http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/show/video-the-radioactive-art-exhibit-you-cant-see–dont-follow-the-wind

This is an incredibly fascinating, scary, and eye-opening video about a group of artists that made an art exhibition in the exclusion zone around the Fukushima nuclear plant that meltdown in 2011 due to the earthquake and tsunami. These artists potentially chopped years off of their lives to put art into abandoned homes that will, most likely, never be seen in person by any other humans. They describe their art pieces as, in a way, replacing the residents who so hurriedly fled their homes in 2011. Some of the artists also discussed their musings about how the natural elements of the exclusion zone will interact with their artwork as well as the destruction around these elements. One artist created a cube out of glass that was collected from broken windows surrounding the nuclear plant which contains a cube of trinitite. Trinitite is the glassy-like mineral that was created after the first atomic bomb test in New Mexico. It is the result of interaction between the sand of the desert and the new chemical event of the bomb. As the trinitite sits in the exclusion zone marinating in radioactivity, it will become even more dangerous.

I would like to talk more about big, dramatic, all-at-once destruction, in this class. We talk a lot about slow moving land alteration, habitat destruction, air pollution, etc., but I think there is a very unique way that humans interact with natural disasters which we should discuss. More specifically, natural disasters that are either caused or amplified, as is the case with Fukushima, by man-made technology. This art project is an incredible example of how these disasters can make us realize that if we mess with the natural world and create risky industries built from chemical manipulation, it can exclude us forever.