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fatehbaz · 3 years ago

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At 6.9 feet in height and 6.2 feet in diameter, Ainu artist Kohei Fujito’s iron sculpture, The Singing of the Needle (2021), is an imposing size, with an iron screen bristling with rough spirals barbed with spikes. A painted deer skull is mounted on a pole at its center, surrounded on all sides by the iron screen like it’s being shielded, from some external threat. In 2011, in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan, Fujito was concerned about the effect of radioactive winds on his Ainu family and community on Hokkaido, Japan’s northernmost prefecture.

“The spiral pattern throughout the work is based on a traditional Ainu symbol for wind,” says Manuela Well-Off-Man, chief curator at the Institute of American Indian Arts’ Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. [...]

Exposure: Native Art and Political Ecology is the first large-scale international exhibition of Indigenous artists responses to nuclear disaster and proliferation. It includes about 45 works by more than 30 Indigenous artists from the United States, Canada, Greenland, Japan, Australia, and the Pacific Islands.

The regions represented in the exhibition, which opens at IAIA MoCNA on Friday, Aug. 20 [2021], are united by similar narratives. Perhaps no toll visited on Earth by the deleterious effects of radiation is greater than that on its Indigenous communities.

Much of the nuclear testing and related disasters happened decades ago, often without public knowledge, and impacted communities who had insufficient understanding of the long-term effects. In the United States, the ramifications of widespread uranium extraction on tribal lands continues to this day. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 75 percent of the nation’s 15,000 abandoned uranium mines are on Federal tribal land, including more than 1,000 on the Navajo Nation.

Diné photographer Will Wilson addresses the subject in his drone-based photographic triptych Mexican Hat Disposal Cell, Navajo Nation (2020-2021), which shows aerial views of contaminated uranium mines and mills, and in two images on display from his Autoimmune Response (AIR) series (circa 2005). The latter is an Indigenous futurist look at a post-apocalyptic world that situates its subject (Wilson donning a gas mask) in the majestic but toxic landscape of the Navajo Nation, which has a history of devastation caused by uranium, oil, and gas extraction.

Destruction I (2002) is located at the entrance of the Anne and Loren Kieve Gallery, where the main part of the exhibition is housed. It’s a 4-foot by 3-foot painting by Aboriginal artists Kunmanara Queama and Hilda Moodoo (both Pitjantjatjara people) that depicts a multicolored atomic mushroom cloud, rendered as a traditional Aboriginal dot painting.

“What we’re doing with this exhibition is giving international Indigenous artists a voice to comment on the impact of nuclear exposure, like here in New Mexico, from the first atomic bomb development and tests but also from uranium mines,” Well-Off-Man says. “Similarly, in Australia, there were atomic bomb tests throughout the 1950s and ‘60s. Like here, with our uranium mines, these tests were conducted on Aboriginal land, without consulting with tribal governments and tribal elders. The government tried to move entire communities, but they didn’t really explain what would happen, and some of the Aboriginal tribal members stayed on the land. They never got the message, and they got severely sick or died of cancer.” [...]

A visual motif in the form of biohazard and radiation symbols runs through the exhibition. Samoan artist Dan Taulapapa McMullin’s Radiation Mats (2021) are intended as markers, alerting the viewer that the separate spaces are part of the same show. They also reflect the exhibition’s theme. The symbols are superimposed over photographic imagery of landscapes and people of the Bikini Atoll, whose inhabitants were forcibly removed in 1946 in advance of a series of nuclear tests conducted by the United States the following decade. When the inhabitants were allowed to return, more than two decades later, they were poisoned by high concentrations of the radioactive isotope Caesium-137 and high levels of Strontium-90 in the well water, prompting mass evacuations in 1980 [...]

Other works by McMullin include Clouds (2021), a video installation that places the history of nuclear testing in American Micronesia and French Polynesia into a contemporary context, and Te Mau Ata: Clouds (2021), a photo-collage depicting Bikini’s displaced people and French Polynesia’s anti-nuclear and independence activists amid the eponymous mushroom clouds created by nuclear blasts.

It’s significant that Exposure, which travels next year, launches in New Mexico, where the first atomic bomb test was conducted. That event was a precursor to the first deliberate use of a nuclear weapon (on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945) mere weeks after the historic test at Trinity Site, New Mexico, on July 16. [...]

Well-Off-Man organized the exhibition in collaboration with guest curators from around the world, including iBiennale Director Kóan Jeff Baysa, Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art Chief Curator and Vice Director Satomi Igarashi, and independent curator Tania Willard (Secwepemc Nation).

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Headline, images, captions, and all text published by: Michael Abatemarco. “Invisible invader: Indigenous artists respond to the nuclear legacy.” Santa Fe New Mexican. 20 August 2021.

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robbyrobinson · 4 years ago

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When the Wind Blows: Alternate Ending

When the Wind Blows. That was a title I hadn’t heard in a long time. It was just obviously a British animated film based on a graphic novel by Raymond Briggs. You know, the guy who did The Snowman? It centered around an elderly couple then one day, word came out that war would break out in three days. The graphic novel was written around the height of the Cold War. The threat of nuclear war was as high as it is now.

I’ve always had morbid affection for dark animated films. Watership Down; The Plague Dogs; Felidae, you name it. When the Wind Blows fit snuggly in that bubble. Having watched it religiously on YouTube, the film was ultimately removed most likely because of it violated the website’s terms of service with its objectionable content. My thirst for the darkness of the animated feature was unquenchable and I hadn’t watched it sense.

That would all change one day. While I was browsing the internet, I came upon an online forum dedicated to dark, more obscure cartoons. It must’ve been my lucky day because one of the users happened to discuss When the Wind Blows. It was boring at first with just him elaborating on how he was immensely disturbed by the film when he saw it at 7. Then the discussion took a swerve.

After he explained what he considered the most horrid aspect of the film, he added an interesting tidbit. Apparently, it was an interview with Briggs himself. In the interview, Briggs explained that what contributed to his penning the graphic novel was the reality of a nuclear war and how virtually impossible it was for anyone to survive a nuclear holocaust. As such, there was a secret ending embedded in the home releases of the movie. To further his point, the user left an link to download the movie.

Curiosity overwhelmed my reasoning. For all intents and purposes, he may as well might’ve fabricated the whole thing. But, if it was in fact real, it would prove a good nugget of knowledge. So, I clicked the link. As it loaded, I was growing concerned that I was hoodwinked and that some sort of virus would crash it. I glanced back at my computer screen seeing that it was finished.

