands as a global symbol of terror and genocide that saw more than 1.1million men, women and children lose their lives. As well as a heart-rending testament to the evil humans can inflict upon each other, it also acts as a vital reminder and tool of education to try and prevent such atrocities happening again. As the museum explains, “There is no way to understand postwar Europe and the world without an in-depth confrontation between our idea of mankind and the remains of Auschwitz.”

Visitor info: It’s free to enter the grounds of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial but you should reserve a ticket on the website in advance as there are only limited individual tickets available on site daily from 7.30am. The museum is open year round except for Easter Sunday, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. Due to its content, the museum advises it’s not suitable for children younger than 14 and visitors are, of course, urged to dress and behave appropriately.

Auschwitz-Birkenau

Auschwitz www.auschwitz.org

Tourists visit the Memorial Park, Atomic Bomb Dome and nearby Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in Japan.

Getty Images

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum

Hiroshima, Japan

A moment that changed the course of history and shape of the world forever, on August 6th 1945 an atomic bomb detonated around 600 metres above the city of Hiroshima signalling the beginning of the end of WWII but at an unimaginable cost to life, the numbers of which will never be known for certain. The Memorial Museum is a call to action for all mankind: ‘No more Hiroshimas’ and hosts exhibitions of artefacts from the explosion and its victims, and testimonials from those who survived. Don’t miss the compelling letters sent to every nuclear world leader annually on the A-bomb anniversary calling for universal disarmament.

Visitor info: Open every day of the year except December 30 and 31st, an entry ticket costs 200 yen for adults and less for students.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum

Hpmmuseum Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum

Pripyat, near the Chernobyl nuclear plant, still bears its radioactive scars.

NurPhoto via Getty Images

Chernobyl

Pripyat, Ukraine

The world’s worst nuclear accident occurred behind the closed doors of the Iron Curtain on April 25-26th 1986 at the remote Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Its effects are still a long way from over, with scientists estimating it will take up to 20,000 years for the exclusion zone around the plant to become habitable again. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take a look for yourself on a carefully guided tour of the town and surrounding area to try and understand the impact it had. Top tip – if you haven’t seen the TV series before you go, maybe wait until after in case it puts you off (which would be entirely understandable.)

Visitor info: A lot to take in here as the tour guide rules are understandably explicit and strict to keep you safe from radiation poisoning so make sure you read up on them properly, so you’re prepared before you go. Chernobyl tours are open year round with one-day and multi-day trips available.

CHORNOBYL TOUR® – Official provider of the Chornobyl zone, ChNPP, Pripyat-town. Top-quality trips.

Chernobyl-tour

The original clothing of the victims hangs as a poignant reminder to the Murambi massacre.

Corbis via Getty Images

Murambi Genocide Memorial

Near Murambi, Southern Rwanda

There’s no possible way to compare mass murders and genocides across history with each as terrible as the next, but of all the global memorials, Murambi’s is perhaps the hardest to bare. It sits atop a picturesque green hill in rolling countryside on the site of an unfinished technical college where, in April 1994 an estimated 50,000 Tutsi men, women and children were massacred by the Interahamwe militia and soldiers loyal to the government responsible for the genocide. Uniquely and horrifically, the corpses of some 800 victims were exhumed, preserved in lime and put on display rather than being reburied – where they remain to this day

Visitor info: Open daily from 8am to 5pm (except on Umuganda Saturdays – the last of each month when it’s open from 1pm to 5pm) the memorial is free to enter and has an accompanying audio guide. Once again, be warned that it’s not an experience for children or those easily overwhelmed.

Genocide memorial opens at Murambi, Rwanda

Aegis Trust

A cell at the former Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary complete with chiseled air vent – a reminder of a successful prison escape in 1962.

Getty Images

Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary

San Francisco, USA

The Rock has become a cultural icon, a place embraced by Hollywood, music, folklore and tourists – and as such is San Francisco’s most popular tourist destination. The notorious former maximum-security federal penitentiary was home over its 29 years to everyone from Al Capone to Machine Gun Kelly and many of its cells remain much as they were when the prison was open, offering a glimpse of the hardships its guests had to endure. Many said the worst thing about being incarcerated here was being able to see the mainland and people going about their everyday lives – something many of the prisoners would never do again and so described as torture to witness.

