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.

Steve Robyns (1981) is een Limburgse maker, ontwerper en kunstenaar. Met Into The Unknown presenteert Z33 zijn eerste solotentoonstelling, in samenwerking met Kunstenwerkplaats VONK. De expo toont Robyns’ volledige collectie functionele sculpturen, ontstaan vanuit een jarenlange fascinatie voor het buitenaardse. Zijn inspiratiebronnen zijn documentaires en sciencefiction films.

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?

The Induction Series by Aernoudt Jacobs, co-produced by Z33, reviews and re-interprets the laws of electromagnetic induction to make sounds, and emphasizes the transition between what can be seen and what can be heard.

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.

In the case of sound art, the medium itself forces the viewer to change his normal mode of perception. Finding the right form for the presentation is a crucial element, especially in the world of visual arts that is mostly focused on the visual.

Based on performance, exhibition All the Knives (Any Printed Story on Request) is triggered by audience entering the exhibition space. Always animated by performers, the show gathers stories of objects that are in constant flux.

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

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.