The film surprisingly started off without a single lag nor freeze. David Bowie performed the title song per usual followed by the real-life footage and Jim returning home from reading the newspapers in town. He lived with his wife in his country home in Sussex. He conversed with his wife again without issue. I felt a building dread. This was likely the third time I’ve seen the film so I already knew how everything would play out. Its saccharine mask would crumble away exposing its sinister underbelly. I hadn’t the faintest idea as to why this was the case. If I could put money on it, I’d have to guess Jim’s tone of voice. He was voiced by John Mills and yet rather than his jovial, more informed self, he had a forlorn expression on his face. Hilda immediately took notice.

When she asked her husband what the matter was, he informed her about the likelihood of war being inevitable. After she went through her tirade of war being wicked, the radio shuttered to life announcing that war could be expected in three days. The film segues to Jim preparing the house for the nuclear missile such as by painting the windows white or making a makeshift bomb shelter all according to the Protect and Survive pamphlet the government handed out. He called his son Ron only to become disheartened with his son's seeming ignorance. Ron's laughter could be heard over the phone. A mixture of humor and melancholy. He quoted famous songs much to his father’s chagrin. To me, it was clear that Ron was aware than he was letting on. He was losing what little sanity he had left by partying his troubles away.

The film progressed with the couple mentioning previous world wars and D-Day. Hilda was making a cake while her husband further desecrated the house in accordance with the pamphlet. The radio sounded again, the announcer explaining that an ICBM would arrive in three minutes. Jim became more hectic, and shoved Hilda underneath the door after calling her a bitch.

The screen turned to symbolize the missile dropping. A deafening siren blared through my headphones nearly sending me sprawling on the ground. Violent images of civilians' bodies littered the scenery. Fire rained down from the sky and engulfed the bystanders.

A school bus full of children was hit by a wave of the flames; each child’s body bloated up from the blast and ruptured like water balloons. Their skin melted off gorily. Imagine placing a stick of butter being placed in a microwave. Other people were glued to the streets due to their legs fusing with the concrete. Faces burned off as buildings and houses were leveled by the onslaught of chaos.

The sound wave struck the couple’s house, decimating it. Miraculously, or rather unfortunately, they survived. Hilda in typical fashion wanted to tidy up only to be held back and told that she couldn’t leave until the fallout subsided. In a new addition, Jim assured his wife that they would be fine. Another voice spoke out one that Hilda could not hear. Jim reacted in disgust becoming further unsettled.

“Old boy, while are you sentencing your wife to death?”

The conclusion I drew was that it represented Jim’s innermost thoughts, or more directly his conscience. It was a monotonous voice bereft of any emotion nothing there but a cold, pure logic.

The two attempted to survive as long as they could off what little rations they had left or whatever survived the blast. Their water bottles were disintegrated and subsequently, their water lines were cut off. The couple were immeasurably famished. Throughout the week, they made offhanded remarks about how people lost in the wilderness resorted to drawing lots and sacrificing the weakest member so the others would live. The thought they were so hungry they'd be willing to eat each other was horrible.

Jim once found a meat clover and walked over to his life as she laid on the couch sleeping. He contemplated his options but got cold feet when Hilda was stirring awake. He quickly hid the weapon away, instead telling her that she was hearing things because of her age.

One day while they were walking in their yard, Jim smelled something in the air. Hilda followed him also smelling it. Roasted pork, she thought. Her stomach was so barren, she’d waste no time gorging on the pork.

They walked over a hill, their thoughts immediately turning to sorrow. A family of four was huddled together tightly and were roasted dark by the blast. They were the remains of a husband and wife and their two small kids. Hilda and Jim looked at each other then at me with that thousand yard stare. The camera focused in on Jim’s beady eyes. Fire danced in them. He knelt down and ripped off an arm from one of the kids. Hilda prayed over the bodies before digging in as well.

"The Powers That Be will get to us in the end.”

A few weeks passed by. The couple were somehow still alive. The camera panned to the fridge showing scraps of flesh that were left of the family. Around that time, Jim had also collected the rain water, unaware that it was radiated and unsafe regardless of boiling it. Their water supply had vanished again. Rat carcasses were thrown all over the floor. It then segued to Hilda vomiting into the toilet ranting about hating the taste of rat meat and blood. Boils were all over her body and Jim’s. They were skeletal in appearance with their leathery skin barely being held together.

“I just hope that Ron and Beryl made it out okay,” Hilda weakly said.

As she said this, a jump cut of Ron popped up. He was animated with clay alongside his wife and children. They were melded together in a fleshy blob with their limbs conjoined together. Jim assures her that their son's family would always stick together. Hilda's hair began to fall out by the time she suggested to Jim that they should return to their bags because another attack could come. Jim agreed to her suggestion still assuring her that help would arrive.

The voice from earlier returned now violently criticizing Jim on withholding the truth about their situation. Hilda got into her bag and waited for her husband to join her. It felt like hours before he returned, and when he did, I was taken aback. In his hands was a rifle. He cocked it, and pointed it behind his wife’s head.

“Dear, are you there?” she asked.

Jim choked back tears as he tried to speak coherently. “Recite the Lord’s Prayer for me, would you?”

She obliged. Hilda recited the prayer louder as if hoping that her prayers would be heard. A single tear rolled down Jim's face. A loud gunshot is heard when the camera panned to the outside of the house. Jim looked at the gun in horror and tossed it beside his feet. Kneeling down, he clutched his wife as she laid dying. Tears dropped on her bosom. He remained in that position until the film faded out. The voice reappeared after the Morse code spelled out MAD.

"Old Jim died clutching his beloved wife to his dying breath due to radiation poisoning. But what he ultimately learned was that when you die…nothing happens.”

I was speechless with what I had witnessed. The film was dark, but never would I have thought that Briggs had a more sinister ending in store for the elderly couple. I took a flask and hard copied the download so I could watch it every now and then. Good too because the user’s account was terminated with the only indication of its existence being the other responses that the users gave.

Briggs said it himself that the wanted to show the utter hopelessness of surviving a nuclear war, and he succeeded.

#raymond briggs #lost episode #lost episode creepypasta #when the wind blows #when the wind blows 1986 #nuclear #nuclear war #nuclear holocaust #when the wind blows raymond briggs #bloggs

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gwendolyn-of-loxley · 1 day ago

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Some more before I run out of steam.

