Perpetual Uncertainty Z33, 2017
Exhibition
Perpetual Uncertainty: Contemporary Art in the Nuclear Anthropocene, Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design and Architecture, Hasselt, Belgium, September 17th – December 10th 2017.
Reviews and related texts
Regine Debatty review and interview with Andy Weir.
Why We Need Nuclear Art, Anna Volkmar
Toward Nuclear Culture Studies, Heritage Futures
Interview with Ils Huygens, Z33 Curator
Exhibition Description
'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.
The nuclear anthropocene describes how man-made radiation has contaminated the earth, forming a mark of human activity that will last for hundreds of thousands of years. Whilst 20th century fallout provides a time-stamp of the first nuclear age from nuclear weapons testing; the 21st century repositories for high-level radioactive waste will physically create a new geologic layer in the earth’s fossil record for over 100,000 years. Looking beyond the modernist vision of a utopian nuclear age, contemporary artists are engaging with the lived experience of radiation through nuclear objects, architectures and landscapes. Investigating new forms of nuclear vernacular, folklore and rethinking the markers and archives of the nuclear anthropocene.
A larger program on Nuclear Culture activities will accompany the exhibition, including field trips to nuclear sites with artists, and a roundtable discussion bringing together different experiences and approaches to nuclear aesthetics and politics.' (Z33)
Andy Weir's Work
Threshold Statuettes
For the Z33 exhibition, Andy Weir has made two new 40cm-high PLA (polylactic acid) 3D-printed Pazugoo figures, based on workshop designs.
Drawing on the architecture and radical history of the building as a 13th century beguinage - a refuge for lay religious women, these are installed in exterior arched niches (for religious statues) above the inner-courtyard entrance gates.
Associated with thresholds, Pazugoo here becomes ritual guardian of the exhibition, occupying the passage between its inside and outside.
This echoes the ritualistic function of Santa Barbara at the nearby HADES underground laboratory, marking the transition from above ground to underground, touched for protection by those taking the journey. Networks of mythic nuclearity resonate from the exhibition to the depths of its outside.
Installation
Inside the exhibition, Weir's Pazugoo work is presented as a prototyping process with accompanying research material.
Mounted on the tiled fireplace, a series of SLS plastic Pazugoo Prototypes (2016) reference ongoing workshop production (approx. 15cm high). These are shown alongside another new 30cm high black PLA figure, and a lump of local boom clay, sourced from the nearby HADES (High Activity Disposal Experimental Site) underground laboratory.
On a wall-mounted monitor w/headphones, a loop of Pazugoo Upflush Operation (2017), imagines future life of plastic alongside sound recorded from the HADES lab.
On the adjacent wall the artist presents a diagram Double Flight as Navigational Procedure for Deep Time (2017); the A3 Double Flight Collage (2017), and a map as diagrammatic proposal for perimeter burial of Pazugoo objects at a low-level waste repository.
The installation becomes a strategy for combining the Pazugoo's material connection to the earth with its mythic dimension of flight, a method that Weir describes as 'geo-fiction'.
images: Z33 exterior; Threshold Pazugoos; Pazugoo Upflush Operation; Double Flight Collage; Z33 interior installation, Double Flight Diagram.