Splitting the Atom, 2020
Exhibition at Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius and the Energy and Technology Museum in Vilnius.
Sep 18 – Oct 25, 2020
Curators: Ele Carpenter and Virginija Januškevičiūtė
Interview with co-curator Ele Carpenter
There are two nuclear power plants in the vicinity of Vilnius: Ignalina (decommissioned) and Astravets (not yet operational). A third, and infamous other, is Chernobyl, eerily present following the effects of its catastrophic failure, and more recently via the popular television series that focuses on the disastrous consequences of lies and neglect. The exhibition "Splitting the Atom" offers insight into the different cultural contexts of these plants and their role in the global infrastructure of the nuclear cycle – from natural resource extraction to waste.'...
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...By the beginning of the new millennium, evidence of everyday experience of radioactive contamination through nuclear testing, uranium mining, and colonial exploitation combined with the dangers of radioactive waste was better understood and radically influenced how artists consider nuclear aesthetics.
Today nuclear culture explores questions of deep time contamination, colonial nuclearity and radioactive waste management as well as the need to disarm. Practical concerns caused by aging technologies and radioactive waste become graver and increasingly urgent every day. While this work takes place, nuclear technologies continue to penetrate different aspects of our everyday life; and we know that radioactive fallout particles will remain across the surface of our planet forever. ' (curators' text)
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I showed two Pazugoo Index figures in this exhibition (reference archive objects for buried markers of nuclear toxicity), alongside a print of Double Flight Diagram, which draws research processes around grounding and ungrounding, earthing and unearthing.
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images: Installation shots: Pazugoo Index (2018) & Double Flight Diagram (2020), CAC (Contemporay Art Centre), Vilnius; Pazugoo Index (2018), Energy & Technology Museum, Vilnius.; museum and general exhibition shots.
