Nuclear Aesthetics: Technology, Corporeality, and the Politics of Nuclear Weapons Testing (original) (raw)

The bomb in the museum: Nuclear technology and the human element

museum and society, 2013

This article examines the commemorative role played by museums of nuclear technology in the United States, particularly those supported by the government agency responsible for the nation’s nuclear weapons and reactor programs, the Department of Energy. The management of public perceptions of America’s nuclear history in these museums reflects national defence and security imperatives in the post 9/11 era. The legacy of American nuclearism is complex and contradictory, and presents a daunting challenge to curators in museums sanctioned by vested interests. The many beneficial civilian applications of nuclear technology have be balanced by the recognition of the dire destructiveness of nuclear weapons; the compulsion to celebrate American technological achievement has to be checked by the acknowledgement of the damage wrought by the military use of nuclear energy both at home and abroad. A comparison with the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum suggests that nuclear ‘victory’ is more pro...

The Smoke of Nuclear Modernity Drifts through the Anthropocene

2016

Working with the nuclear economy and nuclear aesthetics is a complex ethical process, one that twists and turns through spirals of technical jargon, nuclear utopianism and deep psychic fear. In this culture of extremes, artists engaging with contemporary nuclear culture walk a political tightrope interrogating how nuclear aesthetics are reproduced whilst avoiding the simplifying tropes of industry and activism. In parallel to artistic practices, this essay explores some of the constructions of nuclear modernity, and the means of escape and betrayal, which contribute to rethinking nuclear aesthetics in the early twentieth century.

Nuclear Activities and Modern Catastrophes: Art Faces the Radioactive Waves

Nuclear-related artworks provide a favorable terrain for investigation of our contemporary epoch, for they relate to a science whose applications are highly political and that is spreading beyond the Western world. In times of global warming, indeed, the prospect of nuclear energy reappears as the latest sought-after modern technology. But after Hiroshima and Chernobyl, and given the dualistic civilian and military use of the atom, how do artists react to nuclear activities and their inherent politics? Can art provide an effective counterpractice to global nuclear politics? The author argues that art and science share the same project—the modernist project—and that art, like science, has to question its modern heritage.

Why We Need Nuclear Art

In public discourse the nuclear usually oscillates between the uncanny and the sublime, that is, the shockingly close (e.g. radioactive particles inside my body) and the mightily distant (e.g. a nuclear explosion). To designate the middle ground, the " space of care " as the curator of the show Ele Carpenter puts it, and perhaps find a language to speak about the title-giving perpetual uncertainty that governs this space, is the objective that was set for this exhibition. If we want to better understand the nuclear condition that we are all part of, we also need to address political, social, aesthetic questions, because science doesn't have all the answers

THRESHOLDS: GATEWAYS TO THE NUCLEAR IMAGINATION

2015

This photo essay represents some investigations into the imagery and architectures of British nuclear research, in particular the fast reactor programme. I am interested in the interaction of the ‘nuclear imaginary’ and the actual sites in which the experimentation took place. My background is as a visual artist and researcher, with a particular interest in ‘entropic modernism.’ I define this as the exploration of modernism as lived experience, where the fading of 20th century ideals takes physical form. I consider the ‘nuclear imaginary’ as a constellation of anxieties, optimisms, technocratic and patriotic emotions and motivations, which leave traces in factual material, the cinema and fiction of the time, and in propaganda and public discourse.

Deconstructing Nuclear Visions

esse arts + opinions, 2016

s, see http://www.postatomiceyes.net. 2 — Through Post-Atomic Eyes presented this work along with three other atomic-related avant-garde films: Charles Stankievech, Zeno’s Phantasies, 2005, 7 minutes, b&w, silent, 16mm; Su Rynard, As Soon as Weather Will Permit, 2013, 15 minutes, colour, sound, digital; and Lydie Jean-Dit-Pannel, & A Fade to Grey, 2015, 28 minutes, colour, sound, digital. 3 — Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,

"Dwelling on my Falling": Yukiyo Kawano's Nuclear Vision

Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 2022

In August 2021, Yukiyo Kawano, a third generation Hiroshima hibakusha, was refused permission to install her sculptural evocation of the Nagasaki bombing, at the first commemoration of the atomic bombings within the National Park Service’s Manhattan Project National Historical Park at Hanford, Washington, where plutonium for the “Fat Man” device was produced. The artist nonetheless raised the piece near the restricted Hanford zone. We consider the work’s complex ritual symbolism and the Park’s resistance to interpreting the impact of nuclear weapons and the legacies of environmental toxicity associated with plutonium production at Hanford during WWII and the Cold War.