Visitor info: Open daily except Thanksgiving, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, with ferry times to get you there varying through the seasons. Most timetables start around 9am from Pier 33 Alcatraz Landing in San Francisco and you should arrive at least 30 minutes before your ferry departs. Alcatraz Cruises is the official tour operator to the National Park Service.

Alcatraz Island (U.S. National Park Service)

Nps

Visitors explore the archaeological site of Pompeii with Mount Vesuvius looming ominously in the distance, a permanent reminder of the town’s tragic fate.

NurPhoto via Getty Images

The Ruins of Pompeii

Pompeii, Italy

This year saw the 1,940th anniversary of the Mount Vesuvius’s legendary volcanic eruption that wiped out the Roman city of Pompeii in 79AD. And while some may raise an eyebrow at its inclusion as a dark tourist site, the passing of years shouldn’t diminish the devastation of the eruption (which was many thousands of times more powerful than Hiroshima’s A-bomb) nor the number of lives it took. What makes it so compelling is its extraordinary condition thanks to the vast amount of ash that coated the city, thus preserving it for tourists to take selfies against nearly two thousand years later.

Visitor info: Open daily except for New Year’s Day, May 1st and Christmas Day from 9am. You can buy tickets in advance online or on the day at the ticket offices on site. EU citizens aged 18-24 can pick up tickets for €6 and kids for €3, while everyone else has to pay €18.90.

Pompei, gli scavi e la Città nuova. – Pompei Online.net

Pompei Online.net

A Cambodian Buddhist monk looks at skulls displayed at the Choeung Ek killing fields memorial during the annual Day of Anger in Phnom Penh.

AFP/Getty Images

The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Some 10 miles southwest of the Cambodian capital at Phnom Penh, this previously peaceful orchard was transformed between 1975 and 1978 into a mass killing ground under the orders of infamous despot, Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge regime. Removing prisoners from the S-21 prison (now Tuol Sleng Museum in Phnom Penh), around 17,000 men, women and children were transported here to be murdered without ‘wasting bullets’. The remains of 8,895 people were exhumed from mass graves in 1980 and many skulls are on display graphically showing the brutal way they were killed.

Visitor info: Open daily from 7.30am to 5.30pm, admission to the Killing Fields costs $6 including an audio tour. Most hotels in Phnom Penh can also put you in touch with a local tour guide.

Cheung Ek Killing Field, Attraction in Phnom Penh | Tourism Cambodia

Tourismcambodia TourismCambodia.com

The post Dark Tourism: Are These The World’s Most Macabre Tourist Attractions? – Forbes appeared first on Visit onair.

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artefact-chernobyl33 · 5 years ago

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ARTEFACT: Chernobyl 33 exhibition in Kyiv

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holyolyk · 4 years ago

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The First Virtual Chernobyl Exhibition Presented During the COVID-19

The First Virtual Chernobyl Exhibition Presented During the COVID-19 Pandemic

ARTEFACT: CHOrnobyl is the first in the world virtual exhibition dedicated to the Chernobyl accident that was created for an online experience and in VR headsets, presented on the biggest festival of digital and audiovisual art in Spain MADATAC XI with the support of the Cultural Foundation of Ukraine.

The exhibits of ARTEFACT:CHOrnobyl are very diverse works. Among them are the artworks of famous Ukrainian artists: The Chornobyl series by Maria Prymachenko, who lived on the edge of the Exclusion Zone, a series of prophetic paintings by Ivan Marchuk, a 3D photo by Arsen Savadov, as well as the artworks of young artists, whose names are new in Ukrainian media art.

VIDEO: https://youtu.be/oS7NA6WND80

More than 100 Ukrainian artists have been working on creating ARTEFACT: CHOrnobyl, so that more than 50 new artworks could be seen by the whole world online and completely free from the PC. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine restrictions this year the festival MADATAC is held online, the so the exhibits are presented in virtual space of Chernobyl on the web page artefact.live. (http://artefact.live)

The artists could learn to work in virtual spaces and to immerse themselves in the topic of the Chernobyl’s accident during the unique educational art residence by ARTEFACT, where most of the participants created their exhibits. The virtual space also includes the best works of the exhibition ARTEFACT:Chernobyl33, which were shown in Kyiv, in 2019. The artworks were created with VR and AR technologies, laser and video installations, neurointerface technology and parametric architecture and also have been completely transferred to cyberspace. The full list of artists and their exhibits is still being updated.