Cooper tries his best to set aside his vendetta for Blisk and that lasts approximately five minutes. As the Frontier Militia starts waging a proper war of attrition against the IMC, the Titan doctrine of combat begins to fade from the overall scheme. While excellent mining tools that can serve well in desperate combat rolls, Titans themselves are expensive to maintain and arm, and Pilots given clearance to use them take time to train. As a result, the number of Titans on the field are the ones that simply refuse to die; all but the best of Pilots have either fallen or retired.

This is where a shift in perspective comes. Kuben Blisk is set up at an IMC-held colony closer to the front of the Frontier War. He is intently working on his Legion-class Titan, named "Hilda-Mari" as revealed when he absentmindedly chastizes her for "not taking care of herself." He is interrupted when a team of IMC Spectre troops carry in an unweildy holographic projector, wordlessly turning it on to reveal a life-sized hologram of General Marder. The two bicker, and their relationship is evident and clear: General Marder is vocally condescending to Blisk regarding his status as a freelancing mercenary (as opposed to continuing his previous career as an IMC officer) and clearly still frustrated about Blisk's refusal to kill BT and Cooper at the end of Titanfall 2.

Blisk, on the other hand, finds Marder to be irritating. Taking care to keep civil so as to keep his job, Blisk reminds Marder that he's still the best Pilot for hire, and that they both know it. Marder is displeased with Blisk's snark and remarks how much money he's spent hiring Blisk for so long, only for the Frontier to gain ground. Marder then proceeds to give Blisk a new assignment to hold a nearby alien archeological site from Frontier forces as long as possible. Blisk, having grown tired of unchallenging combatants and missing the now-dead Apex Predators, accepts. He additionally mutters about how unentertaining it is to battle Remnant Titans, but does not elaborate.

Marder ends their call, and a few seconds later, Blisk's nearby computer terminal gives him a beep. Lazily checking, Blisk chuckles with excitement as the computer reveals that the 6-4 are closing in. Jack Cooper's head rotates on the screen. Blisk calls out to Hilda-Mari that their "hero still isn't done."

Transitioning back to Frontier command, Sarah Briggs is briefing the 6-4 on the data they retrieved from their last mission. It is revealed that the IMC, having no shortage of wealth, has experienced an indecisiveness among its board of directors. Whole some on the board wish to outright abandon Frontier space in order to cut losses, others have pushed for the engagement of nuclear armaments on Militia planets with fewer organic natural resources. The proposition comes with the theory that if all life on these worlds is destroyed, then equipping workers with radiation protection is a much cheaper, and therefore preferable, alternative to open warfare. General Marder has drawn the ire of many board members as a result of his failure at Typhon, and is leading this nuclear movement in bid to secure profit and regain loyalty in the company.

As a result of this situation, Marder is physically present in Frontier space, though far behind enemy lines. Sarah believes that if the Frontier Militia manages to catch Marder, the IMC board will instead favor the sentiment to withdraw, as ARES Division is also effectively stranded in Frontier space without direct control of most resources.

Out of steam. Let me know what y'all think so far.

Alright, here's what I have so far for "Titanfall 3: No Time to Fall" (deeply unserious title). I barely have an act together for a story so I'm gonna reblog this a bunch of times with new additions. Don't be surprised at any lore contradictions with Apex Legends; I don't play the game or follow the story.

So we start off just, like, a few months after Titanfall 2. Jack Cooper is flying high from the Fold Weapon fiasco and has joined the 6-4 alongside Bear, Gates, Droz, and Davis. The chemistry is delightful; Cooper has developed the confidence to fit right in with the team, and you get a great re-introduction to the setting with a high energy mission against an IMC station (could be in space maybe? Movement system may not be great to start in zero G). The 6-4 is, as always, wonderful. You get re-acquainted with the wall-run movement style of the series.

The 6-4 shreds through the base and finds some important IMC files, but Cooper searches for stuff irrelevant to the mission, and manages to get ahold of a lead on how to track down Kuben Blisk, leader of the Apex Predators. This is still only a couple months after Typhon's donation, and that means Cooper is set on taking down the man he sees as responsible for the death of both Lastimosa and BT. He manages to get the information, but Gates catches him at the last moment, and he plays it off. Before she can press, they get an alert from Bear that enemy Titanfalls have been detected.

The team calls in their various Titans, with kits both carried over from the previous games and entirely new to the sequel. When Cooper calls down his Titan, it is revealed that he has been paired with FS-1041, the Vanguard Titan originally intended to be his once Cooper had finished training under Lastimosa. Immediately, something is not right; FS's vocalisations are sterile in a way far beyond BT's had ever been. He does not make conversation, he does not make informative callouts, and Cooper is audibly frustrated with the situation.

Davis remarks on it with empathy; he too had a strong rapport with a former Titan. Lore is dropped that Titans with incredibly Smart AI like BT had already been rare and expensive this far into the war. Many Pilots, like Anderson, Bear, and (very importantly) Gates, had only ever piloted standard OS AI in their Titans. Lastimosa had been an acceptional dual-tactic Pilot and was deemed valuable enough to merit BT. Most other Smart AI are either present on ships, in charge of infrastructure. MOB-1316, Sarah Briggs' Titan, is one if these, and Cooper makes a snide comment wishing she'd let him switch.

Once the fight is over, the 6-4 returns to the current Militia flagship, the MCS Typhon's Memory. Gates attempts to corner Cooper about his vendetta against Kuben Blisk, but Bear interrupts and has a heart to heart with Cooper. Bear goes on to explain that the war has been hard on all of them. It is revealed that the Militia victory at Typhon was important but not without cost. The current goal of the Militia has become the capture, trial, and sentencing of General Marder, a campaign that has encountered multiple frustrating setbacks. Bear expressed sympathy toward Cooper's grieving, but emphasized the important of having everyone in the same page. He finishes his words with "we'll get him one day, I promise."

Cooper looks at his helmet before setting it on a table and falling into his cot. The helmet's visor blinks in accordance with the post-credits ending of Titanfall 2.

More to follow.

#titanfall #titanfall 2 #titanfall 3 #jack cooper #kuben blisk #bear titanfall 2 #gates titanfall 2 #droz titanfall 2 #davis titanfall 2 #general elias marder #sarah briggs #ares division

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whistlingpig · 2 years ago

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I can’t recall if I’ve ever talked about it online before, but back in.. ohhh, 2016? 2017? Gosh, it’s been so many years now, I’m not sure..

Anyway, several years ago, someone on Reddit introduced me to the film “When the Wind Blows” and it’s remained one of my favorite animated movies to this day - based on the graphic novel of the same name by Raymond Briggs (which, sadly, I have yet to read)

The art style is charming; borderline “cutesy” even. Something you’d expect to find in a children’s book - not a film about nuclear disaster

Enough. This isn’t a review. I’m not smart enough to write one. I’d just like to share my thoughts about what went wrong.

