Nuclear Culture

The Nuclear Culture Deep Geologic Repository Workshops are supported by the Swedish Research Council Vetenskapsrådet to bring together artists and researchers in Nuclear Cultural Heritage to expand the Deep Time discourse of radioactive waste repositories to consider their geopolitics within a contemporary decolonial context. This workshop will be based around a field visit to the site for Sweden’s Final Repository for Short-lived radioactive waste at Forsmark, Östhammar, managed by SKB. This unique opportunity will enable new ways of thinking about the role of arts practice-based research in marking radioactive waste sites for future generations.

The research group includes:

Dr Ele Carpenter is a curator, artist, and Professor Interdisciplinary Art and Culture at Umeå University. She was awarded a UK AHRC Early Career Research grant (2012) to develop curatorial research into Nuclear Culture in partnership with the Ministry of Defence (MOD) Submarine Dismantling Advisory Group. She went on to establish the Nuclear Culture Research Group organising field research and workshops in the UK, Belgium, France, Japan and Sweden which have been integral to research outputs including artworks, book chapters and exhibitions. Most recently she curated Splitting the Atom, CAC Vilnius, Lithuania 2020. In Sweden she curated Perpetual Uncertainty (Bildmuseet, 2016; Z33, Belgium 2017; Malmö Konstmuseum, 2018). She is editor of The Nuclear Culture Source Book (2016) and regularly writes book chapters and catalogue essays conceptualizing aesthetics of radiation. Ele is a curatorial researcher with established professional, artistic and academic networks. She represents Sweden on the Expert Group for Awareness Preservation of Radioactive Waste (EGAP), organized by the NEA Nuclear Energy Agency and the OECD Office for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Erich Berger is a doctoral researcher, artist and curator based in Helsinki. In his fieldwork-based practice, he investigates natural radioactivity, potential uranium mining sites and nuclear infrastructure in Finland and abroad, resulting in works like Inheritance (2016), Open Care (2017), Spectral Landscapes (2021 -), Landscape Machines (2023-). As a curator he develops opportunities that create critical transdisciplinary encounters and collaborations between professionals from art, natural science, technology and the humanities. Berger has exhibited widely in museums, galleries and media-art events incl: Ars Electronica Linz, File Festival Sao Paulo, Sonar Barcelona, and Venice Biennial. Erich is formerly Director of the Finnish Bioarts Society, with 14 years experience of organizing artist field research in Finland. He currently works at the University of Oulu in Finland, where he conducts interdisciplinary research into how artists approach temporalities beyond human-centred time, combining cultural anthropology, geology and art. Erich will organize the Finnish part of the field trip and workshop in partnership with the Oulu University Biodiverse Anthropocene Group. Throughout his artistic practice, Erich has explored the materiality of information and information and technology as artistic material. His current artistic focus lies on issues of deep time and hybrid ecology which led him to work with geological processes, radiogenic phenomena and their socio-political implications in the here and now.

Dr Eglė Rindzevičiūtė is Associate Professor of Criminology and Sociology at Kingston University London, UK, with a PhD in Culture Studies from Linköping University, Sweden, 2008. She was P.I. on the AHRC research networking project ‘Nuclear Cultural Heritage: From Knowledge to Practice’ (2018-2022), and is currently leading on the VR funded project: Nuclear Spaces: Communities, Materialities and Locations of Nuclear Cultural Heritage (2021-2024). Previously:Chargée de recherche, Centre d’études européennes, Sciences Po, Paris (2012-2015), Post-doctoral Researcher, Gothenburg Research Institute, Gothenburg University (2009-2012), Post-doctoral Researcher, Tema Q: Studies of Social Change and Culture, Linköping University (2008-2011). Eglė is a sociologist with experience of leading interdisciplinary research groups investigating nuclear cultural heritage in Sweden, UK and Lithuania. Egle will bring insights into the Eastern European experience of nuclear decoloniality, and a wider European perspective on how Geologic Facilities sit within the wider nuclear cultural industry in Scandinavia. She also has experience of advising artists and curators on developing practice based research on nuclear questions, incl: Materialising the Cold War, National Museums Scotland (2022-2023); Burial, film by Emilija Skarnulyte (2022); Splitting the Atom (2020) at CAC, Vilnius.