Svitlana Korshunova, the coordinator of the ARTEFACT project: “The first virtual exhibition dedicated to Chernobyl during the COVID-19 pandemic became a milestone event and a great challenge for us at the same time. For the first time, all artists presented their works virtually, creating numerous virtual worlds for their exhibits. Art is just starting to take over these areas, but it seems that they are created just for it. And for the viewer, everything is familiar and natural there, because we already spend most of our time online. Therefore, thanks to such technologies, art becomes closer to people. It’s getting closer to modern times and, as always, reflects its era better than anything”.

The closed preview of the exhibition took place in the digital gallery ART AREA in Kyiv, where visitors could get into the virtual exhibits on huge screens and in VR headsets. Thanks to modern technologies of virtual cyberspace, each artist was able to create their own world with its special atmosphere and feelings. Once the quarantine restrictions are over, the exhibition can be presented offline in galleries around the world.

Full list of exhibitors: https://cutt.ly/KgPhHrS

PHOTO: https://cutt.ly/agPhK88

The founder of the MADATAC festival, Iury Lech, already goes ahead of world trends and is ready for a full virtualization of his festival.

Iury Lech tells about the ARTEFACT project and its role in Ukrainian media art:

“Ukrainians are a very talented nation. Through such social and cultural projects, through a modern rethinking of the past, you can tell the world who you really are.

I hope that ARTEFACT will be an exponent of the emerging avant-garde Ukrainian art, and the world can understand what the real Ukraine is. Also, the project can help to reorganize Ukrainian society around the concept of homogeneous, but at the same time opened society to the new international trends, so Ukraine could again be the great country as it used to, but due to the unfavorable circumstances was deprived of its cultural identity and freedom”.

ARTEFACT is an innovative Ukrainian social and cultural project that with the new technologies of contemporary art draws attention to important issues, based on the example of the Chernobyl accident. The artists invite us to rethink the tragedy of our past. The ARTEFACT project considers the disaster of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant not only as a man-made, but as an informational catastrophe, full of disinformation, fake news and propaganda with the purpose to cover the real dimensions of the disaster. The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is an example of the informational catastrophe within one state that can have consequences for the whole world.

The project is implemented with the support of the Cultural Foundation of Ukraine, the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine, the Ukrainian State Agency for the Management of Exclusion Zones, the National Chernobyl Museum, the European Chernobyl Institute and the Center PRYPYAT.com.

MADATAC is the biggest media art festival in Spain for the last 10 years, which received 3 EFFE Awards – 2015-2016, 2017-2018 and 2019-2020. It’s held annually in Madrid. The goal of the festival is to engage the audience around audiovisual art, video art, art of digital and new media. The idea of the festival is to unite artists in a collective laboratory. In fact, this is one of the largest media art gatherings, where Ukrainian works are shown for the first time this year.

Ukrainian Cultural Foundation is a state institution created in 2017 as a new competition-based model of state funding and promotion of initiatives in the field of culture and creative industries. The Foundation’s activities, according to current legislation, are an integral part of the policy and priorities determined by the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine.

You can follow the ARTEFACT project in social media:

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/artefact.live/

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ArtefactArtProject/

What: Virtual exhibition ARTEFACT: CHOrnobyl

Online: http://artefact.live/ or https://madatac.es/artefact-chornobil-33

When: starting from October 26

We are open to answer all your questions, give comment and event information, as well as give you post-release with images and video.

ARTEFACT: CHOrnobyl explanation of the artworks:

1- “Genus. Chernobyl. Code depressurization” by Tetyana Zubchenko.

A symbol of femininity and connection with ancestors, where the video demonstrates how anxiety in the voice distorts the space and provides more information than all the media of that time.

2- “White Souls” by Iryna Vorona. The installation is dedicated to the pure and white souls of those who have gone to eternity. It is a microcosm of your own existence, hundreds of options of events with its knots and points of contact, followed by a new round of events, relationships and emotions.

3-Mimosa/Multifaced by Serhii Nizhinskiy y Volodymyr Kovbasa.

Mimosa is a new goddess of media quazi-reality and information warfare. Her name translates from Greek as the one who has many faces, which is synonymous with hypocritical, faceless and ugly. Instead of a head, the goddess has a cube that continuously broadcasts fakes that can be destroyed with the neurointerface.