MAJOR SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT | READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION

If you’ve seen the movie, you know Jim and Hilda don’t survive. The emerge from the initial blast relatively unscathed, but make some unfortunate decisions that ultimately lead to their demise

Throughout the first part of the film, Hilda brushes off the threat of war - confident that if “they survived it once, they can survive it again.” She scoffs at Jim as he makes preparations for a nuclear strike. Still, as he removes the doors from their hinges for a makeshift ‘inner refuge’ and paints the windows white, it’s clear he doesn’t quite comprehend the gravity of the situation. They’re woefully under-prepared to survive the fallout from a nuclear blast

- Their first mistake?: Removing the doors. Jim was following instructions in an official emergency preparedness pamphlet issued by the government, so he isn’t entirely to blame here. Hilda comments on how draughty the house will be without doors. I think that’s foreshadowing!

- Stocking up on food & medical supplies should have been their number one priority, but Jim treats it as more of an afterthought. By the time he makes it to the grocery store, the shelves have already been cleared by panic-shoppers.

- They stored water in glass bottles without caps. These are all destroyed in the blast, but if they’d managed to remain undisturbed somehow, the water would still have been contaminated by fallout!

- They emerge from the inner core after a mere 48 hours. I think, without doors, the fallout would eventually have reached them....more slowly, though. If they’d waited a couple more days, they might not have gotten so sick

- They collected and drank contaminated rainwater. This is a big one, and probably what killed them in the end. Unfortunately, it couldn’t be avoided. Jim and Hilda would have died from dehydration anyway. If they had a source of CLEAN water to drink and bathe with, they may have been able to survive :(

As I see it: Jim placed way too much emphasis on building an inner refuge, when he should have been stockpiling food & supplies instead. Yes, the inner refuge was important, but you’re still vulnerable to fallout that enters through doorways and broken windows. With only 3 days to prepare, I understand he was struggling to prioritize things.... but safe drinking water is key to survival. Realistically, it only takes a couple hours to build a lean-to out of doors!

I keep wondering... Could they have survived? Not without water. I really think the lack clean drinking water is what they did them in, but I have no way of knowing how much radiation they were exposed to when they emerged from the inner core early.

Hey, hi. So that PSA about what to do after a nuclear strike last week has me in a dangerous spiral. I don’t want to turn into one of those ‘preppers’, but I also don’t want to be caught with my pants down if Russia decides to surprise bomb us lmao

I’m scared and want to stock up on drinking water and iodine tablets. And MRE’s. But I’m not rich. And I don’t want people to laugh at me. I remember when everyone was buying up all the masks and soap and hand sanitizer and meat and toilet paper, though.... That was scary

I’m scared

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krokodile · 7 years ago

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movie watched in 2018, just three n this one with two behind a cut because spoilers for movies older than all of you :P

battle of the sexes - holy fuck, so good. SO SO SO GOOD. look, i usually can’t stand emma stone and i rarely like sports movies. but i loved this movie so much i couldn’t shut up about it for days. emma stone and steve carell are fucking flawless, and watching the bonus features, seeing how emma lights up whenever billie jean is onset, it’s clear how strongly she felt about doing this right. and it absolutely shows. her transformation goes beyond the makeup (although holy crap they did a good job with that). her performance is remarkable; i won’t take back all i’ve said about how annoying i’ve found her over the years, because i did, but i underestimated her (which i guess is thematically appropriate for this movie :P ). she is immensely skilled, and her desire to do this project justice is plainly visible. the fire in her eyes when she’s on the court is fucking magnetic. i can’t say enough about how much i adored this performance. and i generally feel that biopics bring out the worst in actors (academy catnip though they may be).

steve carell nailed his role as well, but that was no surprise; i knew he would be perfect. i hope he gets his oscar for this, finally, though i’m assuming 3 billboards will sweep all the major categories. andrea riseborough is predictably perfect, and cute as a bug’s ear - i’ve always thought she was incredibly pretty, but this is the first time i’ve found her adorable. she and emma stone have the most insanely believable chemistry - i don’t think i’ve believed an onscreen relationship more, in every facet.

the movie looks amazing; it drops you right into the 70s with no detail ignored. and, you know, having lived on planet earth, i knew how this story ended. and yet, i was nervous. i was on the edge of my seat wringing my hands through every set. i wanted to stand up and cheer. i just...i really loved this movie. i expected to like it, because reviewers i tend to agree with raved over it, but i didn’t think i’d fall in love with it. easily one of the best to come out of 2017, at least for me.

when the wind blows - this is the best movie i NEVER EVER WANT TO SEE AGAIN. oh my god. look, if you know this movie, you understand me. if you don’t, how do i sum it up? an elderly couple living in (i think) rural england has been following the news of a seemingly inevitable nuclear conflict approaching. the wife is largely unconcerned - after all, they made it through world war ii, and enough time has past that the memories have become romantic - and the husband is confident that the government pamphlets instructing him to whitewash the windows and create a shelter out of doors will instruct him well.

...you know where this is going, because there’s only one way this story can go.

bombs fall, everyone dies.

but not like that. while most of their area is flattened, their home stands. and at first all seems well. emergency services will be along soon enough to rescue them, after all. the pamphlets instruct them to stay in their little shelter for fourteen days to avoid fallout, but the impracticality of that is immediately apparent, and after all - if you can’t hear it, feel it, see it, how can it be harming you?

sure, they’ve had headaches, but stress, you know?

if you for some reason have been meaning to see this but haven’t gotten to it, and don’t want spoilers, skip this, because i really can’t figure out how to explain how quietly horrific this film is without spoiling the entire thing.

the couple - jim and hilda - quickly grow bored indoors and stroll around their garden, chatting about how nice everything will look once it’s grown back next season.

yeah, you’ve correctly inferred just how much denial they’re in. hilda notices a neighbor’s dog in the distance and worriedly comments that it must be hungry; we can see that the dog is not only dead but partially fused to the ground. grimmer still is jim’s comment that people must have put sunday dinner on early in the week; he can smell the meat roasting. hilda mentions her worsening nausea, which jim attributes to a woman’s inability to handle stress.

the water runs out, there are rats in the toilets, and hilda and jim can’t quite pinpoint why they feel so off; so tired and weak. surely nothing a cup of tea wouldn’t fix, but that’s out of the question now. still, emergency services should be arriving any moment now. they wonder how their son and his family are faring.

