NUCLEAR FANTASIES: ASTONISHMENT

How can we conceive of and depict a nuclear disaster in all its radicality?
This first, inaugural session of the series of meetings on nuclear imaginaries focuses on an indeterminate concept that has traditionally been used to describe a state in which all perceptual, ontological, and cognitive reference points are shaken, and which expresses the lack of words capable of describing and conveying the experience: “stupor.”

Ever since the seminal twin events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—and whenever a nuclear accident occurs—"stunned silence" constitutes that "zero" term, —a slippery and extraordinarily ambivalent concept—that serves to describe both the experience of the catastrophe itself and that of the long process of adaptation to its perpetuation. Art historian Maria Stavrinaki will trace the genealogy of this concept by revisiting it through the writings of philosophers, eyewitnesses, and doctors, as well as images of the nuclear world; artist Ana Vaz will present her ongoing project “The Voyage Out,” which weaves together several unique narratives linked to the Fukushima nuclear disaster; art historian Toni Hildebrandt will reflect on Ana Vaz’s work, which fits within this genealogy of stupor without, however, succumbing to the idea of the end of time.