4- Fakemet by Oleg Kharch.

Every day we receive a lot of new information, but not always we verify it, we cannot always be sure that it is true. We are used to trusting everything we are told, sometimes we ourselves are carriers of fakes. The installation offers us two options: believe what we are told to or verify the information.

5- Reactor Rods by Oksana Buzyak, Yaroslav Kostenko (VJ Yarkus) and Denys Voloshyn. The installation symbolizes the rods of the nuclear reactor and the process of their operation at the time of the disaster in Chernobyl in 1986. This is a visualization of processes that no one can see with the naked eye.

6- Radiation by Yaroslav Kostenko.

The light and laser performance tells us about the stages of the Chernobyl catastrophe, accompanied by the track of Denys Voloshyn and the play of actors immerses you in a special atmosphere that allows you to reconsider the perception of the disaster.

7- Atom Reaction/ Interactive Map by Eugen Vashchenko.

This infographic audiovisual installation symbolizes the behavior pattern of the uranium atom in the initial stages of the fission and the map of the spread of radioactive waste contamination.

8- Emission by Valeriy Korshunov and Astian Rey.

In the hospital bed lies a "man" who emits light. The exhibition is dedicated to the moment of emission of inner energy of a person. It is an example of a survivor of the Chernobyl accident suffering from radiation disease, which shows us that surviving an accident like this does not mean being able to carry on with a life as before.

9- A Landscape that No One Will See by Volodimyr Gulich.

The roof of the reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is like the other side of the moon, a place that no one will be able to see. There is no life there because of the highest level of radiation contamination. It became so because of human irresponsibility.

10- The Ashes of the Nuclear Age by Valeriy Korshunov and Astian Rey.

The installation is a reflection on the topic of heroism and sacrifice of people who were involved in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident.

11- Video 360º and VR of the ARTEFACT: Chernobyl 33

Here you can experience the last year exhibition ARTEFACT: Chernobyl 33 in a 360º video or a VR headset.

12- Chernobyl Lights by Valeriy Korshunov.

The largest digital sculpture Chernobyl Lights at the Duga radar, which is also the largest laser and light installation in Ukraine on October 23 2019. The record is registered by the Book of Records of Ukraine.

13- The Flags of More than 40 Countries Lighted on the Chernobyl Arch. Valeriy Korshunov.

The flags of more than 40 countries were projected on the world's biggest movable structure, the New Safe Confinement, also known as the Arch, erected over the destroyed reactor of Unit 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The artist dedicated the action to the Ukrainian Flag Day and the Independence Day of Ukraine, which was celebrated on 23 and 24 of August 2020.

14- ARTEFACT Prometheus by Valeriy Korshunov.

It is a digital sculpture presented during the last Burning Man 2020 that was held virtually. The project demonstrates the hand of the mythical god Prometheus who once brought fire to the people, but in this case the hand holds the artifact, as a symbol of awakening.

15- Verity (“Pravda”) by Olesya ( Shambur) Geraschenko

A selection of issues of the newspaper "Pravda" during the Chernobyl accident in video format 360º. When did the All-Union newspaper report such a serious accident with a radiation leak? Only on the 12th day and not on the first page, but with a small article inside.

16- Be Ready! by Oleg Kharch.

The name of the artwork refers to a motto of the Soviet pioneers, represented by 500 red pioneer ties. On May 1, 1986, everyone demonstrated in Kyiv for Workers' Day, although the capital was heavily contaminated with radiation. No one was ready or prepared for that.

17- Sarcophagus / Piano-Camera-Obscura by Waldemart Klyuzko and Igor Belsky.

This is a mutation of a musical instrument that turns into a camera obscura. Inside you can see how the camera obscura works, in which the world is turning upside down. It is a symbol of an upside down world after the Chernobyl accident.

18- Exodus by Dmytro Radushynskiy and Igor Bondarchuk.

In the virtual room you are at the end of a queue. There are a lot of people and it is not clear what is happening ahead and only when you go out from the line, you can see the whole picture: “the queue of evolution". This installation focuses on human evolution, and not on the catastrophe itself. The catastrophe here is just a bitter step leading to the growth.

19- HPA (Hope Problem Action) by Dmytro Aranchii and Angelina Gladushevska.