jim wonders if hilda is wearing lipstick; she isn’t. her gums are bleeding. but surely it’s a result of ill-fitting dentures. they’re old; it happens. those strange sores on their limbs must be varicose veins. they’re old; it happens. bloody diarrhea? hemorrhoids. they’re old; it happens.

jim runs out of answers when hilda’s hair starts coming out in handfuls - or perhaps he’s simply too weak to speak much at this point.

ultimately, they retire to their tiny shelter, both finally acknowledging - wordlessly but clearly - that no help is coming. with no better ideas left, hilda suggests they might pray. jim, endearingly, begins his prayer with “dear sir,” which hilda suggests is wrong. they are, after all, an old married couple.

mid-sentence, jim ceases to speak. and that is all.

this movie came out in the 80s, as part of that boom of nuclear holocaust films that flooded the nation at that time. but unlike the thrillers or the family dramas, this film is almost painfully quiet. jim and hilda have no fear. there’s no screaming, no crying, just wondering why on earth their son seems to have gone mad at the news. war is survivable; they’ve done it before. there are no horrific shots of dead bodies, of people burned and in agony. just jim and hilda, quietly transforming from round-faced little old cherubs to hollow-eyed skeletons.

and my god, they make you love them. they’re fucking adorable, with their accents and their quaint little house. they bicker, but you know neither would know what to do with themselves without the other. (the sweetness of their relationship is, i imagine, what makes the moment where jim carelessly calls hilda a “stupid bitch” as she refuses to get into the shelter - the oven’s on, the laundry’s still on the line, she really should take care of these things first - so disproportionately upsetting. it feels personal, somehow.)

the movie looks absolutely gorgeous. the characters are animated, the home is done in 3d models, manipulated with stop motion, and the blending of mediums is startlingly seamless. the character designs are simple - jim looks rather like an elderly charlie brown, with a large round head, dots for eyes, a little squiggle mouth and little else - making it all the more effective when the effects of their sickness start to visibly affect them. there’s no gore, nothing hyperrealistic, and yet the images are deeply disturbing in ways eli roth can only dream of being.

as the saying goes, one death is a tragedy; a million, a statistic. we can speculate about the number of lives lost if nuclear war breaks out, but somehow that will feel less devastating than watching just these two. there’s nothing exaggerating, nothing made “bigger” for film. just the quiet, horrible truth.

and fuck, it’s a sick feeling when you remember that this is exactly what we did to every single japanese individual who didn’t immediately die when we bombed them. they died in days and weeks after with radiation poisoning, or years later of blood and bone cancers. either they went through this themselves, dying horrible, agonizing deaths that they couldn’t even feel the hope of curing, or they helplessly watched their families. numbers are sobering, but the reality of the suffering is nauseating.

oh and i mean trump seems determined to bring about the same fate to the us, so there’s that to think about, if you didn’t feel shitty enough.

it’s an absolutely brilliant piece of art; one of the best animated films i’ve ever seen. but i think it’s best to go in warned about what you’re seeing. you know it’s going to be sad, you know they’re going to die, but...you should know that it’s worse than you’re envisioning.

still. see it. it’s on youtube.

ringing bell - because shit, i didn’t already want to die enough, right? it’s bambi, but with sheep. oh, and instead of growing up and marrying his cousin, bambi joins forces with the hunter and becomes an expert gunman.

yeah.

honestly, i didn’t like it, and not for the reasons you might think. yeah, it’s sad, but i didn’t think it was well put-together. the first third is just a baby lamb called chirin prancing around being nauseating (or cute, i guess). the second third is an irritating, dumb baby sheep deciding he wants to become an apprentice to the wolf who killed his mother, which...okay, i can accept that he’s come to reason that only the strong survive (there’s an absolutely gutting scene, one of the few done well, where the lamb attempts to rescue a bird and her eggs from a snake. the mother is killed, and in the scuffle, the eggs are broken. the image of chirin wailing “why do the weak have to die?” is going to be the thing that fucks me up for the rest of my life. jesus christ.) but we see NONE of this - he goes from hunting down the wolf determined to kill it, the wolf knocks him down a fucking mountain, he climbs back up and declares his intent to become a wolf.

we get a rocky movie’s worth of training montages, and really a whole bunch of nothing for the second act. i’ll give it credit for having the wolf’s design be badass as fuck and for the hunting scene having more realism than i’d expect from a sanrio production (yeah, this came from the people who brought you hello kitty.) but the story elements are really ignored. we never do find out why the wolf never just ate the damn sheep when it came looking for him.

the third act is better - chirin’s adult model is the stuff of nightmares compared to his cotton fluffball appearance in the earlier scenes, and everything looks gorgeous and is animated far better than what came before it. i won’t spoil the story of the ending, but the final shot, of chirin alone, wailing for the wolf in what sounds creepily like a howl, is...depressing. it’s not SAD. it just comes with a resignation that makes it so much worse than just being sad. of course this is how it ends. what else could there be for this wretch, no longer a ram, but not enough a wolf?

it’s a short, about 50 minutes, and at first i was thinking it might have worked better as a feature, but really, it would’ve worked better at the same length, just with differently-applied focus. still, i appreciate its existence. i think the 70s and 80s realized what we’ve forgotten now - kids eat up the dark stuff, the cautionary and morality tales. when things are scary, you get to feel proud and excited that you made it through. when things are sad, you learn to remember that happiness returns. when you experience loss vicariously, you begin to understand it, how to process it. when you see death, you accept it as part of life. kids WANT to understand these things; they WANT to know more than what they know; they WANT to take on tough things and overcome them. WE want to keep them “safe” and “innocent” - they know that that’s the opposite of what they need.

that said, if any kid i’m watching wants to watch it, i’m going to another room until it’s over. JESUS.

#movies watched in 2018 #MWi2018: battle of the sexes #MWi2018: when the wind blows #MWi2018: ringing bell #anime

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verschwoerer · 5 years ago

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Five thousand miles west of Los Angeles and 500 miles north of the equator, on a far-flung spit of white coral sand in the central Pacific, a massive, aging and weathered concrete dome bobs up and down with the tide.

Here in the Marshall Islands, Runit Dome holds more than 3.1 million cubic feet — or 35 Olympic-sized swimming pools — of U.S.-produced radioactive soil and debris, including lethal amounts of plutonium. Nowhere else has the United States saddled another country with so much of its nuclear waste, a product of its Cold War atomic testing program.