Yhonnie Scarce, is an Artist and lecturer at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne University, Australia. Scarce conducts interdisciplinary artistic research into ongoing effects of nuclear colonisation on Aboriginal people; in particular, the effects of British nuclear weapons testing on unceded aboriginal land, and the impact of radioactive contamination on future generations. Significantly this memory is preserved through artworks held in over 12 major collections. In 2021 IMA, Brisbane and ACCA Melbourne, presented Missile Park an exhibition of new work and a major survey of 15 years of Scarce’s career. Scarce was lead researcher on The image is not nothing (concrete archives)’ edited by Lisa Radford and Yhonnie Scarce, for Art and Australia Online 2020, which involved fieldwork to local and international sites of nuclear colonisation, genocide and memorialisation, an editorial project with Art + Australia online and a major curatorial project that debuted at ACE Open (ADL) and travelled to VCA (MEL). Yhonnie was born in Woomera, South Australia, and belongs to the Kokatha and Nukunu peoples. Scarce’s interdisciplinary art practice references the ongoing effects of nuclear colonisation on Aboriginal people; in particular, her research has explored the effects of British nuclear weapons testing on unceeded aboriginal land, and the impact of radioactive contamination on future generations. Family history is central to Scarce’s work, drawing on the strength of her ancestors, she offers herself as a conduit, sharing their significant stories from the past. Scarce will bring new perspectives on the indigenous experience of landscape and materials, rethinking deep time memory for future generations.

Dr Susan Schuppli, Artist and writer, Reader and Director of the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, affiliate artist-researcher and Chair of the Board of Forensic Architecture. Schuppli’s work examines material evidence from war and conflict to environmental disasters and climate change. Her Nuclear Commons research cluster explores the evidential afterlives of radioactive materials from the accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima to the isotopic signature found in glacial ice as well as issues related to geological containment and nuclear waste disposal. Cases dealing with the nuclear feature prominently throughout Schuppli’s book Material Witness published by MIT press, 2020. Her creative projects have been exhibited throughout Europe, Asia, Canada, and the US. She has published widely within the context of media and politics and is author of the book, Material Witness published by MIT Press in 2020. Susan is a long standing member of the Nuclear Culture Research Group, and her film Trace Evidence (2016), was commissioned by Bildmuseet for the Perpetual Uncertainty exhibition. Schuppli has a particular interest in the material evidence of nuclear techno-scientific practices, and has developed a cluster of research projects around the nuclear commons. Alongside a new investigation of the legal and moral frameworks of common ownership of radioactive waste, her critical framework of the ‘material witness’ will be a core concept for the group to utilize in collective and individual explorations of the deep time underground repository project from wider geopolitical perspectives on the nuclear.

Ele Carpenter will introduce her curatorial research into contemporary art and nuclear culture, focusing on how her conversations with artists in Australia contribute to the spatial mapping of radiation in the landscape. Her sabbatical in Australia is focused on the challenges of decolonising the discourses of the Nuclear Anthropocene, identifying what is ‘out of scope’ of the European Commission Directive on Radioactive Waste. Ele is also happy to answer questions about nuclear site markers, radioactive waste, nuclear submarines and the variable risk perception of Uranium Glass.

Further details here.

Recording of the talk here.

The 2024 Nordic Social Science Conference took place in Turku, Finland 4-7  June 2024.

Including a workshop on the Co-production of techno-scientific promises: communities, institutions, and materialities, convened by Markku Lehtonen, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain; Matti Kojo, LUT University, Finland; and Hanna-Mari Husu, LUT University.

