Z33

Nuclear industry is undergoing a process of decommissioning and waste management. At the same time, a renewed interest in the ‘nuclear humanities’ is now also reaching art and curating. Curator and writer Ele Carpenter reflects on the relation of art and nuclear culture.

On November 17 last year, the seventh Nuclear Culture Roundtable took place at Z33, a day of debates accompanying the exhibition Perpetual Uncertainty. What exactly is nuclear culture, and what’s the origin of the Nuclear Culture Roundtable?

‘Sense of Sound’ symposium brought together six curators specialized in sound art to discuss the status of sound art within the field of visual arts. The speakers include Joost Fonteyne, director of Festival van Vlaanderen Kortrijk and Sounding City, Carlo Fossati, director of sound art gallery E/Static, researcher, curator and author Nicole Gingras, Justin Luke, founder of Audio Visual Arts AVA gallery, curator Bernard Schulz, and Carsten Steiffart, founder of sound art gallery Singuhr.

Perpetual Uncertainty is an exploration of contemporary art in the nuclear anthropocene. The exhibition brings together international artists from across Europe, the USA and Japan to investigate experiences of nuclear technology, radiation and the complex relationship between knowledge and deep time.

Over the last 6 years, Fukushima-based artist Kota Takeuchi has made a series of intelligently informed and aesthetically embedded artworks that draw us closer to the contaminated site of the dilapidated Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plant

With exhibition ‘The Wilde Things,’ Z33 explores new presentation models for contemporary jewellery in context of a wearer and within a narrative framework. Furthermore it takes a critical look at current developments within this discipline, which has evolved since the 1960s to become an autonomous, artistic, and reflective design practice.