A: What stirred your interest towards the topic of nuclear culture, and lead you to develop Nuclear Culture project in the first place?

E: I was invited by the Submarine Dismantling Project Advisory Group in the UK, to consider how artists could respond to the dismantling of nuclear powered submarines in the UK. That was the first time that I formally made a connection between nuclear issues and artistic practices. The advisory group was advising the Ministry of Defence (MOD) on both the practicalities and the ethics of dismantling their nuclear submarines. I worked with three different artists and in partnership with the MOD, that provided access to the Navy and to the submarines themselves. Artists could film on the submarines and interview submariners too, which resulted in an exhibition at KARST Gallery in Plymouth, UK. We had a round table discussion, with the chair of the submarine dismantling project advisory group, artists, people from the navy, activists, writers and submariners.

A: The field of nuclear industry is saturated with political agenda. What was the main interest of the military to involve visual artists and designers? 

E:  What the different stakeholders anticipate from artists varies: the activists would like to have a clear campaigning image, the consultation groups want to be able to engage more people in the discussion generally, as the debate is usually very technical, slow and can be very dull at times. Even if people have a political response to nuclear issues, it's very hard to engage with complex information over long periods of time. All the involved parties want to simplify that knowledge, and to engage a public. The main challenge here is not to let art practice become instrumentalized for a political position. My argument has always been that artists will not simplify, they will complexify — so will not necessarily provide what any of those groups expect, but they might do something else which is perhaps more interesting. To re-think the questions from different positions, to create a political space, as well as an aesthetic space. 

A: Could you speak about your experience of establishing networks between artists, nuclear agencies and NGOs? What are the main challenges of navigating such a polarised discussion? 

E: On the one hand, there are very clear decisions to be made: do we want to have nuclear weapons or not, or do we want to have nuclear power generation or not? On another, we already have nuclear waste, it is not going to disappear. The nuclear waste management organisations are making the commitment to cleaning up the waste, thus acting from an ethical position, which is perhaps not so different from a green activist position. This serves as a common ground for discussion. But of course, these debates are very different in countries that hold nuclear weapons, because the politics and bodies of knowledge around the subject are kept in secrecy. Tensions always arise where you do not expect them to be. One of the big issues is around the role of public engagement, and whether our role as artists and curators is to develop a critical discourse (which we tend to think of as more academic or theoretical), or to engage a wider population. I believe that local specificity of the conversation is crucial - being in real space, speaking in real time, and about things in front of you.

"Today, more and more artists are engaging with the idea of nuclear decoloniality, thinking about whose nuclear histories we are telling and representing, what kind of bodies of knowledge we use to configure a nuclear aesthetic, and where else should we be looking for this knowledge."

A: Has the role of visual culture and design in nuclear debate change over the course of history? What are the current trends and urgencies? 

E: Initially, artists have been concerned with the nuclear age as a 20th century phenomenon: from cold war archives and cold war histories, nuclear weapons programmes, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the test sites in Trinity, the Marshall Islands, Algeria. Then interest has shifted to Chernobyl, Fukushima and the increased American / North Korean nuclear weapons threat. My research is concerned with what a 21st-century art practice engaged with nuclear matter could look like. A lot of work revolves around questions of visuality and visibility, but what interests me the most is the way that artists can make connections between different parts of the nuclear industry, and of nuclear history. Today, more and more artists are engaging with the idea of nuclear decoloniality, thinking about whose nuclear histories we are telling and representing, what kind of bodies of knowledge we use to configure a nuclear aesthetic, and where else should we be looking for this knowledge.

A: What are the main blindspots encountered while working with toxic matter in the Western context? 

E: While today radioactive waste is much better managed and strictly regulated, the ‘legacy waste’ is part of a wider problem. In Britain in the 1950s and 60s, radioactive waste was stored badly in places it shouldn’t have been stored: for example, unlined containers that often leaked or could easily blow up. In this time, the waste was not considered to be ‘nuclear’. And this is where Gabrielle Hecht’s concept of ‘nuclearity’ comes in as an important aid. In her book ‘Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade’, she looks at the way that Uranium mining was not (and is still not) considered a nuclear process, which means that it is not regulated in the same way as a nuclear power station would be. This directly applies to monitoring and ensuring the safety of the workers, and the inhabitants of the surrounding area. The point is: not all radioactive things are considered to be nuclear. And this distinction is highly political.

"Many artistic practices today still mimic the compartmentalisation of science. We need more artistic and design projects that overcome these gaps."

A: We cannot see or sense radiation, hence the role of visualization and mapping is very important. But how can you go further from merely revealing the invisible? And how can the agency of a designer extend to other aspects of the nuclear supply chain?

E: Currently I’m working with uranium glass, and following the material traces of the radioactive domestic products back to the uranium mines. I suppose in all of our material products there are purposeful blindspots in the supply chain, but the areas of knowledge in nuclear science are also very compartmentalised, which is a different major issue. For instance, all the teams within the Manhattan project were working on small isolated projects within different areas of research, without having an overview of how all the elements fit together. Many artistic practices today still mimic the compartmentalisation of science. We need more artistic and design projects that overcome these gaps.

The interview elaborates on the content of Nuclear Culture Roundtable: Design for the Deep Future, that took place on 4 July 2019 at Het Nieuwe Instituut. The full summary of the event is available here.

Dr Ele Carpenter is Curator of the Nuclear Culture project. Her curatorial research investigates nuclear aesthetics through commissioning new artwork, publishing, curating exhibitions, site visits and roundtable discussions in partnership with arts organisations and nuclear agencies. Ele regularly participates in European workshops on the role of culture in long-term radioactive waste management, and was interviewed for 'Radioactive Art' on BBC Radio 4 (2 March, 2017). Carpenter is convenor of the Nuclear Culture Research Group at Goldsmiths University of London where she is a Reader in Curating. She is a Visiting Research Fellow, Institute of the Arts, University of Cumbria.