Written by artists, curators, historians, and cultural workers, Art Encounters in the Nuclear Age: Radiant Objects is a collection of essays that offers an idiosyncratic cross-section of nuclear history, foregrounding stories of objects and artworks.
This collection aims to expand discourse around nuclear power and bear witness to the strangeness of living in the nuclear age and to contribute to a culture of care for nuclear subjects. Particularly the collection seeks to direct attention to the marginalised voices of those who have experienced nuclear traumas more directly. The book can be read as a kind of inventory of objects, of things close-to-hand, which can allow us to sense the magnitude and complexity of issues arising from nuclear technologies. Amidst prevailing eco-anxiety, these essays ask us to sit with these experiences, to ‘hold’ these objects and to come closer to understanding our nuclear heritage. Topics include: the legacies of nuclear bombs; the nuclear archive and ‘noise prints’, nuclear decommissioning; the past and present of nuclear bunkers; and art in Fukushima.
This text is suitable for researchers in the visual arts, history, philosophy, and environmentalism.
Introduction 1. Radiant Memory 2. Photography and Materiality: Accounts from the No-return Zone of Fukushima 3. The Nuclear Archive 4. A Wylfa souvenir, reactivating nuclear presence 5. Christian Kuhtz’ Einfälle Statt Abfälle, Sonne-Heft 2 (Invention not Waste, Sun-booklet 2) 6. Bunk’Art: Staging the past and present of Albania’s nuclear bunkers 7. Contaminated Tartan 8. Remembering Plutonium 9. More-Than-Human Life and Art in Low-Level Radiation in Fukushima: Trevor Paglen Trinity Cube and Don't Follow the Wind Conclusion: The Remainderless Destruction of Immaterial Objects – Nuclear Apocalypse and the Digital Archive
Jessica Holtaway is Lecturer at Solent University, UK.