Ele Carpenter presented a draft paper on the co-production of techno-scientific promises for radioactive waste, starting with a decolonial close reading of the EU Directive on ‘Establishing a Community framework for the responsible and safe management of spent fuel and radioactive waste’. This work is part of Ele Carpenter’s research Sabbatical during 2024.

Erich Berger is a doctoral researcher, artist and curator based in Helsinki. In his fieldwork-based art practice, he investigates natural radioactivity, potential uranium mining sites and nuclear infrastructure in Finland and abroad, resulting in works like Inheritance (2016), Open Care (2017), Spectral Landscapes (2021 -), Landscape Machines (2023-). As a curator, he develops opportunities that create critical transdisciplinary encounters and collaborations between professionals from art, natural science, technology and the humanities. Berger has exhibited widely in museums, galleries and media-art events incl: Ars Electronica Linz, File Festival Sao Paulo, Sonar Barcelona, and Venice Biennial.

Dr Ele Carpenter is a curator, artist, and Professor Interdisciplinary Art and Culture at Umeå University. She was awarded a UK AHRC Early Career Research grant (2012) to develop curatorial research into Nuclear Culture in partnership with the Ministry of Defence (MOD) Submarine Dismantling Advisory Group. She went on to establish the Nuclear Culture Research Group organising field research and workshops in the UK, Belgium, France, Japan and Sweden which have been integral to research outputs including artworks, book chapters and exhibitions. Most recently she curated Splitting the Atom, CAC Vilnius, Lithuania 2020; and Perpetual Uncertainty (Bildmuseet, 2016; Z33, Belgium 2017; Malmö Konstmuseum, 2018). She is editor of The Nuclear Culture Source Book (2016).

Alex Ressel is an artist based in Darwin and Gunbalanya in the Northern Territory of Australia, who works in collaboration with Kerri Meehan. Alex is a Phd Candidate in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences.at Griffith University, Australia. Alex is researching Contemporary Rock Art in Western Arnhem Land, Australia, informed by collaborative filmmaking with Kunwinjku people. His research addresses the different concepts of cultural heritage in response to specific contexts. The heritage of rock art in western Arnhem Land is indicative of new ways of thinking about cultural heritage as a contemporary and living process. The project explores how contemporary Indigenous people in western Arnhem Land care for their rock art heritage, which is one of the world’s oldest enduring creative traditions. This research is supported by the ARC funded project: Art at a crossroads: Aboriginal responses to contact in northern Australia. https://nuclearterritory.wordpress.com/

Dr Eglė Rindzevičiūtė is Associate Professor of Criminology and Sociology at Kingston University London, UK, with a PhD in Culture Studies from Linköping University, Sweden, 2008. She was P.I. on the AHRC research networking project ‘Nuclear Cultural Heritage: From Knowledge to Practice’ (2018-2022), and is currently leading on the VR funded project: Nuclear Spaces: Communities, Materialities and Locations of Nuclear Cultural Heritage (2021-2024). Previously: Chargée de recherche, Centre d’études européennes, Sciences Po, Paris (2012-2015), Post-doctoral Researcher, Gothenburg Research Institute, Gothenburg University (2009-2012), Post-doctoral Researcher, Tema Q: Studies of Social Change and Culture, Linköping University (2008-2011).

Dr Susan Schuppli, Artist and writer, Professor and Director of the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, affiliate artist-researcher and Chair of the Board of Forensic Architecture. Schuppli’s work examines material evidence from war and conflict to environmental disasters and climate change. Her Nuclear Commons research cluster explores the evidential afterlives of radioactive materials from the accidents at Chernobyl and Fukushima to the isotopic signature found in glacial ice as well as issues related to geological containment and nuclear waste disposal. Cases dealing with the nuclear feature prominently throughout Schuppli’s book Material Witness published by MIT press, 2020. Her creative projects have been exhibited throughout Europe, Asia, Canada, and the US. She has published widely within the context of media and politics and is author of the book, Material Witness published by MIT Press in 2020.