The authors draw attention to excessive energy consumption, which provokes more energy production in dangerous ways, including nuclear energy production. The installation symbolizes the reflection and trace of humans on Earth – the better the reflection you leave behind you, the longer the life of the universe will be.

20- "Expanse" by Vartan Markarian.

The artwork "Expanse" is a metaphorical view of the ecological catastrophe, a call to conscious consumption of resources. The remnants of human civilization of the city of Pripyat are gradually dissolving, nature is gaining space back, houses are sprouted with trees, creating landscapes of the post-humanity world. Nature quietly dissolves the whole environment, humanity has not been able to coexist in harmony with the world.

21- Narrative of Catastrophe by Tim Voronkin.

Media reports about the Chernobyl accident starting from 1986 create a multi-layered information collage for the world community: here you will find both – sources of information and as well as sources of disinformation. And only critical thinking and new technologies will help to analyze the whole narrative about the Chernobyl catastrophe, which was formed over the time.

22- Radiotroph by Volt Agapeyev.

For some time after the Chernobyl disaster, it was believed that the existence of any life at the site of the explosion was impossible. However, in 1991 microbiologists discovered colonies of mushrooms on the wreckage of the reactor, which learned not only to live in the middle of radiation, but also to convert it into energy for themselves. Internally displaced people from Pripyat, like most Ukrainians, are similar to that mushrooms with a phenomenal ability to survive and form new connections.

23- Chernobyl – the City of Future by Oleksandra Tumyk and Oleksandra Stupakovska.

The project combines the present of Chernobyl and its possible future, which is located on the other side of the bridge. The news of the new Chernobyl shows what humanity aspires to: "There is no more dangerous nuclear waste left in the world".

24- Chernobyl Story by Alis La Luna.

It is a conceptual art project where modernity is paralleled with the past events, using GIFs to show how Chernobyl continues to exist in different forms like Youtube videos or patients with thyroid problems. We live a “normal” and modern lives today and we can perceive the disaster and all the (dis)information about the past, entangled with emotional dissonance, only from today’s point of view.

25- Genesis by Oksana Chepelyk.

The project reveals the topic of the nation's reproduction and demonstrates the ultrasound of the fetus in the body of a pregnant woman. A ball, which hangs over the woman, changes the images of babies every 1.5 minutes, when a new baby is born in Ukraine. Genesis conveys anxiety and shows the limitations of human impact on radiation.

26- Meta-Physical Space-Time by Oksana Chepelyk.

In the Moebius tape, an algorithmic society, quantum physics, consciousness and history are combined with 360º videos from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and its cooling pond. Through spatial ideas, the project turns to the search for understanding of the universe through quantum physics and human consciousness in the era of algorithmic society.

27- “Trace of Chernobyl” by Iván Dzis.

This art installation depicts and tries to draw attention to children with oncologic diseases,

associated with the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Some studies suggest that the Chernobyl accident may have caused about 1,000 cases of thyroid cancer and 4,000 cases of other cancers in Europe. The exact health consequences of this radiation exposure are still being assessed.

28- Obscurity by Ivan Dzis.

Events on the night of April 26 1986, in Chernobyl are seen through the eyes of an ordinary family. Here’s also raised the issue of disinformation in Soviet mass media about the tragic explosion. As well as the famous ballet Swan Lake by Piotr Tchaikovsky was used by Soviet media to show in times of crisis – either when a disaster happens or the leader died. That way to suppress the information.

29- Voice of Pripyat by Margo Reznik.

With the help of sounds there is a strong emotional immersion in Pripyat. It's a different mix of sounds and voices for each part of the city. For example, for the music school of Pripyat, these are the sounds of piano playing, children's laughter, popular songs of that time, the sound of a dosimeter, the noise of wind, the sounds of crickets and nature.

30- “Arc Chornobyl” by Denis Kopylov.

A gallery of the photos of the different parts of the world: Antarctica, the Arctic, Kenya, Uganda, Congo, Brazil, Papua. Exotic animals in their natural habitats, incredible landscapes and genuine emotions. All of this is reflected in the thousands of photos by traveller and photographer Denis Kopylov to show that the world is diverse and homogeneous, far and near, and incredibly beautiful at the same time.

31- Neutron flux by Viktor Arefiev.