Between 1946 and 1958, the United States detonated 67 nuclear bombs on, in and above the Marshall Islands — vaporizing whole islands, carving craters into its shallow lagoons and exiling hundreds of people from their homes.

U.S. authorities later cleaned up contaminated soil on Enewetak Atoll, where the United States not only detonated the bulk of its weapons tests but, as The Times has learned, also conducted a dozen biological weapons tests and dumped 130 tons of soil from an irradiated Nevada testing site. It then deposited the atoll’s most lethal debris and soil into the dome.

Now the concrete coffin, which locals call “the Tomb,” is at risk of collapsing from rising seas and other effects of climate change. Tides are creeping up its sides, advancing higher every year as distant glaciers melt and ocean waters rise.

Officials in the Marshall Islands have lobbied the U.S. government for help, but American officials have declined, saying the dome is on Marshallese land and therefore the responsibility of the Marshallese government.

“I’m like, how can it [the dome] be ours?” Hilda Heine, the president of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, said in an interview in her presidential office in September. “We don’t want it. We didn’t build it. The garbage inside is not ours. It’s theirs.”

To many in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Runit Dome is the most visible manifestation of the United States’ nuclear legacy, a symbol of the sacrifices the Marshallese made for U.S. security, and the broken promises they received in return.

They blame the United States and other industrialized countries for global climate change and sea level rise, which threaten to submerge vast swaths of this island nation’s 29 low-lying atolls.

“More than any other place, the Marshall Islands is a victim of the two greatest threats facing humanity — nuclear weapons and climate change,” said Michael Gerrard, a legal scholar at Columbia University’s law school. “The United States is entirely responsible for the nuclear testing there, and its emissions have contributed more to climate change than those from any other country.”

Over the last 15 months, a reporting team from the Los Angeles Times and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism made five trips to the Marshall Islands, where they documented extensive coral bleaching, fish kills and algae blooms — as well as major disease outbreaks, including the nation’s largest recorded epidemic of dengue fever. They interviewed folk singers who lost their voices to thyroid cancers and spent time in Arkansas, Washington and Oregon, where tens of thousands of Marshallese have migrated to escape poverty and an uncertain future.

Marshallese leaders acknowledge that America doesn’t bear full responsibility for their nation’s distress. But they say the United States has failed to take ownership of the environmental catastrophe it left behind, and they claim U.S. authorities have repeatedly deceived them about the magnitude and extent of that devastation.

A Times review of thousands of documents, and interviews with U.S. and Marshallese officials, found that the American government withheld key pieces of information about the dome’s contents and its weapons testing program before the two countries signed a compact in 1986 releasing the U.S. government from further liability. One example: The United States did not tell the Marshallese that in 1958, it shipped 130 tons of soil from its atomic testing grounds in Nevada to the Marshall Islands.

U.S. authorities also didn’t inform people in Enewetak, where the waste site is located, that they’d conducted a dozen biological weapons tests in the atoll, including experiments with an aerosolized bacteria designed to kill enemy troops.

U.S. Department of Energy experts are encouraging the Marshallese to move back to other parts of Enewetak, where 650 now live, after being relocated during the U.S. nuclear tests during the Cold War. But many Marshallese leaders no longer trust U.S. assurances of safety.

“We didn’t know the Runit Dome waste dump would crack and leak…. We didn’t know about climate change,” said Jack Ading, a Marshallese senator from Enewetak Atoll. “We weren’t nuclear scientists who could independently verify what the U.S. was telling us. We were just island people who desperately wanted to return home.”

Adding to the alarm is a study published this year by a team of Columbia University scientists showing levels of radiation in some spots in Enewetak and other parts of the Marshall Islands that rival those found near Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Such discoveries could give Marshallese leaders fresh ammunition to challenge the 1986 compact, which is up for renegotiation in 2023, and also to press the United States to honor property and health claims ordered by an international tribunal.

The tribunal, established by the two countries in 1988, concluded the United States should pay $2.3 billion in claims, but Congress and U.S courts have refused. Documents show the U.S. paid just $4 million.

The U.S. position is that it has already paid more than $600 million for the resettlement, rehabilitation and radiation-related healthcare costs of communities affected by the nuclear testing, said Karen Stewart, the U.S. ambassador to the Republic of the Marshall Islands. She said inflation brings the number closer to $1 billion.

“The United States recognizes the effects of its testing and has accepted and acted on its responsibility to the people of the Republic of the Marshall Islands,” Stewart said in a statement.

In September, the Marshallese parliament, the Nitijela, approved a national nuclear strategy, which calls for a risk analysis and environmental survey of Runit Dome, an assessment of legal options for its cleanup and a new attempt to secure the $2.3 billion ordered by the tribunal.

Last month, Marshall Islands lawmakers called on the international community to reduce greenhouse gases causing what they declared to be a “national climate crisis.”

China is taking an increasing interest in the Marshall Islands and other Pacific island nations, in part because of their strategic location and Beijing’s interest in reducing U.S. influence in the region. Those inroads by China have alarmed U.S. leaders, forcing them to pay more attention to the grievances of Marshallese leaders such as Heine.

“This heightened interest,” Heine said, “should bode well for us.”

https://www.latimes.com/projects/marshall-islands-nuclear-testing-sea-level-rise

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lhanimationblog · 8 years ago

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For todays lecture, we watched 'When the wind blows' created in 1986, and directed by Jimmy Murakami. This film is based of Raymond Briggs' graphic novel of the same name. When the wind blows uses stop motion and 2D hand drawn animation. This is shown in the backgrounds, as the objects and home are animated in stop motion, while Jim/James and Hilda, the main characters, are hand drawn in.

The film is set during a time when there was a fear of a nuclear war happening. During the film, James finds out that there will be a war happening in three days, and he starts to prepare for the worst, using the government issued pamphlets, that were designed for times when a war was evident. However, it had strange advice, such as painting his windows white. Hilda continues her daily routine, which makes the first half of the film seem like nothing is going to happen and it seem like people were misinformed about the event. Their son, Ron, dismisses the preparations as pointless, as he doesn't believe there will be a nuclear war.

During the film, when there is a nuclear blast, Hilda and James survive, with James continues to follow the pamphlets, which, at this point, to the audience, it is clear they are giving James and Hilda false hope, as they believe they should follow it and wait for rescue (which sadly never comes).

By the end of the film, James and Hilda are dying from radiation sickness and James is still confident that the rescue service with come and save them, however, it can be argued that he is in denial about this and isn't sure how to comfort Hilda any more. They still have false hope that someone will come and save them, which shows that in times like this, people need hope to continue and survive, and this isn't the case here.