SOLU Dialogues is an ongoing event series at SOLU Space where art, science and society meet. Through varying formats we host artists, scientists and other practitioners present and discuss their work. These events are a forum for exchange and dialogue between our members, collaborators, communities and publics.

Curating Nuclear Futures: Decolonising the Nuclear Anthropocene

Collab Space – bld. 17, JRC Ispra and Webex

Dr Carpenter will introduce her curatorial research into nuclear art and culture, tracing the movement of uranium across the planet. She will introduce some of the key concepts regarding decolonising European notions of ‘RK&M’ Records, Knowledge and Memory, Awareness Preservation and intergenerational knowledge transfer, when concerned with radioactive waste and nuclear cultural heritage. There will be time for Q&A.

This talk follows a week spent by Dr Ele Carpenter at the JRC Ispra site, connecting with colleagues from the Nuclear Facilities Management & Safe Conservation and exploring the archives of JRC, in the framework her Research Sabbatical on Planetary Nuclear Aesthetics – considering the decolonisation of radioactive waste management in Europe. More information on the JRC SciArt website.

We invite JRC colleagues who are on site to join us numerously in person for a discussion on history and memory in relation to nuclear waste – an important conversation especially here at the JRC Ispra site – and the significance of decolonisation within the context of nuclear waste management.

Ele Carpenter attended the fourth plenary meeting of the EGAP Expert Working Group on Awareness Preservation after Repository Closure at the Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management (BASE) in Berlin, Germany, 17-19 April 2024.

The group includes people working in radioactive waste management agencies across Europe concerned with geologic repositories for high level waste including: geologists, regulators, implementers, as well as representatives from civil society groups, and scholars from the humanities and social sciences researching futures literacy and deep time thinking.

The group is part of the IDKM Working Party on Information, Data and Knowledge Management of the NEA/OECD.

Is the Circle closed?

The new union building, Västra pavilion, Skolgatan 67A, Umeå

We live in a time of tough challenges for the planet and many of its inhabitants. How should we deal with all crises, how can we create a more sustainable society and what role does culture play in all of this?

During the spring of 2024, Norrlandsoperan will show three dance works with themes that call for reflection and discussion. That’s why we now want to invite you to open lunch discussions at the new Kårhuset, the Western Pavilion, which is located at Vasaplan. You are welcome to buy your lunch here and listen to a short lecture by an invited researcher, followed by a conversation with a choreographer.

The third lunch conversation takes place on February 13. Here we meet researcher Ele Carpenter from Umeå University and choreographer Hagar Malin Hellkvist Sellén. They will touch on issues around circular thinking, collectives, heritage and environment and sustainable cultural production. Also, don’t miss the performance We are moving towards the end, which premieres on February 17.

Dr. Ele Carpenter is professor of interdisciplinary art and culture and director of the UmArts Artistic Research Center at Umeå University. Ele Carpenter is a research-focused curator and teacher in interdisciplinary, politicized art and practice-focused social networks. Her work is based on concepts such as planetary care, decolonization and the Nuclear Anthropocene. Through artistic research projects, she will discuss the cycle of uranium from its formation on Earth 4.5 billion years ago, to its use in nuclear weapons, nuclear energy and now radioactive waste.

Info here in Swedish https://norrlandsoperan.se/forestallning/lunchsamtal-3-ar-cirkeln-sluten/

The art world is becoming increasingly aligned with a nuclear techno-fix to climate change. Most famously the newcleo partnership with Museo Rivoli in Turin. As artists and scholars with long term practices which investigate the decolonial and deep time politics and aesthetics of nuclearity and radiation we are meeting to address the increasing popularity of small scale nuclear reactors, and consider possible responses to the Turin conference.

If you would like to take part in forthcoming meetings please join the JISC mailing list, and introduce your work and professional context.

At these meetings the Nuclear Culture Research Group formed a working group to write an open letter calling for the arts to stop promoting Small Modular Reactors.