Neutron flux is a phenomenon that occurs in a running reactor. This time he got out of control and went into the sky with a crimson light. The neutron flux is dangerous to all living things on Earth, but the light pillar that pierces the space and other galaxies, is a warning message to other extraterrestrial civilizations.

32- “Khodylymyporaiu” (We Were Walking in Heaven) by Yan Bespalko.

The world of illusion and the world of reality are connected in space. Only one moment was enough for them to collide, but the truth about the accident collapsed for the monumental and, at first glance, humanistic system. The price of illusion turned out to be too high.

33- Follow the Landscapes by Tetiana Korneieva.

The project is dedicated to the investigation of the Chernobyl tragedy through the prism of personal stories and the creation of a virtual map for rethinking danger zones and objects of forced museification.

34- Transformation. Kupava (Nadiia Chernenko).

The transformation of the traditional view on Chernobyl as a tragedy into an alternative feeling, depicted in light drawings. It all starts with real pictures from Chernobyl, which change through the associations and imagination of the author.

35- Earth by Valentina Biero.

The virtual monumental sculpture "Earth" has glass parts which allow to see the Exclusion Zone from the inside. And with the help of a teleportation capsule you can see the restored natural area. The main theme is the influence of the people on nature and environment.

36- Beautiful View by Kostiantyn Militynskii.

On May 1, 1986, the elite of the Soviet communist party received the parade from the tribune of Vladimir Lenin's mausoleum, and at the same moment blue and red lights were coming out with 30,000 roentgen from the destroyed Chernobyl nuclear reactor, which also happened to be named after Lenin.

37- The Snow City by Maria Pavlenko.

The Snow City is an utopian project about a new source of energy and the civilization that has formed around it. The search for new energy sources and the use of atomic energy provoked a large number of theories and myths. The Snow City focuses on the myth of nuclear winter.

38- Memory Board by Inna Sorochynska.

In front of you is a Memory Board, a place where you can learn many different stories. Maybe it will help to find something lost or to find someone who stayed in that past life before the Chernobyl disaster.

39- Homo Inside Out by Kostyantyn Shkurpela.

The Soviet scientific progress became a great international tragedy. The Soviet machine was a bureaucratic system. An idea in the head of a superior leader out of ignorance drove to the fatal actions of his subordinates, only to break a record that costs thousands of lives and lasts hundreds of years.

40- Hidden Threat by Yuri Gurin.

In the fight against old problems, the new generations face other invisible threats. Life shows that humanity is often unprepared for such disasters. The purpose of this project is to connect and at the same time to contrast the understanding of the conscious and true perception of modern problems in the context of the mistakes of the past.

41- Invisible Consequences by Khrystyna Khmil.

Human's actions change the human and the world around us, it depends on us what the world will be like. However, we often depend on other people's choices and actions. Here works another molecular world, invisible to our eyes, which interacts with us and becomes a part of us.

42- ZOO by Veronika Vo (CHEREDNYCHENKO).

The abstract sculptures symbolize the adaptability of a living organism. The example of the Chernobyl tragedy clearly shows how fragile the human being is, on the contrary: nature is invulnerable. What is a catastrophe for one species can be an incentive for the emergence, reproduction and development of thousands of other species.

43- Sunrise Energy. IllumiNation Team.

The central image of the installation is a divided atom, which hides a popular and used object – an incandescent lamp. The installation encourages a different look at the electric bulb, which, like 34 years ago, is powered primarily by nuclear power plants, which produce more than 50% of Ukraine's electricity, and coal-fired power plants, which poison the air. Instead, the authors offer to consider alternative energy sources.

44- “Error: Memory Cannot be read”. Vera DG.

3D sculpture in the style of calligraffiti is created in the form of a calligraphic circle, similar to the continuous movement of the sun, wind, energy, it symbolically consists of 1986 elements. Each element is an element of Iranian calligraphy, which means the word love for the millions affected by the Chernobyl tragedy.

45- ASH TRAIL by Taya Kabaeva.

ASH TRAIL is a digital installation dedicated to the Chernobyl disaster, created in TiltBrush. This is a 3D photo collage of images of victims of the tragedy, which has become a digital island of memory in VR. The author herself comes from the nuclear city of Energodar, which, in her opinion, is very similar to Pripyat.

46- Memories about Pripyat. Rita Gasanova.

This is a virtual journey to the collective memory of the inhabitants of Pripyat until 1986. On April 27, 1986, they left their homes for only three days, they thought, and, as it turned out, forever.