To conclude, this film is about the fear of nuclear wars and what could have happened. It links to today, due to how people live in fear of terrorism and how it can affect us if we have false hope about things, such as what the media tells us. Overall, I enjoyed this film, as I loved the animation style, as it was simple but striking and the stop motion fitted well with the overall tone of the film. I give this film 9/10.

#Film Review

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bracketsoffear · 5 months ago

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When The Wind Blows (Raymond Briggs) "Utilizing a cartoonish design, this graphic novel follows a retired couple, Jim and Hilda Bloggs, and their journey through surviving a nuclear attack on Britain launched by the Soviet Union. Throughout the story, we see this innocent, cheerful pair of lovely grandparents very slowly die from radiation poisoning, all the while they keep waiting for help to arrive, help that we as the reader already know is not coming. The book was mentioned in UK parliamentary discussions, and used to support unilateral disarmament."

The Southern Reach Trilogy (Jeff VanderMeer) "The Southern Reach is a secret United States government agency responsible for investigating and hiding the existence of Area X, a remote region of swamps and coastline which was one day surrounded by an invisible and nearly impenetrable barrier. Strange phenomena have been occurring in Area X ever since it formed, and the Southern Reach has been sending in team after team in an attempt to find out what was responsible for the Area's creation—and if it poses a danger to the outside world.

Expedition members are warned to avoid contamination by Area X as it's not know what happened to those who did not return; though frustratingly for the teams, that's a very broad directive given how there's any number of ways Area X can contaminate them. Though most became part of Area X by turning into animals, some turned into grotesque monsters that are neither animal nor human. It is strongly hinted at that the… thing behind it all is merely trying to recreate its long lost homeworld, despite that homeworld being dead and its mission obsolete.

To quote the movie adaptation: "It wasn't destroying. It was changing everything. It was making something new." To quote the wiki about the Extinction: "It is the fear of catastrophic change" and "the extinction of humanity and its replacement by something else.""

#extinction poll #the extinction #poll #the magnus archives #leitner tournament #When The Wind Blows #Raymond Briggs #southern reach #southern reach trilogy #jeff vandermeer

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nofomoartworld · 8 years ago

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The Nuclear Culture Source Book

The Nuclear Culture Source Book, edited by Ele Carpenter, a curator, writer and one of the driving forces behind the Nuclear Culture Research Group.

On amazon USA and UK.

Black Dog Publishing writes: The Nuclear Culture Source Book is a resource and introduction to nuclear culture, one of the most urgent themes within contemporary art and society, charting the ways in which art and philosophy contribute to a cultural understanding of the nuclear. The book brings together contemporary art and ideas investigating the nuclear Anthropocene, nuclear sites and materiality, along with important questions of radiological inheritance, nuclear modernity and the philosophical concept of radiation as a hyperobject.

This book was published at the end of last year. 5 years after the Fukushima disaster. 30 years after Chernobyl. Even Fukushima sounds like a distant memory now but if we start to think in terms of nuclear deep time (where the safety of the storage of radioactive waste underground has to be guaranteed for the next hundreds of thousands of years if not far more), it actually happened less than a micro second ago.

Merilyn Fairskye, Plant Life (Chernobyl) Reactor 4

The Nuclear Culture Source Book contains artworks and essays that attempt to respond to the current nuclear age. This is an age characterized by an environment made radiological by the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents. But also by the long term effects of the fallout from weapon testing and the thorny issue of long-term storage and occasional leaking of nuclear waste repositories. Add to the picture, a vast infrastructure involving mining, energy production, waste transport, etc.

How do we take responsibility for high-level waste that has to be kept safe from earthquakes, climate change, volcanic activity and container corrosion for up to one million years? Is this even possible? Do we risk forgetting this nuclear background when its vast timescale exceeds our own understanding of time? When radiation cannot be perceived directly by our human senses? Will we ever stopped being haunted by a threat that remains invisible, odourless, silent?

This book illustrates the role of art in creating a visual sensory framework that helps us grapple with nuclear culture. It also demonstrates that there are ways to approach, debate and articulate the many political, aesthetical and social issues surrounding a phenomenon that eclipses our standard notions of time, materiality and danger.

Thomson & Craighead, Temporary Index, 2016. Image: Arts Catalyst

The Nuclear Culture Source Book accompanies the exhibition Perpetual Uncertainty at the Bildmuseet in Umea, Sweden, but it offers far more than your usual exhibition catalogue. It presents more artworks than the exhibition does and it contains outstanding essays. I was particularly fascinated by a text in which artist and writer Susan Schuppli so eloquently exposes facts i had never heard about such as the spontaneous nuclear fission of an uranium deposit in Gabon two billion years ago or Sweden’s role in forcing the Soviet Union to officially announce the Chernobyl disaster.

Dark nuclear times have suddenly been brought back to our minds now that there’s an obtuse and raving lunatic in control of the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal. A book like The Nuclear Culture Source Book is not going to make us feel better about the future of the world but it might at least enable us to face it with a better informed and clearer head. I highly recommend that you browse the publication if you get a chance. It’s only January but i’m already pretty sure that this one is going to be among my favourite books of 2017.

A quick run through some of the works i discovered in the book:

Trevor Paglen, Trinity Cube. Installation view, Don’t Follow the Wind, 2015. Image via elephant mag

Trevor Paglen’s Trinity Cube brings together two key moments in the nuclear age. The Fukushima disaster and the early experiments of nuclear weapons. The outer layer of this jewel-like cube is made of irradiated broken glass collected from inside the Fukushima Exclusion Zone. The inner core of the sculpture is made out of Trinitite, the mineral created on 16 July, 1945 when the U.S. exploded the world’s first atomic bomb in New Mexico, heating the desert’s surface to the point where it sand turned into glass.

The cube can be found inside the Fukushima Exclusion Zone as part of the Don’t Follow the Wind project. The artwork will be viewable by the public when the Exclusion Zone opens again, anytime between 3 and 30,000 years from the present.

youtube

Isao Hashimoto, 1945-1998

Isao Hashimoto made a simple but strikingly disturbing time-lapse animation of the 2,053 nuclear explosions on earth between 1945 and 1998, beginning with the Manhattan Project’s “Trinity” test near Los Alamos and concluding with Pakistan’s nuclear tests in May 1998. The video leaves out all tests since 1998.