47- Revival of the Chernobyl Pulse. Olga Borysenko.

The parade for Workers' Day on May 1, 1986. The people are walking, and there is silence on the radio. The plane cuts their heads, because information about the Chernobyl accident is still unknown.

48- Forced Evolution by Natalia Fedoryshyn.

The Chernobyl explosion affected not only people, but also animals. Magic graphite stick, because graphite is a symbol of the highest concentration of radioactive parts, turns realistic animals into naive, distorted and mutated.

49- Maze of Progress. Lesia Strelbitska, Taya Kabaeva, Ivan Say, Igor Ishchuk.

The viewer can observe and feel from the inside the physics of the reactor processes at the time of the accident. When entering the room the person, like a neutron, sets off a chain reaction and then goes through all the key stages of the reactor��s work. And there comes the explosion, the first one and then the second one.

50- Jammer by Daniil Galkin.

For several months, the author was interfering in the radio signals of people who were not aware of that and were finding themselves within the range of his jammer. Such blocking provoked outrage in people, when the signal was interrupted. However, in the USSR the practice of blocking the radio signal was common, so it was not possible to freely receive or disseminate any information. These practices are directly related to the consequences of the silencing the Chernobyl accident.

51- Dream of Pierre Michelli or Memorial of the Victory of Saprobionts. Ksenia Gnylytska.

The beautiful world of microorganisms can be seen under a microscope. They live two hundred million years longer than human beings, pierce us, kill us or save us, and they will exist long after us. They will survive everywhere from the poles to the equator, deserts, geysers, rocks or the deep sea, despite heat or cold, high pressure or even radiation.

#R #art #ARTEFACT: Chernobyl 33

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holyolyk · 5 years ago

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Chernobyl and the Uprooted Apple Tree

İsmail Koray Yılmaz / Volunteer of beraberce Xchange Program: Sites of Memory 2019

“Uprooted yet never alone and out of these strange ashes, hope will arise.” Launa Gray

It was my last evening in Kyiv, I had some books about Chernobyl and two red apples in my hands that Anna ( Anna Korelevska: Director on Scientific Research ) had given to me. And now, after the whole experience, a red apple has another meaning for me. While thinking about my five weeks, once again I reviewed my dreams, my expectations and what I saw in those 5 weeks. It was a unique experience for me, visiting the Chernobyl region and learning about it while making translations for the museum. There are many things I have learned. In the text, I want to explain the mission and operation of the museum by examining the practices of remembering on Chernobyl. At the same time, I aim to explain how and why we should remember Chernobyl by conveying the other recall practices I have experienced.

Highlights of the Museum

The National Museum of Chernobyl was opened on April 25, 1992, at the 6th anniversary of the tragedy, with purpose of being a memory place for people affected by the consequences of the accident and who have made a major contribution to the control of these consequences. The mission of the museum is telling the world what happened before and after the accident and to raise awareness on nuclear power in general.

The museum has three exhibition halls; these exhibition halls have temporary and permanent exhibitions that provide historical and technical information about the accident. The temporary exhibition hall on the first floor features researches on radiation and radioactive areas from the world and art works inspired from Chernobyl.

On the second floor, there is a permanent exhibition in a chronological order which shows the events that occurred in Chernobyl, and there is a large hall where events like conferences, educational programs are organized.

Important Installations in the Museum

As we move to the second floor, we see the names of the settlements from exclusion zone on the ceiling above the staircase. On the steps, an uprooted apple tree figure appears which is designed by Anatoliy Haydamaka, the interior designer of the museum.

This tree represents thousands of people who had to leave their homes forever after the accident. This figure can also be seen in the museum signboard, different parts of the exhibition halls.

It is one of the most powerful parts of the museum because it reminds the losses caused by the accident. At the end of the road, the name of Chernobyl, written on a black background with a red line crossing out the name. It serves as a sign that Chernobyl no longer exists.

Just below the sign, the museum’s slogan is written; “Est dolendi modus, non est timendi” which means “There is a limit of sadness, anxiety has no limits”.

The exhibition hall, where we witnessed the events in a chronological order since the moment of the accident, starts with an office clock showing the accident time with the stamp of the USSR.

Respectively, the explosion, first interventions to the reactor, measures taken for protection, structures which were built after the accident in the area, information about the region, health studies and the assistance of various institutions and states are explained in that hall.