Jane and Louise Wilson, The Toxic Camera, Konvas Autovat, 2012. Photo: likeyou

vimeo

Jane and Louise Wilson, The Toxic Camera, 2012

The Toxic Camera is inspired by the film Chernobyl: A Chronicle of Difficult Weeks made by Vladimir Shevchenko in the days immediately following the accident. The film crew was the first in the disaster zone following the meltdown of the power plant on April 26, 1986. They shot continuously for more than 3 months, documenting the disaster’s impact on the local population and the cleanup efforts. Radiation levels were so high that parts of the film were marked with white blotches from radiation. Shevchenko died from radiation exposure before the film was released. As for his 35mm Konvas Avtomat camera, it was so highly radioactive that it had to be buried on the outskirts of Kiev.

The Wilsons’ film explores interconnecting stories from interviews conducted with Chernobyl survivors and with Shevchenko’s colleagues, 25 years after the incident.

Morris&Co fabric, Tudor Rose, 1883, used to upholster British nuclear submarine interiors. Photo: Nuclear Culture

The Morris & Co company’s ‘Strawberry Thief’ fabric was used to upholster British Nuclear Submarines from the early 1960s to the mid-1990s. It seems that, like many other Victorian manufacturers, Morris & Co produced wallpapers rich in pigments such as locally mined arsenic green. However, due to the action of damp mould, the wallpapers emit poisonous gases which made the occupants of houses ill. William Morris apparently refused to believe that this was the case, and only reluctantly gave up producing such wallpapers.

Taryn Simon, Black Square XVII, 2006–ongoing. Void for artwork. Permanent installation at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow

In the year 3015, a black square made from vitrified nuclear waste will occupy a now empty space in at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow. The nuclear waste is made of organic liquids, inorganic liquids, slurries, and chemical dusts from a nuclear plant in Kursk as well as from pharmaceutical and chemical plants in the greater Moscow region. Through a process of vitrification, radioactive waste will be compacted and solidified into a mass resembling polished black glass. This mass is currently stored in a concrete reinforced steel container, within a holding chamber surrounded by clay-rich soil, at the Radon nuclear waste disposal plant in Sergiev Posad, 72 km northeast of Moscow. It will remain there until its radioactive properties have lowered to levels deemed safe for human exposure. Cast within the black square is also a cylindrical steel capsule containing a letter to the future written by Taryn Simon.

The work is part of the Black Square series, a collection of objects, documents, and individuals within a black field that has precisely the same measurements as Kazimir Malevich’s 1915 painting of the same name.

Hilda Hellström, The Materiality of a Natural Disaster (video still), 2012. Image via cfile daily

Hilda Hellström, The Materiality of a Natural Disaster

vimeo

Hilda Hellstrom, The Materiality of a Natural Disaster

Hilda Hellström’s The Materiality of a Natural Disaster is a set of radioactive food kitchen artifacts made from soil and clay taken from the exclusion zone surrounding the Daiichi nuclear power plants in Fukushima, Japan. The objects are irradiated, but within “allowable” levels. Hellström collected the irradiated soil with Naoto Matsumura, a former rice farmer and the last resident living inside the exclusion zone. The pots are accompanied by a video that documents Naoto Matsumura’s daily routine. He lives without water nor electricity on his land that won’t be farmable for at least thirty years.

Ken + Julia Yonetani, Crystal Palace, 2013. The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nuclear Nations

Crystal Palace is comprised of 31 chandeliers, as many as there are nuclear nations in the world. The size of each chandelier reflects the number of operating nuclear plants in that nation. Antique chandelier frames have been refitted with uranium glass and UV lighting. Once switched on, the UV bulbs cause the glass beads to glow with an eerie green. The title of the work references the grandiose building designed for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, alluding to human ambition, technological development and the costs and consequences that inevitably accompany them.

Suzanne Treister, NATO 2004-ongoing. From the series NATO

Shuji Akagi, Fukushima Traces, 2011-2013. Photo via Osiris

Shuji Akagi’s Fukushima Traces chronicles the city’s decontamination process and life after the tsunami. His visual diary and annotations reveal governmental billboards of encouragement to the population, contaminated soil from playgrounds and sports fields dug up and covered with blue tarpaulin, trees stripped bare to remove contaminated leaves and branches, cracks on the road, etc.

In the book of the project, Akagi writes: “I would like to record as much of what happened within the sphere of my everyday life. No matter how the media would cover the shining city-scape in the glow of recovery, I want to document the lingering scars of my surroundings.”

Brian McGovern Wilson and Robert Williams, Cumbrian Alchemy, 2014

Cumbrian Alchemy, by Brian McGovern Wilson and Robert Williams, explores the connections between the nuclear industry of the Energy Coast in Cumbria and Lancashire and the archaeology and folklore of the region. The performance in the photo above was inspired by Thomas Sebeok‘s proposal in 1984 that an Atomic Priesthood of physicists, anthropologists, semioticians and other experts could be effective in communicating information over vast expanses of time.

smudge studio, Look Only at the Movement (route map), 2012-15

smudge studio, Look Only at the Movement (digital stills), 2012-15

In 2012, Elizabeth Ellsworth and Jamie Kruse from smudge studio followed the routes along which nuclear waste is moved in the American West from sites of waste generation to disposal stations. Equipped with a car-mounted video camera, they documented storage infrastructures and engineered landscapes such as the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where nuclear weapons research is conducted; the former site of a plutonium plant in Colorado; the Department of Energy’s TRANSCOM in Carlsbad, New Mexico, which monitors, 24/7 and via satellite, the transportation of nuclear waste in trucks; the uranium tailings disposal cell at Mexican Hat in Utah and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, America’s only deep geologic repository where nuclear waste is buried 1,250 feet below the surface in a salt dome, etc.

Look Only at the Movement exposes the encounters of two worlds that seem to ignore each other: the travelers on the American Highway and the network of nuclear waste transport, disposal cells, and sites of remediation. It also demonstrates how the movement of nuclear waste through public spaces is (and will long continue to be) a condition of contemporary life, landscape, and infrastructure design. Yet, citizens, architects, and engineers have virtually no models for how to design and maintain infrastructures capable of safely containing nuclear materials for the millions of years required by their potency.

The exhibition Perpetual Uncertainty is at the Bildmuseet in Umea (Sweden) until 16 April 2017.

Included in the exhibition: Inheritance, a precious heirloom made of gold and radioactive stones.

Related stories: High-Speed Horizons. Using sonic booms and nuclear energy to power aviation, Anecdotal radiations, the stories surrounding nuclear armament and testing programs, Relics of the Cold War.

from We Make Money Not Art http://ift.tt/2kGLjlc via IFTTT

#IFTTT #We Make Money Not Art

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