Many photos belonging to the people who worked in the power plant, who participated in the treatment processes or were affected by the accident and photos of the aftermath of the accident in general, accompanies the display cases. In addition, the integrity of the exhibition hall is provided with various elements from the exclusion zone and elements of Slavic culture.

In the third and last exhibition hall, iconostasis covered with barbed wires welcomes us. The last hall is a monument to the consequences of the catastrophe, a warning of the danger that the world must be aware of, and a space for thinking about what we have learned in the museum.

In the center of the hall, there is a model of the reactor’s upper biological shield in exact sizes.

In the middle of the model, there is a boat with dolls and stuffed animals as a representation of Noah’s Ark. Portraits of Chernobyl children on octagonal plates hanging on the opposite wall.

Totally, the hall shows us the extent of the disaster. This leads us to think about the consequences of the accident. We realize that catastrophes like Chernobyl can happen anywhere and anytime in the world. We need to be careful about our actions!

Art and Chernobyl

During my stay in Kiev, I had the opportunity to visit Artefact Chernobyl 33, an exhibition based on digital image and sound. Installations, lighting arrangements, visual and sound systems create a unique atmosphere throughout this exhibition. In the emotional dimensions of Chernobyl; I was feeling full of anxiety, fear, sadness. In my opinion, the oldness of the building, where the Artefact is located, combines the elements of the exhibition and it creates an unforgettable experience. This further strengthens the atmosphere there.

Figures, black as a raven, referring the people who were affected by radiation welcome us. Animation of heartbeats belonging to a person exposed to radiation supplemented by graphic visuals makes us nervous. On another side, I saw the slogan of Vladimir Lenin All-Union Pioner Organization written in two flags. Slogans’ meanings are “Be ready!” and as a response “Always ready!” and red scarves worn by children in the organization hanging on the ceiling and I am questioning, were they ready ? Human faces under nylons under intense red lighting in another room look like a cemetery. I was hearing the real record the announcement of Chernobyl evacuation, which increases the tension of the environment.

All of these elements took me back to 33 years ago, to the atmosphere of this great catastrophe. I understood that, Chernobyl continues to be a bleeding wound even after 33 years and art remains a powerful way of remembering that and passing it to people.

Chernobyl Tours

Increasing popularity of the region, has led to the emergence of black tourism. There are different kinds of tours to the region; You can stay in the Exclusion Zone, you can take a tour by helicopter or boat, you can visit the buildings that are very inconvenient to enter. You can even buy Chernobyl souvenirs from a shop at checkpoint.

Considering the long-lasting effects of the disaster and the fact that the region is the epicenter of a tragedy, it is quite disturbing that the tour becomes more and more touristic now.

I have participated in the tours in order to observe and understand the size of the accident better. Also, increasing dominance of nature at area and things left behind by who used to live there helped me to realize what mankind can leave behind. Except our own existence, everything we made is destined to perish. The secret military city, the huge power station and Pripyat turned to just few pieces of concrete. And Reactor 4 is closed with the world’s largest arched structure, which was completed 2 years ago.

We were allowed to be near the reactor for about 10 minutes, but as the audience in the area, how much we were aware about the danger we were involved?

Conclusion

On the way back from Kyiv to Istanbul a street musician was playing a sweet music in the subway wagon. This is how Kyiv says goodbye to me. In that moment I’m starting to think about what I’ve learned and felt. Kiev is a city full of lessons, recalls and remembering places with the recent history of Ukraine and the Chernobyl disaster that has affected the whole world 33 years ago. After my witnesses, I keep asking myself these questions;

-Are the seconds, minutes, hours, days that we are in, really capable of changing everything?

-Are we aware of the future which we endangered for our short-term interests?

-When we carry out our actions as individuals or humanity, do we consider the past and the future, or do we make fatalism by letting our lives and history repeat itself?

-Does it have a real impact, the sharing, remembering and reacting paths that technology changed, or is it just something that comforts our consciences?

-Is Turkey ready for building a nuclear power plant and for the consequences of a nuclear catastrophe?

P.S.

https://www.facebook.com/972971759453284/videos/798067210650615/

https://www.facebook.com/972971759453284/videos/416787245686595/

https://www.facebook.com/972971759453284/videos/766401230469586/